History Today

Claud Cockborn explains how British bloodstock has its origins in a small group of Arab horses first imported in the seventeenth century.

Four times Prime Minister, Gladstone owes his great reputation, A.F. Thompson argues, less to his achievements in office than to his character and personality.

2000 years ago, writes William Y. Willetts, magnificent Silks from China began to reach the wealthy families of Rome.

J.H. Plumb shows how, between 1857 and 1888, after much controversy, the mystery of the Nile’s source was finally solved by the successive discoveries of Speke, Burton, Livingstone and Stanley.

A study of diplomacy in transition by Nicholas Henderson

James Kinross tells the story of the French Foreign Legion, a force famous for fighting in Africa, Russia, Mexico, Indo-China and France itself, as well as across the world.

A Liberal, a Catholic and a great Historian who yet never composed a great work of history—these are some of the aspects in which Roland Hill considers Lord Acton's career.

Thomas Balston profiles John Boydell, Lord Mayor of London in 1790, who created the first great printselling business in Britain, and could count Reynolds, Romney, Fuseli, Benjamin West, and Wright of Derby among the artists who worked for him.

Hugh Trevor-Roper recounts how the “Cromwellian Exiles” returned from abroad to restore the English Church's episcopal structure.

An acceptable minister in peace-time, Lord North’s misfortune was to hold office at the time of the American Revolution and War, as Eric Robson here shows.