History Today

Depicted as a dangerous extremist and a threat to the civil rights movement, black activist Malcolm X was as much a beneficiary of the media as he was its victim.

The designer of the Colt revolver, the most celebrated killing machine in the history of the Wild West, died on January 10th 1862, aged 47.

Frederick the Great, the man who made Prussia a leading European power, was born on January 24th, 1712.

The Maid of Orléans was born on January 6th 1412: she has been an incarnation of French national identity and pride for six centuries.

The poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Coventry Patmore both subscribed to a Tory world view, fiercely opposing the reforms of Prime Minister Gladstone. But their correspondence reveals two very different personalities, says Gerald Roberts.

Simon Heffer argues that until relatively recently most historians have been biased in their efforts to harness the past to contemporary concerns.

Paul Lay pays tribute to the Renaissance and Early Modern historian who was a pioneer of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Today Jane Austen is regarded as one of the greats of English literature. But it was not always so. Amanda Vickery describes the changing nature of Austen’s reception in the two centuries since her birth.

Ian Bradley looks at the life of Vincent Priessnitz, pioneer of hydrotherapy, whose water cures gained advocates throughout 19th-century Europe and beyond and are still popular today.

The Zoological Society of London was launched in 1826 to promote scientific research into new species. Roger Rideout describes how it amassed its specimens for its private museum and menagerie, which soon became a public attraction.