History Today

‘What is the most common misconception about my field? That “anarchic” and “fanatical” Poland was partitioned by its more “enlightened”, “tolerant” absolutist neighbours.’

The climate crisis is a hot topic, but what does it mean to study the history of our relationship with the natural world?

Parliament’s champion of the people or scandalous, self-serving politician? Georgian radical John Wilkes kept a foot in both camps.

On 16 October 1930 Britain’s sense of its historical greatness was skewered with the release of 1066 and All That.

The dismissal of a government scientist over the unproven battery additive AD-X2 galvanised the American scientific community in the 1950s.

In the chaos unleashed by the October Revolution, Mikhail Bulgakov found a past become fragmented and confused, and history the domain of madmen and devils.

The Diver of Paestum: Youth, Eros and the Sea in Ancient Greece by Tonio Hölscher – and translated by Robert Savage – searches beneath the surface for the meaning behind a beguiling fresco.

On 9 October 1676 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek – the ‘Father of Microbiology’ – presented his findings to the Royal Society.

After the Flood, Noah’s sons were repurposed to support a new worldview justifying racial hierarchy and slavery.