History Today

Lenin’s return to Russia by German agency in April 1917, writes David Woodward, was one of the turning points in 20th-century history.

Christopher Lloyd profiles a highly successful businessman of modest and abstemious habits, John Julius Angerstein, who formed a magnificent collection, the nucleus of London’s National Gallery, at his house in Pall Mall.

During the last decades of the eighteenth century, the Ascendancy in Ireland, writes William D. Griffin, was dominated by Lord Clare, a figure both reviled and admired.

A history cartoon by Rob Murray.

A 1972 essay on women petitioners of the mid-17th century anticipated greater engagement with the political ambitions and private lives of ordinary men and women, says Alice Hunt.

Liz James celebrates the Eastern Empire’s artistic heritage and its pivotal role in shaping Europe and the Islamic world of the Middle Ages.

Two centuries before the Swinging Sixties the weakening of social customs caused by the Industrial Revolution led to a modest transformation in people’s sexual behaviour, says Emma Griffin.

G.D. Sheppard uncovers three audacious and previously unknown fabrications by an English sinologist, which threatened to rock Britain’s diplomatic relations with China in the 1930s.

The decade before the Nazi occupation was a period of bitter division in France, raising questions about the nature of French fascism.

At what point did the Scots first see themselves as a distinct kingdom separate but equal to that of England? Scottish sovereignty and independence have medieval origins.