History Today

Hitler's contribution to the history of the twentieth century has been one of destruction. The war he started in 1939, argues Jeremy Noakes, was to recast the pattern of our world irreparably.

Much of the research that has established social history as a serious branch of historical study has been carried out in County Record Offices explains J.A. Sharpe, of which Essex is an outstanding example.

Richard Cavendish visits an association dedicated to the 19th-century poet, socialist and craftsman.

Overburdened by taxation, the people of Naples, as Neil Ritchie explains, led by a poor fishmonger's boy and inspired by Giulio Genoino's vision of a more just society, rose in revolt against their Spanish overlords.

The word 'monument' contains two ideas: 'commemoration' and 'survival'. Historic buildings of all ages commemorate the past because they are as integral a part of it as are written documents, which are sometimes described as 'monuments' in their own right.

The seventeenth-century Jews regarded Venice as 'the land of promise', where for a few generations they flourished almost free from constraint and prejudice.

The epic voyage of this Elizabethan adventurer to Peru and his subsequent capture by its Spanish masters inspired Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho! An article by A.L. Rowse. 

Lawrence A. Clayton on the Chinese labourers who came to work in Peru, often in appalling conditions.

'Monumentally bad diplomacy, worse strategy, chaotic military organisation and inept generalship' - Thomas Tulenko describes how great powers have failed in their attacks on Afghanistan. Penned as Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul in December 1979, the BBC's David Loyn offered his own analysis thirty years later.