History Today

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.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, writes J.H. Shennan, Russian merchants and explorers settled the eastern lands between the Urals and the Pacific.

Michael Grant describes how the Greeks borrowed from other civilizations, and how they transformed their borrowing.

Fenelon’s devout and earnest pupil had the makings of a great king. But for his early death, writes Geoffrey Treasure, he might have changed the history of France and Europe.

J.I. Whalley describes the development of handwriting in the early modern period.