History Today

Once Rowland Hill had launched the Penny Post, many British citizens, it was said, first learned to read that they might enjoy a letter. By Dee Moss.

A veteran of Poitiers, writes Neil Ritchie, John Hawkwood served as a mercenary in Italy; twenty years in the service of Florence.

George Grey was governor in succession of South Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony and New Zealand again. Cyril Hamshere charts a most remarkable career in the Victorian Colonial service.

Had Trench’s ambitious projects been carried through, writes John M. Robinson, London might have rivalled St Petersburg in neo-classical magnificence.

During the Reformation, writes Christine King, Tudor agents demolished many venerated shrines, and made great use of the frauds and trickeries that they claimed to have detected.

Joanna Richardson profiles a figure who carried her Republicanism to the edge, though not across the border, of Socialism.

Scents; cosmetics; essences: D.C.S. Wiltshire finds that enormous variety for the unguents were produced in fashionable Roman world.

Philip Baker reassesses an article from 1967 on Cromwell and the Levellers, which challenged the orthodoxies of the times.

Stephen Cooper and Ashley Cooper consider how the deeds of Richard III, still controversial today, were judged by his contemporaries.

D.E. Moss introduces a Cambridge scholar who was tutor to Princess Elizabeth, an observant traveller in Germany and the author of books on archery and education.