History Today

The American abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on 14 June 1811.

John Swinfield describes the bizarre politics behind the British government’s attempt to launch a pair of airships in the 1920s and how a project that might have boosted national pride ended in tragedy and failure.

Despite the popularity of shows like My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Britain’s Gypsy Travellers still face longstanding prejudice, warns Becky Taylor.

The Aeneid, Virgil’s epic Latin poem, offers as profound an insight into the current Libyan crisis as any 24-hour news channel, argues Robert Zaretsky.

In the late 18th century the merchants, manufacturers and traders of Liverpool founded one of the first chambers of commerce in Britain with the aim of promoting the local economy. Bob Bennett looks at early parallels with the Coalition government’s plans for local partnerships.

The anti-government protests in Egypt earlier this year swept through Cairo and Alexandria before measures could be taken to protect antiquities in museums and archaeological sites in those cities and across the country. Yet, argues Jonathan Downs, the impact on Egyptian heritage and the repatriation debate has been a positive one.

During the seventh century the Arabs invaded North Africa three times, bringing not just Islam but a language and customs that were alien to the Berber tribes of the Sahara.

Brazil may be one of the 21st century’s emerging superpowers, but its independence from Portugal was not inevitable, nor was its survival certain.

History Today was launched in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. Barry Turner challenges Arthur Marwick’s impressions, first published in 1991, of the year that austerity Britain glimpsed a brighter future.

Adam Hochschild looks at an unlikely pair of siblings whose high profile yet very different approach to the events of the early 20th century reflect a turbulent age.