History Today

When it arrived on the Victorian stage, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre had a cast of new characters and a new social order.

Bismarck’s War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Modern Europe by Rachel Chrastil argues that German victory was a catastrophe for Germany and the world.

Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind by Mike Jay is a fascinating study of cyclical attitudes towards self-experimentation.

What was there to fear from a medieval inquisition? For the inquisitors themselves, quite a lot.

Well-researched and attractively written, Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy by Robin Waterfield grapples with a life that left few records.

Mystery surrounds George McMahon who, having tried to assassinate Edward VIII, outed himself as an agent of a ‘foreign power’. Does the discovery of new Italian documents solve the puzzle or obscure it further?

Within two months of arriving in New Spain, Catalina Suárez Marcaida, first wife of the conquistador Hernán Cortés, was dead. Did she meet with foul play?

After winning the biggest shooting prize in the Empire, Marjorie Foster joined the new pantheon of women making sporting headlines. On the eve of the Second World War, she had a new target in her sights: the War Office.

Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement by Cole M. Bunzel is groundbreaking and deserves to reach as wide an audience as possible.

Homer and His Iliad by Robin Lane Fox is a masterly survey of the Iliad, its majesty, its pathos and its unparalleled progression from wrath to pity.