History Today

George Woodcock describes how, in March 1778, Cook was the first European to set foot on the Pacific coast of Canada.

After the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth, writes M.L. Clarke, Rome became a centre of her enemies, and every English traveller was apt to be regarded with suspicion.

Plants have been hunted since the days of the Pharaohs, writes William Seymour; but, in more recent times, two resolute Scottish botanists led particularly adventurous and courageous lives.

In 1764, writes Stuart Andrews, during his successful Grand Tour, James Boswell, then aged twenty-four, visited two great European thinkers, who were, he wrote, far more interesting to him ‘than most statues or pictures’.

Neil Ritchie traces the career of a Norman Crusader in Italy, in Syria and in wars with the Byzantine Emperor.

Ian Bradley traces the development of the Salvation Army's brass sections.

In 1809, under Wellington, Beresford regenerated the Portuguese Army which, Michael Glover writes, had suffered from years of neglect.

Nora C. Buckley describes how a soldier from the Azores became a Jesuit priest in India and how his extensive travels proved that ‘Cathay’ was in fact China.

Richard Harrison describes how the foundations of the ‘Second’ Assyrian Empire were firmly laid by a great warrior-king.

G.R. Potter tells the story of a Bavarian religious reformer, burnt in Vienna for heresy.