History Today

Michael Grant asks whether Caesar Augustus, sole ruler for forty-five years, was honest and sincere, or a 'hypocrite of genius'?

In an age of opportunity, G.E. Fussell describes how the Elizabethan farmer lived under pioneer conditions.

Taking a historiographical angle, Marcus Cunliffe describes how, in 1861, the American federal experiment broke down, and there ensued the greatest and most hard-fought of modern wars before that of 1914.

On October 23, 1812, the Emperor Napoleon, campaigning in Russia, was for six hours threatened with dethronement by a theatrical coup d'etat back in Paris. Godfrey LeMay describes what happened.

Arthur Bryant relates how Becket’s death, at the hands of Henry II's servants, made this once worldly prelate a popular religious hero.

In the twelfth-century conflict between Church and State, Henry II found his most determined opponent in his formerly devoted servant, Thomas Becket, as Arthur Bryant continues his Story of England series.

D.H. Pennington uses the diary notes of a contemporary MP to give readers a real sense of the dramatic atmosphere in the pre-Civil War House of Commons.

A leading actor in the civil war, Clarendon in his History offered an interpretation of the causes of the conflict which has been much debated by later historians, as Christopher Hill discusses here.

The Italian prince who boasted that the Pope was his chaplain, and the Emperor his condottiere, ended his days in 1508, forgotten in a foreign prison

Michael Howard records the relish with which Oliver Cromwell ended a particularly famous session in the House of Commons.