History Today

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

C.R. Boxer profiles an Anglo-Irish Protestant at the Portuguese Court, 1728-41.

Judith Hook describes how, during the sixteenth century gifted churchmen in Italy tried, against crosscurrents of foreign influence, to heal the divisions of Christianity

George Woodcock describes how, during the centuries after his death, Alexander became many things to many peoples and in countries often distant from those that saw his exploits.

Soon after their humiliating reverse at Weardale, writes I.M. Davis, the English recognized Scottish independence in the Treaty of Northampton.