History Today

David Lance on the history of food in the Royal Navy, from canteen messing to professional catering.

Timothy Wilson Smith describes how, in the year 878, Alfred witnessed the conversion to Christianity of the Danish warlord Guthrum, and helped to found the English nation.

Alton Ketchum describes the Founding Father's earliest military foray, against the French on the headwaters of the Ohio River.

M. Foster Farley introduces one of the most marked and original men of his day and generation; Tattnall distinguished himself in many hard-fought engagements from 1812 to 1864.

Michael Langley describes how, until a mid-eighteenth century innovation, navigators seldom knew exactly where they were when at sea.

Alan Haynes describes how, for just over three centuries, Greek visitors often settled in England and associated with its clerics and learned men.

Raymond Lamont Brown describes how this professional soldier’s greatest achievement was a splendid feat of peace-time engineering along lines that he himself laid down.

David Patten describes how the breech-loading rifle was newly used during the American War of Independence and how its founder Patrick Ferguson himself was slain in North Carolina, 1780.

Joanna Richardson portrays the marriage of Alfred Tennyson and Emily Sellwood, which set the world a ‘radiant example of domestic happiness’.

Joanna Richardson introduces the creator of the popular press in France and a supreme example of the self-made man.