History Today

Twenty-three crucial years in English history were covered by the arch-episcopate of Thomas Cranmer, whose most enduring monument is the English Book of Common Prayer. By H.A.L. Rice.

D.H. Pennington examines an economic burden that the “poor oppressed people of England” believed no government could relieve them of.

Had these early artists a purely practical aim? Or were they inspired by a true creative impulse? “This conflict” writes Jacquetta Hawkes, “exists only in the mind of the disputants.”

At the close of the third century B.C., Rome and the Seleucid Empire confronted one another in the neutral ground of disputatious Greece. By E. Badian.

John B. Morrall describes how worldly learning and a reverence for Christian tradition were combined in the character of “one of the best of the Renaissance Popes.”

Jacquetta Hawkes explains how, at an unpromising period in human history, a sudden upsurge of creative power produced the earliest masterpieces of European art.

To most modern readers little more than a resounding name, the Kingmaker is here described by Paul Kendall as an “early exemplar of that Western European energy” which was presently to transform the civilized world.

Far more interesting than Byron's romantic hero, who also inspired a celebrated circus act, is the real Mazeppa, as described in this article by L.R. Lewitter.

For nearly two hundred years Jesuit missionaries held a privileged position at the court of the Chinese Emperors, C.R. Boxer writes, where they laboured not only as fishers of men, but as astronomers, mathematicians, portrait-painters and skilful architects.

By the Act of Union, the Scots lost their Parliament but gained the freedom of the British Empire.