History Today

G.R. Potter describe show, during the 15th and 16th centuries the scholarship of the humanists and theologians was fused at Basel into something characteristically Swiss.

Townsend Miller describes the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, issued in Spain’s greatest century and accomplished amid civil war and in spite of foreign intervention.

J.P. Kenyon describes how the childlessness of the Queen, and the conversion of James, Duke of York, to Roman Catholicism, produced a febrile state of opinion in Restoration London, out of which rumours of a “Popish Plot” naturally arose.

S.G.F. Brandon analyses the differences that divide the Eastern and Western views of man’s nature and destiny, concluding as to their urgent significance today, as mankind becomes more closely interrelated and interdependent.

Wilhelmina F. Jashemski visists the heart of the Pompeian house: the garden. While some gardens were splendid and spacious, others were crammed into minute courtyards “no larger than a professor's desk,” but rich with flowers and enclosed by painted walls.

One of the strangest episodes in the Spanish conquest of the New World was the quest for the mythical Seven Cities, first believed to stand on a mysterious island far out in the Atlantic Ocean, afterwards magically transported to the depths of America.

Among military adventurers who have served in India, Mildred Archer writes, none was more dashing than the half-Indian leader of the famous Irregular Cavalry Corps known as Skinner’s Horse.

S.G.F. Brandon explains how, early in the history of Egyptian religion, Osiris, the slain king, emerged as the classic prototype of the saviour-god, whose death and resurrection assures his worshippers a new life.

Anthony Bryer explains how Byzantines, Bulgars and Serbs all left their imprint on medieval Macedonia; for six turbulent centuries the Churches of Ochrida exerted a powerful influence on Balkan politics and Eastern Christianity.

During his lifetime, George II's son accomplished little of note. However, writes Romney Sedgwick, Frederick's propaganda in his own political interests left behind two fictions that profoundly influenced later historians.