History Today

Winston Churchill’s four-year quest to sink Hitler’s capital ship Tirpitz saw Allied airmen and sailors run risks that would be hard to justify today.

Albert Speer’s plan to transform Berlin into the capital of a 1,000-year Reich would have created a vast monument to misanthropy.

The historical debate over the United Kingdom has been led by those who wish to bring the Union to an end. David Torrance believes the public deserves a more balanced discussion.

Kate Retford explains how the artist Johan Zoffany found ways to promote a fresh image of royalty that endeared him to George III and Queen Charlotte – a relationship he subsequently destroyed.

Global history has become a vigorous field in recent years, examining all parts of the empires of Europe and Asia and moving beyond the confines of ‘top-down’ diplomatic history, as Peter Mandler explains.

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.