History Today

Tim Stanley draws parallels between a New York gang war of the 1900s and an act of horrific violence in south London.

Margaret Clitherow, a butcher’s wife from York, was one of only three women martyred by the Elizabethan state. Her execution in 1586 was considered gruesome, even by the standards of the time. 

The scientist and natural philosopher John Tyndall was known to the public through his lectures and newspaper debates. But, say Miguel DeArce and Norman MacMillan, one of Tyndall’s most famous public speeches, his Belfast Address of 1874, plagiarised the thinking of others.

Terence O’Brien recounts how some women served with their husbands in the Crimean War as cooks, laundresses and nurses to the Regiment.

Gerald Morgan recounts how, towards the mid-nineteenth century, Russian expansion in Central Asia prompted the authorities in India to send British Missions in reply.

Though dull in places and difficult to translate, Hugh Thomas writes, Don Quixote’s refreshing realism once made Cervantes the most widely read foreign writer in England. But will his most famous work endure as literature?

Long a beautiful feature of the English landscape, William Seymour explains how forests have played an important part in the economic history of Great Britain.

H.T. Dickinson introduces a Bishop who held many liberal views,  and was much disliked by his brethren.

Nora C. Buckley explains how, during the 15th century, Chinese seafarers were active in Indian and African trade. 

Arnold Whitridge, the Polish solider, reached Philadelphia in 1776, fought throughout the War, but returned to Poland in 1784.