History Today

Did the British Empire have a culture?

It’s bad news for local newspapers, with reports that they have reached their lowest numbers since the 18th century. How will historians study the provincial past when they can’t read all about it?

A search for Boudica finds its author, but not the Queen of the Iceni. 

Talk of a Balkan federation became a hot topic at the end of the Ottoman Empire, eventually dying a death at the dawn of the Cold War. Was Europe’s ‘Little Orient’ destined to fall apart?  

The Archpriest Avvakum Petrov was burned in Pustozersk on 14 April 1682.

Is knowledge a useful remedy for ignorance?

Almost three quarters of the golden age of Hollywood has been lost. Preservation only began when film came to be seen as art.

The death of Joseph Stalin’s son Yakov Dzhugashvili in a German concentration camp 80 years ago was kept a secret for decades.

Hawai‘i’s Mauna Kea is among the best places in the world to study the universe, but the construction of a new super telescope is about more than astronomy.