Historiography

History's Heroic Age

Blair Worden revisits Hugh Trevor-Roper’s essay on the radicalism of the Puritan gentry, a typically stylish and ambitious contribution to a fierce controversy.

The New Internationalism

Global history has become a vigorous field in recent years, examining all parts of the empires of Europe and Asia and moving beyond the confines of ‘top-down’ diplomatic history, as Peter Mandler explains.

Edward Gibbon: And He Rose Again

The return of religion and the West’s current obsession with decline make Roy Porter’s profile of Edward Gibbon, first published in History Today in 1986, curiously dated.

Past, Present and Propaganda

Simon Heffer argues that until relatively recently most historians have been biased in their efforts to harness the past to contemporary concerns.

Who was Herbert Butterfield?

Michael Bentley looks at the father of British historiography who was an eloquent and controversial opponent of teleology.

Tacitus: The Continuing Message

Christopher B. Krebs considers Irene Coltman Brown’s article on the ambivalent and ironic Roman historian Tacitus, first published in History Today in 1981.

Russian Historiography: Now You See Them...

Roger Moorhouse revisits a perceptive article by John Erickson on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, first published in History Today in 2001, its insights born of a brief period of Russian openness.

Rethinking Otto III – or Not

Chris Wickham revisits an article by J.B.Morrall, first published in History Today in 1959, on the strange, shortlived emperor who in the tenth century sought to rule the lands we now call Germany and Italy.