History Today

P.J. Thorne analyses the symbolism contained within the famed 11th-century embroidered tapestry.

The autobiographies of ordinary men and women are an important, though neglected, source of social history. John Burnett, Professor of Social History at Brunel University, has been collecting and studying these writings, many of them unpublished, for several years. This month and next, History Today is publishing an extract from the section on education in his book, Destiny Obscure.

Paul Kennedy rounds up the historiography of appeasement.

John D. Pelzer explains how the casual gathering of like-minded coffee-drinkers would influence British political and intellectual life for decades.

Philip Pattenden explores the work of Charles Eamer Kempe at Old Place, Sussex.

Rodney Dennys looks at the heraldry of the Falkland Islands.

Juliet Gardiner charts the progress of the project to raise the Mary Rose from the seabed.

In 1956 the Suez Canal seemed to flow through every British drawing room and the limits of British power and influence were forcefully brought home - but it had been a different story in 1882, explains Christopher Danziger, when the first Suez Crisis brought Britain prestige and the expansion of her Empire.

'To sum up all, poverty, slavery and innate insolence, covered with an affectation of politeness, give you... a true picture of the manners of the whole nation' was Hogarth's opinion of the French in 1749, explains Michael Duffy.