History Today

What was it like to grow up in Nazi Germany in a family quietly opposed to National Socialism? Giles Milton describes one boy’s experience.

While industrialists in Manchester were busily engaged in developing the factory system, investors in London were applying its principles to the capital’s old pubs. The result was a coldly efficient business model. Jessica Warner explains how it worked and why it failed.

Robert Irwin on how Islam saw the Christian invaders.

Richard Sugg explains the origins of the term ‘Blood Libel’, an antisemitic ritual murder myth with a long and ugly history.

The creation of the modern unified German state in January 1871 constitutes the greatest diplomatic and political achievement of any leader of the last two centuries; but it was effected at a huge personal and political price, argues Jonathan Steinberg.

The English diet has been mythologised as one of roasted meats and few vegetables but, as Anita Guerrini concludes from a survey of early modern writings on the subject, the nation’s approach to food has been rather more complicated than that.

Richard Cavendish remembers the death of Emperor Septimius Severus on February 4th, AD 211.

Richard Cavendish remembers Ivan Pavlov who died on February 27th, 1936. Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1904.

Few British soldiers have written of their experiences of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Here, former infantry officer Patrick Mercer recalls his tours, which offer lessons for today’s soldiers and politicians.