History Today

After the appointment in 1811 of Britain's first Resident Ambassador in Persia, a number of English women braved the hazards of travel in that country and, according to Denis Wright, have left us invaluable accounts of their lives there.

Alan Wood writes that the wastelands of Siberia have provided Russia with 'a vast roofless prison' for criminals and political prisoners banished into exile. 

'The cult of personality' means that for the West Stalin personified the arbitrary terror of the Soviet regime: yet he must also stand for the USSR's greatest achievements of modernisation and industrialisation, argues Paul Dukes. 

To mark the occasion of the fifteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, being held in Bucharest from 9th-15th of this month, we present a portrait of the Romanian capital.

J. G. Nandris investigates an Iron Age culture centred on modern Romania

Much less is known about the Portuguese conquistadores of eastern Africa, explains Malyn Newitt, than of their counterparts in America and the Indies.

The census of religious worship taken in England and Wales in 1851 gives a unique insight into the religious habits of our Victorian predecessors which, as Bruce Coleman explains, is very much at variance with the popular image of them.

What did medieval monasteries mean to those living inside them, to those who founded and helped them with gifts or protection, and to those who lived near them? Professor Holdsworth examines these questions in relation to the Cistercian order.

The 'Churchill Question' is a complex one: a study in failure as well as success.