History Today

The medievalist Jacques Le Goff was inspired by the work of his uncle and fellow historian, Marc Bloch.

Justin Marozzi admires Hugh Kennedy’s article from 2004, which offers a nuanced portrait of the great Abbasid caliph, Harun al Rashid, much-mythologised hero of The Arabian Nights. 

The compact between the British state and those prepared to die for it is a dubious one, argues Sarah Ingham.

The opening naval battle of the First World War took place not in the North Sea but in Central Africa in August 1914. It would change the course of the African conflict in Britain’s favour, says Janie Hampton.

When West Germany won the competition for the first time in 1954 they were the unfancied representatives of a divided nation emerging from defeat and humiliation.

Though it all seems rather mild from the distance of half a century, the riots that took place in English seaside towns during 1964 revealed a shift in values from those of the austere war generation to the newly affluent baby boomers, argues Clive Bloom.

Africans in Georgian Britain have often been portrayed as victims of slavery, unfortunates at the bottom of the social heap. The reality was far more fluid and varied, with many African gentlemen sharing the same cultural and social aspirations as their fellow Englishmen.

Why did the diplomatic deceits and deceptions that took place across Europe in the summer of 1914 lead to the First World War? Annika Mombauer seeks answers to one of history’s most complex and controversial questions.

The British colonial policy towards the indigenous people of Tasmania in the first part of the 19th century amounted to ethnic cleansing, a part of its history that Britain still hasn’t confronted, argues Tom Lawson.

Historians have often depicted the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign as a period of decline or crisis. Yet her government operated more successfully than is usually thought.