History Today

“How different were our feelings” wrote a Scottish sergeant, “from many of our countrymen at home, whose ideas of the French character were drawn from servile newspapers and caricatures in print shops.”

The concluding article in Steven Watson’s studies of Britain’s Lord Chancellors.

Richard Storry describes how the Army Mutiny of February 1936 was the climax of revolutionary nationalism in Japan. Its outcome meant action against China, and in the end led to Pearl Harbour

On the Neva in 1740, Peter the Great’s niece constructed a winter palace.

Thomas D. Mahoney discusses the character, career and present-day importance of the great political philosopher.

W.H. Chaloner assesses the life and career of Ferdinand De Lesseps, the French diplomat and later developer of the Suez Canal.

J.L. Carr describes how, in revolutionary France, the debonair delights of civilization were replaced by a more virtuous albeit often stale cultural climate.

For more than four years after the death of Nelson, Admiral Collingwood held naval command from the southern tip of Portugal to the Dardanelles. Piers Mackay writes how, in that time, Collingwood became the prime and sole Minister of England, acting upon the sea.

In the reign of Francis I, writes Desmond Seward, the first modern and last medieval poet attended the French court.

For more than a decade, writes Robert Rhodes James, until personal disaster overwhelmed him in 1890, Parnell and the Irish Nationalists held the balance in the House of Commons, and by a policy of considered obstruction swayed the course of British politics.