History Today

In challenging times Britons seek comfort in a past that never existed. Tim Stanley shatters their illusions.

Pilgrims were a lucrative source of income for the Church and miracles did not come free. Adrian Bell and Richard Dale discover some striking parallels with modern marketing tactics in the management of shrines in the Middle Ages.

The recent introduction of police commissioners to England and Wales is supposed to bring the force closer to the people. But, asks Clive Emsley, where is the evidence for that?

Syrie Maugham was a businesswoman and beauty whose interior designs became a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. However her relationships with a series of prominent men left her personal life in tatters. Frances Larson tells her story.

The right to determine who enters its territory has always been seen as a test of a state’s sovereignty, but the physical boundaries have often been vague, says Matt Carr.

Hent Kalmo considers the roots of sovereignty and the changing basis determining the authority of a state to govern itself or another state at the expense of local or individual liberties.

Nigel Watson celebrates 80 years of the British Interplanetary Society.

Mark Ronan describes new efforts  at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, to decode the world’s oldest undeciphered language.

The trial of Captain William Kidd raised uncomfortable questions for the state about the pirate’s role in the consolidation of England’s early overseas empire.

Benjamin Ziemann examines the enigma of Karl Mayr, the reclusive army officer who nurtured Adolf Hitler’s early political career.