History Today

Sarah Wise admires an assessment of lunacy in 19th-century London.

Disabled people were prominent at the court of the Spanish Habsburgs. Janet Ravenscroft examines the roles they played and draws comparisons with modern attitudes towards physical imperfection.

Derek Wilson welcomes the emergence from the shadows of Thomas Cromwell, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning historical novels.

Gillian Tindall reflects on a recent discovery by a Dickens scholar, which offers new insights into the great writer’s early years.

The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, was one of the great revolutionary upheavals of the 20th century. What were its causes and consequences?

Roger Hudson sails past a half-built Battersea Power Station and on to its slow decline.

Sir Julian Huxley examines the debates and mysteries that surround humanity's earliest moves towards mass society.

This extract is the first of a series in which Dr. Arthur Bryant describes the evolution of the English Kingdom, through the invasions of Saxons, Danes and Normans, to its consolidation in medieval times.

From Stubbes' angry Anatomie of Abuses, Sydney Carter unveils a revealing portrait of Elizabethan fashions and pastimes, from high-heeled shoes to football, and from ruffs to dicing and dancing.

At one time a member of Charles II's notorious Cabal, Anthony Ashley Cooper later became the much maligned leader of the Protestant and Parliamentary opposition to the last two Stuart kings. By J.H. Plumb.