History Today

A Kingdom at Stake, 1553

Four hundred years ago the Duke of Northumberland made his vain attempt to exclude Mary and Elizabeth Tudor from the succession in favour of Jane Grey. S.T. Bindoff reconstructs the circumstances and development of this daring and ingenious plot and produces a new document, throwing light on it, which he recently discovered in the Archives at Brussels.

The Cotswolds and Regional History

The problem of writing local history, R.H. Hilton suggests, can seldom be solved on the basis of parishes or even of counties; regions with a distinctive character and economy, such as the Cotswolds, are the natural units for the local historian’s attention.

The Louisiana Purchase, 1803

At the dawn of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte liquidated the French empire in America, selling the vast Bourbon heritage along the banks of the Mississippi to the United States. Why?

Egypt from Cromer to Neguib

C.H. Brown presents his study of the political and economic background to mid-twentieth century Egyptian nationalism.

Country House Radicals, 1590-1660

Revolutionary impulses do not always originate in proletarian discontent. Hugh Trevor-Roper's article traces 17th-century radicalism to a very different social source.

Heralds and Monarchy

Up to the reign of James II, the College of Heralds, besides the part they played on state occasions, had the important duty of regulating the kingdom’s social structure, as Anthony R. Wagner here documents.