History Today

British attitudes to witchcraft during the Tudor era tended to be less extreme than those of contemporary Europeans, argues Victoria Lamb.

Sarah Fraser examines Bruce Lenman’s 1980 article on Jacobite exiles, part of a vigorous, influential rebuttal of a worn-out image.

Cromwell’s military campaign in Ireland is one event that the British can never remember and the Irish can never forget. Tom Reilly questions one of the most enduring and troubling topics in Irish history. 

Changing sides during the British Civil Wars was more common than once thought, claims Andrew Hopper, and played an important part in determining the outcome of the conflict.

The popular image of crusading is derived almost entirely from western accounts of the victorious First Crusade. Yet when historians examine Byzantine sources about the campaign a very different picture emerges, argues Peter Frankopan.

Jane Everson highlights the social networks of the Italian academies, the first of their kind in Renaissance Europe.

Roger Hudson reflects on a photograph of Blondin, the tightrope walker whose crossings of Niagara Falls became ever more bizarre.

‘Black’ propaganda in south-east Europe took many forms during the Second World War. Ioannis Stefanidis looks at top secret British attempts to undermine Nazi domination of the Balkans via the airwaves.

The story of penicillin is well known, as are those Nobel Prize winners who were honoured for their part in its discovery. But one man’s contribution has been overlooked. Malcolm Murfett sets the record straight on the biochemist Norman G. Heatley.

Modern secularists often paint a naive view of the medieval church. The reality was far more complex, argues Tim Stanley.