History Today

The changing climate of the Little Ice Age forced radical thinkers to reconsider humanity’s place in the universe.

In 1981, a horrific murder case required police in East Germany to go door-to-door collecting handwriting samples. There was no public outrage, because they were not told about the crime.

Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe by John J. Callanan revels in the making of the controversial satirist and philosopher.

For the Portuguese empire to rise, an old world had to give way. Rivals in Europe’s lucrative spice trade, how much did they know about the powerful Mamluk sultanate?

The vagaries of palace politics are notoriously difficult to record. Historians should pay attention to rumour.

British soldiers fighting in the American Revolutionary War were unprepared for the terrain awaiting them across the Atlantic. Many thought that America was determined to destroy them; some felt it had succeeded.

Rosemary Wakeman’s The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918-1941 is a tale of three cities linked by globalisation and a singular global citizen.

The first year of Edward I’s reign saw waves of strictures placed on a medival Jewish community in an already perilous situation. It set the path to their expulsion.

How many planets are there? As with the discovery of Uranus, the answer depends on who you ask.

On 16 January 1926, the BBC broke the news that a murderous mob was storming the capital. Broadcasting the Barricades wasn’t supposed to be a hoax, but it was an effective one.