History Today

Medieval knights were the sporting superstars and military heroes of their day, who performed before an adoring public in the tournament. Nigel Saul explains their appeal.

Richard Bosworth looks at the Vittoriano, the Italian capital’s century-old monument to Victor Emmanuel II and Italian unification and still the focus of competing claims over the country’s history and national identity.

Eichmann was captured in Argentina on May 11th, 1960.

The Hindenburg disaster marked the beginning of the end for travel by dirigible. But airships were once a popular and luxurious way to travel.

Paul Preston remembers the journalist and Basque sympathizer who broke the news of the bombing of Guernica on April 26th, 1937.

The ‘biggest, bloodiest and longest battle on English soil’ was fought at Towton in Yorkshire on Palm Sunday 1461. Its brutality was a consequence of deep geographical and cultural divisions which persist to this day.

Ian Bradley examines the achievements of the surprisingly radical Victorian dramatist and librettist who, in collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, created classic satires of English national identity.

Alex von Tunzelmann reassesses a two-part article on the troubled relationship between the United States and Cuba, published in History Today 50 years ago in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The events leading up to the Mexican dictator’s fall from power on 25 May 1911.

Richard Cavendish describes the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary on May 27th, 1936.