History Today

Henry Stewart wed Mary on July 29th 1565.

High-minded allegations of prurience should not stop historians from examining the intimate lives of people in the past.

Many of the world’s languages derive from a single source. Harry Ritchie tells the story of Proto-Indo-European.

We tend to think of the early modern city as one beset by foul, dangerous air and dank odours. Yet it also inspired a golden age of perfumery, explains William Tullett. 

From luxury liners to troopships: Roland Quinault examines the close relationship between the Cunard line and Winston Churchill.

The momentous final days of Maximilien Robespierre are well documented. Yet many of the established ‘facts’ about the Thermidorian Reaction are myths.

Roger Hudson details the tense situation leading up to the evacuation of British troops from Aden in 1967.

By no stretch of the imagination was Richard III a saint, but the furore that sprung up around his discovery and reburial was strongly reminiscent of a medieval cult of sainthood.

The glamorous success of Alcock and Brown’s first non-stop transatlantic flight in the wake of the Great War made the world smaller but no less nationalistic, argues Maurice Walsh.

Britons like to think that they all pulled together during the Second World War, but as Clive Emsley shows, some of the work force, in particular those employed in the nation’s ports, were just as likely to be pulling a fast one.