History Today

Judith Hook profiles the genius of Rome during the great Catholic Reformation.

During a reign that lasted only five years, writes Stewart Perowne, Aurelian ‘accomplished wonders’, fortifying Rome, strengthening the monarchical principle and generally stabilizing the Roman Empire.

Stephen Usherwood describes how an Asiatic flea, living as a parasite upon black rats, caused as many as 100,000 deaths during the summer and autumn of 1665.

Harold Kurtz traces colonial influence from the days of Cromwell, to those of Napoleon.

Desmond Seward describes an outstanding colonial achievement of the Middle Ages.

‘Larger than a peahen and smaller than a peacock’, Jahangir wrote in 1612. Geoffrey Powell describes how the bird reached England from America some decades before the Indian knew it.

B.G. Gokhale describes how, in India, at the beginning of the fourth century A.D., a line of rulers arose from obscurity to inaugurate a Golden Age.

J.J.N. McGurk reflects on the eighth centenary of Becket's martyrdom.

S.G.F. Brandon marked the nineteenth centenary of the fall of the Holy City.

Colin Davies assesses the ancient Greek whose philosophy seemed to have banished certainty forever. In Socrates' midst, there flourished a new humanism in which man saw himself as the denizen of an indifferent universe