History Today

On August 26th, 1071, Byzantine army was defeated by the Seljuk Turks, and Anatolia was forever lost to Christendom.

W. Brownlie Hendry describes how a sixteenth-century Scottish laird, with, in Gibbon's words, ‘a head to contrive and a hand to execute,’ worked out the powerful aid to mathematical calculation known as logarithms.

David J. Jeremy writes that from the moment of Beau Nash’s quitting the scene of his power and pride, corruptions and relaxations crept, insensibly, into his formal and elaborate system of public punctilio.

George Woodcock describes how, towards the end of the seventh century BC, the Persians first began to establish themselves as a rising power in the Middle East.

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the earliest representatives of mankind were concerned with three fundamental problems— birth, death and the supply of food—which they attempted to solve by magico-religious means.

J.B. James describes how travelling was an occupation that, although they believed it had a good effect on the character, most sixteenth-century Englishmen found singularly unenjoyable.

G.R. Crone analyses the influences on, and development of, geographical thought over centuries.

In the mid 1570s, writes R.C. Morton, the plantation and settlement of Ulster were undertaken by the Elizabethan Government.

Peter Munz describes how the reign of Henry IV was marked by the famous struggle with the Papacy, wars with his German nobles and family tension with his sons.

Malaria was one of the scourges of the British Indian Empire. William Gardener writes how a remedy was at last provided by the introduction of a South-American tree.