History Today

Having climbed from partisan leader to king of armies, Brian Boru eventually established himself as the first monarch of a consolidated Ireland.

Although the Roman soldier might worship many gods, writes Colin Martin, the State religion was an integral part of every military establishment.

From the fourteenth century until the building of the railways, writes D.J. Rowe, the Newcastle keelmen were indispensable and pugnacious carriers between collieries and sea-going ships.

Gwyn Jones remembers a great Northern historian, who met a violent death half way through the thirteenth century, and who has left us a memorable account of a famous Norwegian chieftain, murdered in 995.

James Edward Holroyd describes how, under the famous Duc de Berry, during a period of strife and trouble, the art of the French medieval miniaturist achieved a splendid flowering.

Meyrick Carre introduces James Howell; an enquiring disciple of the new astronomers who enlivened the British seventeenth-century scene, and ended his life as historiographer-royal to Charles II.

Lionel Kochan describes how ‘the game of kings’ found its apotheosis in the Soviet Union; the country of the proletariat.

Richard C. Simmons describes how a land-owners’ colony, rather than a military settlement, was Gilbert’s aim.

At the end of the tenth century, writes E.R. Chamberlin, a gifted French Pope aided the bold designs of an ambitious German Emperor.

Lionel Kochan traces the development of chess, from its origins to the end of the fifteenth century.