History Today

The Valiant Losers of the 11th Century

History is not only written by the victors. Those chronicling the 11th-century conquests in England and Scandinavia tried to rehabilitate the reputations of Byrhtnoth, Harald Hardrada, and others.

Duke William and his two half-brothers: to his right, Bishop Odo of Bayeux and to his left, Count Robert of Mortain, on the Bayeux Tapestry. Myrabella (CC0 1.0).

Reassessing William the Conqueror

In the popular imagination, William the Conqueror is, without doubt, the villain, yet the sources we have for his life are ambivalent.

Modern painting of Mehmed and the Ottoman Army approaching Constantinople

Opening and Closing of Turkey’s Past

Over the last 30 years, western ideas about the Ottoman Empire have been transformed, just as Turkish attitudes towards the West have become increasingly negative, writes Erik Zurcher.

Head in the clouds: Jorge Luis Borges in Palermo, Sicily, 1984.

Portrait of the Author as a Historian: Jorge Luis Borges

Is reality simply a collection of unconnected moments and impressions? If so, what does it mean for our understanding of the past? For one Argentine writer, fiction was the perfect place to explore such questions.

Young women gazing at Kabul from its hills, c.2014.

Islam’s Forgotten Scholars

The Islamic world produced some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, including a number of remarkable female scholars. Arezou Azad examines who these women were and why their place in history has been neglected.

Bones of those killed in the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide at the Liberation War Museum, Dhaka. Adam Jones (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Genocide, War and Bangladesh’s Search for Identity

Bangladesh was born of civil war in 1971. The former East Pakistan has wrangled with issues of religion, secularism and democracy ever since.

Transitory power: Henry I in 'Sir Thomas Holme's Book of Arms', English, 15th century

The Hunt for Medieval Kings

As the search for lost medieval kings continues, interest in them seems stronger than ever. But a warning from the past speaks of their – and our – ruin.

Guilty before God? Churchill and President Truman, Washington DC, January 10th, 1952

Churchill, God and the Bomb

Did the idea of nuclear war make Britain’s wartime leader more God-fearing?

A Separate Australia

Western Australia’s desire to secede as ‘Westralia’ in 1933 was undermined by a change in Britain’s attitude towards its Empire.

The Cultural Revolution: A People's History

Mao Zedong’s brutal campaign to purify Communist China, which began in the early 1960s, resulted in a decade of chaos that has left an indelible stain on the nation’s politics.