History Today

Loan sharks, youth debt, peer pressure and parental responsibility are not just issues of the moment. Nicola Phillips tells the story of a young Regency buck who pushed his father a financial step too far.

A photograph of shipbuilders working on the liner Queen Mary taken in 1935 tells a wider story, by Roger Hudson.

The Daily Mail has recently caused controversy with its views on patriotism. Adrian Bingham looks back at a time when the newspaper’s belief in its national duty provoked intense debate and copies were burnt in the City of London.

As Home Secretary in 1911 Winston Churchill intervened in a debate about Britain’s role in a future European conflict. His observations were remarkably prescient and, had they been implemented, might have shortened the First World War, says Allan Mallinson.

Mary Sparks describes a female citizen of Sarajevo, whose life in the city coincided with the period of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and whose impact on the social and cultural events reflected the modern aspirations of the city in the time leading up to the First World War

During the First World War, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist William Lawrence Bragg devised a system to locate enemy guns, which made a dramatic impact on the Allied war effort and beyond, says Taylor Downing.

We ask some of our leading historians to tell us about the books that they have found most stimulating over the past 12 months.

The ‘little town’ celebrated by western Christians as the location of the Nativity is much more than a stylised depiction evoked in Christmas cards each December, says Jacob Norris. 

The tragic figure whose death led to the outbreak of the First World War was born on 18 December 1863.

Tinseltown pioneers founded the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company on December 22nd, 1913.