History Today

Though an incredible feat of engineering, the Panama Canal ruined many reputations during the 400 years it took to make the dream a reality.

For over a century, the crowns of Hanover and Great Britain were worn by the same king. While the British public remained largely indifferent to Hanoverian affairs, politicians grew to resent them.

Roger Hudson expands on a photograph of a locomotive taken during the American Civil War by one of Mathew Brady’s team.

Understanding the emotional lives of people in the past is one of the most difficult challenges facing the historian, argues Suzannah Lipscomb.

With the independence referendum just around the corner, Naomi Lloyd-Jones asks why the Scottish Home Rule Association, an important precursor of the SNP, has been largely forgotten.

No outbreak of jingoism and no immediate rush to enlist greeted the outbreak of the First World War.

The Concert of Europe, the diplomatic model championed by Britain in the run-up to the First World War, was doomed by the actions of competing nationalisms. Britain’s entry into the conflict became inevitable, despite its lack of military preparation, as Vernon Bogdanor explains.

Stephen Cooper and Ashley Cooper find parallels between the Schleswig-Holstein question and more recent European interventions.

T.P. Wiseman looks at how Roman republican ideals and the struggle between optimates and populares shaped the lives and legacies of the Roman imperator, Augustus, and his designated successor, Tiberius.

The much-loved film first appeared on August 12th, 1939.