History Today

Jon Manchip White introduces one of the greatest generals and strangest personalities of his age, Maurice de Saxe, who was “vain, childish, virile, hard-bitten, chivalrous when it suited him ...”

Always a staunchly independent race, Yorkshiremen made strenuous efforts to preserve their neutrality during the struggle between King and Parliament. By Austin Woolrych.

Deryck Abel assesses the challenges to, and abilities of, the various heads of the English church under Queen Elizabeth I.

Much malignant gossip has gathered around the enigmatic personality of the second Roman Emperor whose peaceful reign extended from AD 14 until AD 37.

Romney Sedgwick believes Lord Chatham used Lord Bute, the Princess, and her son, for his own purposes, attained them, and then kicked them down the ladder, which George III never could forget.

C.R. Boxer finds that the methods used - or alleged to have been used - by Portuguese proselytizers more than three hundred years ago, remain a “living issue in Ceylon politics.”

John McEwen describes the events of September 9th, 1513, as Scotland lost her King and suffered appalling losses during a disastrous battle that “remains in large measure a mystery.”

J.H.M. Salmon introduces a Machiavellian despot, as well as the gallant leader of a gay and brilliant court. Francis had the good fortune to embody the aspirations of France in his own ambition.

Christopher Hill examines the millenarian religious ferment of the seventeenth century and finds that it threw up many strange figures—among them an eccentric Anglican divine who prophesied that the second coming was soon to occur in his own parish, where he gathered a large community of religious squatters.

Peter Partner asserts that, from a financial point of view, the Reformation was a paradox; the final outburst against Papal exactions came at a moment when the Popes were less guilty under this charge than they had been for many centuries.