Feature

Joseph Stalin, by Samuel Johnson Woolf, 1937. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Muriel Woolf Hobson. Public Domain.

Stalin and the Communist Party in the 1920s

By the late 1920s, Stalin and the Soviet Union seemed on the road to totalitarianism. Did the system spawn a monster – or a monster the system?

The Fall of the Mighty

Douglas Johnson compares and contrasts the downfalls of Neville Chamberlain and Margaret Thatcher.

Japanese children in uniforms raise their arms to salute emperor Hirohito, c. 1932. Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe. Public Domain.

Emperor Hirohito’s War

What did Hirohito really think of the Second World War? After his death, diaries and memoirs from the Shōwa emperor’s court began to shed light on his role in the conflict.

Uprising of enslaved people in the French colony of Santo Domingo, 22 August 1791. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris. Public Domain.

Anti-Slavery and the French Revolution

The French Revolution’s message of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ was crucial to uprisings by enslaved peoples in Europe’s Caribbean colonies.

Soldiers of the National Liberation Army during the Algerian War of Independence.

French Resistance and the Algerian War

During the 1950s the Algerian struggle against France and its white settlers for independence inflamed passions and hatreds in both countries – while a small number of French men and women helped the Algerian liberation movement in defiance of their government and the sentiments of the majority. What made them do it?

Independence for Zimbabwe. Condemn the white minority government of Rhodesia! Poster from 1976

Rhodesia’s War of Independence

The brutal war to maintain white supremacy in what is now Zimbabwe eventually led to the rule of Robert Mugabe.

Returned French prisoners of war are greeted at Roanne station by Marshal Pétain, August 1941. Nationaal Archief. Public Domain.

Vichy: Pétain’s Hollow Crown

In 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain took the helm of a humiliated France. While Vichy endured, many took his silence as evidence of grand strategy – a view bolstered by the client press.

King John's Maundy

England's royal black sheep may well turn out to be the instigator of the ancient ceremony linking Church and Crown. Arnold Kellett explains how this came about.

Selling the Seaside

Sun, sea, sand and ... salesmanship. Nigel Yates describes the mixture served up by English coastal resorts to lure the visitor to a cornucopia of attractions before the days of the package holiday abroad.