History Today

Brian Bowers assesses the first fifty years of public electricity supply in the United Kingdom and its scientific background.

On March 19th, 1942, a British officer, riding the “best polo pony in Burma,” launched a headlong charge against a Japanese machine-gun emplacement. He died as he would probably have chosen to die; and with his death, writes James Lunt, concluded a long and distinguished chapter in the history of the British Army.

There were repulsive sides to Fascist Italy; but Mussolini’s movement sprang from deeply patriotic sources, and endured for two decades.

J.B. Morrall offers his study of the events that led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and of the French Calvinists’ fortunes thereafter, both at home and abroad, down to the beginning of the present century.

A century ago, writes Patrick Renshaw, Karl Marx and his colleagues founded in London the first International Workingmen's Association, a body from which many varieties of socialism and communism have since developed.

From 1848 until 1867, writes E.R.R. Green, the romantic nationalists of Ireland, with strong backing from the Irish-Americans, conspired in vain to make their country an “Independent Democratic Republic.”

During the Industrial Revolution, many “dark Satanic mills” arose to scar the English landscape. But in Gloucestershire, writes Esther A.L. Moir, home of the cloth industry, commerce and the art of architecture achieved a happy compromise.

Tsarist Minister of Finance, and briefly Prime Minister, Witte was one of the pioneers of Russian industrialization, writes Lionel Kochan.

A youth of brilliant promise, a man of commanding gifts, Gladstone's friend and lieutenant quitted the political arena before he had reached the age of fifty. None of the statesmen of his period, writes John Raymond, presents the modern biographer with a more absorbing problem.

At a time when class-distinctions were still immensely powerful, writes Lucy Masterman, Lloyd George became the first working-class Prime Minister of Great Britain.