History Today

In 1808, writes H.J. Barnes, a Scottish Benedictine played an important part in securing the return of Spanish troops from Denmark for service in the Peninsular War against Napoleon.

Noel Blakiston describes the actions of an ebullient British Consul in the Papal State during the final stages of Italian unification.

W. Bruce Lincoln describes how Nicholas exercised a more personal control in state affairs than any other ruler since Peter the Great.

Catherine’s cordial relations with the greatest thinkers of her day were no mistake, writes A. Lentin, but an integral part of her statecraft.

It was Russia’s tragedy, writes Leonard Schapiro, that a greater man than Stalin supplied Stalin with the means to put his nightmare Utopia into practice.

In the age of the Encyclopaedists, writes Wilfrid Blunt, Linnaeus applied his great classifying talents to the world of plants.

A.L. Rowse describes the life and career of the foremost Persian and Sanskrit scholar of his day.

Joanna Richardson describes how Queen Victoria wrote as she certainly must have talked - with common sense, some simplicity, much shrewdness, and occasional indiscretions.

During the eighteenth century, writes Bill Hooper, ‘barbaric anarchy’ reigned at Eton.

Once the hall of Richard II’s palace, Westminster Hall became a centre of the British judicial system and, writes Leonard W. Cowie, a popular meeting-place for Londoners.