History Today

John Andrew Boyle describes how, for many years during the mid-thirteenth century, Mongol forces which had already driven deep into Central Europe, threatened to over-run and obliterate the Christian civilization of the West.

Francis Watson delights in Defoe's inimitable personage not only as the hero of one of the greatest of all adventure stories, but “as the portrait of an Englishman, a representative of the contemporary middle class, with a Protestant stimulus to hard work, founding a new age of commercial, industrial and political development.”

Peter Green introduces Hesiod, a Boeotian farmer who, towards the end of the eighth century B.C., wrote his poem known as The Works and Days. His cantankerous, radical, earthy views present a remarkable contrast to the stylised grandeur of the contemporary Homeric vision of Greek society.

Caesar once crossed the Thames on the back of an animal previously unseen by Britons. Here, C.E. Stevens assesses just how much of a historical anomaly this pairing was.

The make-up master died on August 30th, 1938.

The first (and indeed only) Welsh monarch was toppled on August 5th, 1063.

The Byzantine ruler claimed his throne on August 16th, 963.

Kate Cooper reassesses Brent Shaw’s 1994 article on women in the early Church, which reveals a key historical principle.

Modern paganism is an invented tradition, says Tim Stanley. So why is the Church of England offering it a helping hand?

The relationship between religion and rationality was an intimate one in 17th-century England. Christopher J. Walker looks at the arguments and controversies of the time, which helped to forge a more open society.