History Today

The site of her oldest university and the home of one of her earliest missionary Saints, St. Andrews holds a special position in the history of Scotland, as Russell Kirk here explains.

His refusal to learn by experience, C.S. Forester suggests, was largely responsible for Napoleon’s ultimate failure

Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, which lasted from 1096 to 1099. Jonathan Phillips examines the origins and motives of the first Crusaders.

Colin Smith recounts the Allied invasion of French North Africa, which commenced on November 8th, 1942.

The outrage that Christmas was tarnished by the ugliness of the First World War was felt by both British and German soldiers. In some cases, it led to a brief moment of truce.

C.E. Hamshere shows how, a fortnight after the Armistice of 1918, the elusive German Commander in East Africa surrendered at Abercorn in what is now Zambia.

How did the Allied Powers become committed to fighting the First World War on the Western Front, so that Germany, until near the end, always held the initative? John Terraine investigates.

For sixteen years a Congressman and Senator, John Randolph was the most gifted conservative spokesman of the American South. Russell Kirk charts his singular career.

A great historian of an age he disliked, Harold Mattingly shows how Tacitus has given posterity an incomparable picture of the early Roman Empire.

‘If ever a house radiated cheerfulness, that house is Versailles.’ Nancy Mitford on the royal palace in the middle years of Louis XV.