History Today

Flaming June

A Victorian homage to a Renaissance master became one of the world’s most reproduced images.

Allegory of the Empress Catherine II with the Text of Nakaz, 18th century.

The Power of the Pen

The writing of constitutions is a forgotten artform.

Pilgrims in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from Liber peregrinationis, French, c.1410 © Bridgeman Images.

Blood, Stones and Holy Bones

The spiritual power of medieval relics meant that Jerusalem, or a dragon, could be remade anywhere.

Catherine II, by Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov, c.1770.

The End of a Nation

Wedged between Russia, Prussia and Austria, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth faced extinction in the 18th century.

Beauty and the Beast, by Walter Crane, c.1901. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

The Moral of the Victorian Children’s Story

Illustrated picture books in Victorian England reached new aesthetic heights. But was it always for the benefit of the children?

Members of the Ulster Unionist party sign a covenant on ‘Ulster Day’ as part of their campaign to halt the passage of the Third Home Rule Bill, 28 September 1912.

Solving the Insoluble

Was the partition of Ireland an inevitable act?

A Young English Woman, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 16th century.

The Historian Embodied

Dressing in historical clothes can reveal things about the past that no book can.

Fear of Plague in the House of Fitzeisulf, a detail from Trinity Chapel window, Canterbury Cathedral, 14th century.

Pandemics in the Parish

The medieval approach to emergency planning may offer lessons for the 21st century.

Alfred the Great’s statue in Wantage, by Count Gleichen, 1877.

How Great was Alfred?

In uniting the peoples of Wessex and Mercia, the celebrated king left an ideological legacy of lasting importance.

For wealthy tourists travelling to the Middle East in the 19th century, the services of a dragoman were an essential purchase. Yet the often difficult lives of these local agents and guides remain elusive.