History Today

J. Hurstfield analyses social conditions in the Elizabethan age.

Cyme, near the modern Smyrna, was one of the ports that served the Phrygians during the centuries from 1000-700 B.C., when they dominated Asia Minor. Freya Stark studies the civilization of this ancient people, from whom the Greeks derived one of the three modes of classical music.

Dorothy George looks at the development of political - and often satirical - public artwork in early modern Britain.

Administrator, Orientalist, patron of science and founder of Singapore, Raffles was an enlightened Governor of Java during the British occupation, 1811-1816.

Gibraltar provides one of the examples of how the British Empire was 'acquired in a fit of absence of mind'. 

David Stockton describes an important stage in the life of Cicero, the Roman philosopher, politican and theorist.

F.M.H. Markham profiles Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, the French political theorist and early advocate for a centralised, technocratic society.

A biographical portrait by Lord David Cecil of William Lamb, the early 19th century parliamentarian better known as Lord Melbourne.

On March 16, 1921 the first Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement was signed; Sir Robert Hodgson headed Britain’s Commercial Mission to Moscow.

Shakespeare’s enormous influence in shaping subsequent concepts of 15th-century England is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of the character of Richard III.