History Today

Richard Cavendish looks back at the Capetian monarch, crowned aged seven, on 23 May 1059.

The Lord Protector stood down on May 25th, 1659.

Wendy Moore catches a rare glimpse of a medical collection that includes tonsil guillotines and implements for trepanning.

Despite the seemingly endless celebrations of the events of 1968, it is the legacy of 1979 that lingers on, argues Jeremy Black.

Bartitsu – rather than Baritsu – was a hybrid martial art that flourished in fin de siècle London. As an amateur boxer, Arthur Conan Doyle was fascinated.

The air of London in the seventeenth century was polluted by clouds of sea-coal smoke against which Evelyn proposed some drastic remedies. By Steven R. Smith

White South Africans who fought in the long ‘Border War’ to maintain apartheid now find themselves in a country run by their former enemies. Gary Baines examines their continuing struggle to come to terms with the conflict and their efforts to have their voices heard.

As Europe polarised between Right and Left in the 1930s, many artists and authors nailed their reputations to either extreme. Others, says Nigel Jones, took refuge in the ‘inner emigration’ of silence. Even in stable Britain, writers felt compelled to take a stand – often in the service of the secret state.

In the first millennium, Christianity spread east from Palestine to Iraq, and on to India and China, becoming a global religion accepting of, and accepted by, other faiths. But with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, Christianity’s eastern journey came to an end. Philip Jenkins recovers this lost history.