History Today

Nick Poyntz looks at the opportunities offered to historians by text mining, the use of computer programmes to examine concordances and divergences within and between documents and texts.

The acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh talks to Paul Lay about his influences, working methods, the need for historians to engage in public policy and why he is relieved to be free from academic bureaucracy. 

Richard Overy looks behind the myth of a vulnerable island defended by a small band of fighter pilots to give due credit to the courage of the redoubtable civilian population.

Folke Bernadotte was a great humanitarian who navigated the perilous path between warring parties, a mission that was to cost him his life.

Kathryn Hadley joins a group of schoolteachers and police officers in an innovative project that seeks ways to better understand the Holocaust.

Few events in history have proved as momentous as Galileo’s discovery of the moons of Jupiter. But would sharing his findings mean sharing his telescope?

The fortunes of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II and the regard in which their successive regimes came to be held were mirrored in the fate of one of their mightiest naval vessels, as Patrick Little explains.

At a time of widespread concern about the patriotism of 'economic migrants' and political refugees, Peter Barber tells the story of one 19th-century immigrant whose affection for Britain grew as political crisis severed his attachment to home.

Martin Greig reveals the intimate relationship between the powerful Earl of Lauderdale, Charles II's Secretary for Scotland in the 1660s, and a Scottish spinster who became the earl's 'Presbyterian conscience' during a tumultuous period for kirk and crown.

As the daily life of Berlin's Jews became even more difficult under the Nazi regime, rumour and hearsay grew about the fate of those 'evacuated' to the east. How much did ordinary Berliners know about the fate of their neighbours?