History Today

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.

Peter Laslett charts the descent of a near forgotten family of English nobles.

Elizabeth Wiskemann recounts the story of one of Europe’s richest and most hotly-disputed industrial territories

Arthur Bryant looks at how “The Bones of Shire and State” were formed before the Normans came.

Wolf Mankowitz discusses the life and times of one of Britain's most radically successful Georgian industrialists.