History Today

John Cohen traces the ancestry of modern automation back through the curious mechanical inventions of past centuries to the twilight figures of remote mythology.

John Gage profiles Loutherbourg, the Alsatian landscape-artist who lived in London from 1771 onwards and became a creator of striking theatrical designs and seemingly miraculous exhibitions.

John Terraine sheds fresh light on the principles at stake in the disputes between generals and politicians during the last year of the First World War.

D.B. Quinn and P.H. Hulton describe the six voyages to American waters that John White sailed on between 1577 and 1590, and how almost all his surviving drawings are connected with exploration.

John Raymond profiles a man whose forbears had fought to win the Republic. Henry Adams, however, witnessed and testified to the birth of a nation.

J.H.M. Salmon describes how lust for power was the consuming motive of Marie de Médicis' life, but also how she failed to identify her personal ambitions with the symbolic meaning of the French crown.

Simonds D’Ewes’ record of his personal experiences gives us a vivid picture of University life at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as seen by a devout young Protestant with “an insatiable appetite for sermons.” By Meyrick H. Carré.

Resolved to examine the prospect before his younger brother emigrated, Shirreff undertook an arduous perambulation of the United States and Canada. G.E. Mingay describes events.

British missions to the Chinese Court had already run into many grievous difficulties. When a mission was despatched to Burma, writes Mildred Archer, they found their problems no less irksome.

Early in December 1854, a group of miners, led by a hot-headed Irish rebel, defied the forces of the Australian Government. For many Australians, writes T.R. Reese, this gallant but hopeless gesture still symbolizes democracy’s unending struggle to preserve the freedom of the common man.