Today’s featured articles
As the Roman Empire declined its rulers became more interested in personal survival than good governance. Rome’s fall offers lessons for leaders today.
Early Stuart England saw the emergence of mass petitioning. These expressions of collective grievance would advance popular politics, uncover division, and lay the road to war.
When abolitionist author Frederick Douglass visited Britain and Ireland in 1845, he was celebrated in poems and songs wherever he went. Arriving as an enslaved man, he left with his freedom.
Most recent
Golden Horses, Red Square
In 1935 Turkmen farmers rode their horses 4,300 kilometres across the Soviet Union to impress Moscow.
‘Desk Revolutionaries’ by Biancamaria Fontana review
Desk Revolutionaries: The Men of the French Directory, 1795-9 by Biancamaria Fontana sets the record straight on the French Revolution’s great experiment in governance.
How the Carthusians Resisted the Reformation
The consequences of Carthusian defiance showed the brutality of the dissolution of the monasteries.
‘The Rise and Fall of American Europe’ by Glyn Morgan review
The Rise and Fall of American Europe by Glyn Morgan finds a continent powerless before a capricious United States. Is it too late to teach an old world new tricks?
Crimped by the Prince of Shanghai
Sailors looking for work in the 19th century risked getting crimped – or shanghaied – and caught in a whirlpool of exploitation and corruption.
Patent Granted for Zeppelin’s Airship
A project worthy of Jules Verne: the first rigid airship began its ascent on 31 August 1895.
The Women Who Fought the Mau Mau
During the Kenya Emergency, white women took up arms against the Mau Mau rebels. What did it mean to be both domestic and violent?
‘The Traveller’ by Andrea Wulf review
The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and His Search for Humanity by Andrea Wulf brings the most enlightened of Enlightenment radicals into the mainstream.
Current issue
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In the September 2026 issue:
Tourism in Communist China, the medieval forgery at the heart of the Church, what the Victorians read, the Bengal Famine in Indian letters, Stuart petitions, and more.
Plus: reviews, opinion, crossword, debate, and much more!
You can buy this issue from our website, from newsstands across the UK, or read it as a digital edition via the History Today App.