Historical Memory

As China reclaims its central role in the world, Robert Bickers appeals to Britons and others in the West to take account of the legacy left by the country’s difficult 19th century.

Asa Briggs has been associated with History Today from its beginning. In an interview to celebrate our 60th anniversary, he tells Paul Lay about his involvement with it, his new book on his days as a cryptographer and his passion for Blackpool.

Twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall Martin Evans introduces a short series looking at changing attitudes to history in the former Communist states.

Stella Rock sees a renaissance of religious traditions at what was one of Russia’s most vibrant monasteries before the Soviet purge.

Richard Wilkinson questions the motives of important historical figures, and of historians writing about them.

Kathryn Hadley discusses the fate of several villages destroyed in the First World War, now on military territory usually inaccessible to the public.

The Mongolian past has been drawn by both sides into twentieth-century disputes between Russia and China, writes J.J. Saunders.

Susan-Mary Grant argues that the cult of the fallen soldier has its origins at Gettysburg and other battlefield monuments of the American Civil War.

Mussolini casts a long shadow. R J.B. Bosworth describes how Italians of both the left and the right have used memories of his long dictatorship to underpin their own versions of history and politics.

Rachel Sieder considers the role of ‘memory politics’ in Guatemala’s uncertain path to democracy as government and society attempt to come to terms with the brutality of the counter-insurgency war.

David Anderson looks at the contentious issues raised as Kenya comes to terms with the colonial past.

Winston Churchill wrote history with an eye to his eventual place in it, David Reynolds tells us. His idea of history also inspired his making of it.

Is it history or fiction? Is it better than both, or worse than either? Robert Pearce wrestles with these questions.