History Today

Guibert of Nogent was a French abbot who found it difficult to adapt to the 12th-century Renaissance. Yet his writings are among the first works to examine man’s inner life, says Charles Freeman.

Barack Obama’s admiration for the progressive Republicanism of Theodore Roosevelt ignores the true nature of both early 20th-century America and the president who embodied it, argues Tim Stanley.

Ivan became Grand Prince on March 27th 1462, following the death of his father.

The Flemish cartographer was born on March 5th, 1512.

Alex Keller tells the story of how an unlikely friendship between a Dutch doctor and a young Italian nobleman led to the establishment of the first scientific society, which lent crucial support to the radical ideas of Galileo Galilei.

Told by Churchill to ‘go and sing when the guns are firing’, Noël Coward aspired to do more during the Second World War than entertain the troops.

The return of religion and the West’s current obsession with decline make Roy Porter’s profile of Edward Gibbon, first published in History Today in 1986, curiously dated.

Constructing the Victoria Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames in London: an image analysed by Roger Hudson.

Jonathan Downs reports on the fire last December that caused extensive damage to one of Egypt’s most important collections of historical manuscripts.

The actress behind the Spirit of Ecstasy, the mascot on every Rolls-Royce, and other women who have inspired famous emblems.