History Today

Charles I had ‘the authority to plan and initiate a policy, but he had not the power to enforce it.’

Nearly 35 centuries ago the first Empress in the history of the world proclaimed herself Pharaoh; Jon Manchip White records how Queen Hatshepsut then went on to rule for more than 20 years.

The diffusion of wild flowers, thousands of miles from their native places, is a “vegetable record” Geoffrey Grigson suggests, of human migration and colonization.

N.P. Macdonald explains how modern Brazil owes its extensive frontiers, and the discovery of many of its natural riches, to the journeys far inland, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of pioneers in search of slaves.

No monument of Christian architecture is more celebrated than the Cathedral of Chartres. Peter Quennell here traces both the origins of the great church and the effect it has exercised on succeeding generations.

Duff Cooper examines the consistencies and differences between two centuries’ worth of Prime Ministers and asks, 'Has there been a truly great statesman among them?’

An acute commentator on the French Revolution and on the development of the United States, Tocqueville foresaw a century ago many of the political and social problems that face democracy today. Gordon Philo introduces his life and career.

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.