History Today

A collateral relation of the famous diarist met with some alarming experiences in Dr. Johnson’s company during the 1780s, writes D. Pepys Whiteley.

Captain Boycott, whose name has added a word to the English language, was accepted as a symbol of the landlord class in troubled Ireland. By T.H. Corfe.

W.H. Chaloner offers a study in British railway engineering.

“A game of bluff from start to finish,” said Robert Baden-Powell, British commander during the Second Boer War. Nicholas King describes the seven-months’ siege, that took place in present day South Africa.

The economic and cultural transformation of Russia’s vast possessions in Central Asia is still rapidly going forward. Geoffrey Wheeler describes how she began to enter this field during the first half of the eighteenth century.

In deciding on the Reoccupation of the Rhineland, writes D.C. Watt, Hitler said that he went forward “with the assurance of a sleepwalker...” His practical calculations proved to be “entirely justified.”

Reorganised by Trotsky in 1918, writes David Footman, the Bolshevik forces gradually prevailed against the Whites in Eastern Russia and Siberia.

Joanna Richardson describes how the gifted cousin of the Emperor Napoleon III acted as an all-powerful intermediary between the studio and the palace.

Arnold Whitridge explains how a group of instinctively conservative, wealthy gentlemen led the American people to an unlikely victory in war and a miraculous nationhood.

Cyril Falls describes the dissolution of the union of Norway and Sweden, and the subsequent ascension of a Danish Prince to the Norwegian throne.