History Today

Douglas Hilt describes how Privados - favoured courtiers in early modern Spain - often became figures of strength for the monarch and agents of stability in the peninsula.

Although he died six centuries ago, Robert the Bruce remains a symbol of Scotland’s identity.

Louis C. Kleber describes how, for the American Indians, ‘medicine’ was a spiritual belief as well as a curative.

During the two Victorian Jubilees, writes Joanna Richardson, Britain enjoyed an imperial grandeur which was displayed in the Queen’s celebrations.

Joanna Richardson describes how the prosaic alliance arranged between the middle-aged Duke of Clarence and Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen became at length an extremely happy marriage.

The Emperor Napoleon III, writes Robert E. Zegger, was a leading patron of the French Society for animal welfare.

A fashionable parade and a scene of sporting contests, St James’s Park was first enclosed by Henry VIII. Marjorie Sykes describes the history of the park, including how James I kept a menagerie and aviary there, to which Charles II added pelicans.

In 1917, writes Jamie H. Cockfield, the American Ambassador’s valet reported on revolutionary events in Russia through letters to the family at home.

Geoffrey Parker asserts that the enduring English view of Philip “the Prudent” is clouded by libellous sectarianism and bad history.

Philip Guedalla became the Duke of Windsor’s most trusted supporter in England. Michael Bloch describes how this historian, wit and failed Liberal politician conceived a brilliant public defence of Edward, which ultimately came too late...