History Today

Robert A. Draffan describes how contemporary reviewers of Jane Austen took a moralistic view of her heroines’ adventures.

Stewart Perowne describes how, in the fourteenth century ‘the last of the Roman tribunes’, but one of the first of political liberators.

Hugh Malet describes how the Druidic gods were regarded by Celts very much as a neighbouring clan, endowed with a particularly powerful magic.

Since the reign of James I, writes C. Leo Berry, members of the Royal House have been variously prayed for in the Services of the Church of England.

No marriage has been documented so assiduously as that of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Ronald Pearsall describes how a famous Victorian historian was the first who attempted to unveil its secrets.

S.G.F. Brandon asserts that Pontius Pilate regarded Jesus as guilty of sedition. Whether he was right is another matter.

Four hundred years ago, writes Antonia Fraser, the young Queen of Scots, then struggling to hold her own against her factious nobles, saw a favourite servant butchered at her feet.

Cecil Parrott describes how the elderly monarch from a Christmas carol was based on the character of a young and vigorous sovereign, assassinated on his birthday by his own brother.

Geoffrey Keynes describes how the reception accorded to Harvey’s great book in 1628 proved him to have a creative genius that could leap ahead of his contemporaries.

Sarah Searight describes how the Levant Company, which had received its first charter from Elizabeth I, did not surrender its monopolistic hold over trade with the Middle East until the reign of George IV.