History Today

Fourteen years before the French Revolution, writes Felice Harcourt, the son of a Belgian nobleman joined the court of the Bourbons.

Widowed for the fourth time, ‘Bess of Hardwick’ came to London for the last time; D.N. Durant writes how this visit shows the Countess of Shrewsbury to have been intent upon legal business over her estates.

A study of the cosmographical theories and nautical observations that prompted Columbus’s momentous voyage to the unknown West in 1492.

Michael Glover investigates the early modern sources of the English reputation as the most indefatigable writers of letters in the world.

David Mitchell describes the postwar peace-making efforts employed by Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

Alan D. Dyer describes how Britain’s industrial development began when coal replaced wood during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Having failed to introduce a new Irish coinage, writes John S. Powell, this ambitious projector set out to revolutionize contemporary iron-production.

‘The pleasure of books possessed me from childhood’ wrote this twelfth-century historian. Among other work, William of Malmesbury, writes J.J.N. McGurk, produced an Historia Novella, extending until 1142.

John Godfrey describes how the capture of Constantinople in 1204 was an unexpected result of the Crusading movement.

In the thirteenth century, writes Diana E. Greenway, one of the Bishops in the important see of Winchester was a rich and noble monk; the second a warrior accountant turned prelate.