History Today

Stella Rock sees a renaissance of religious traditions at what was one of Russia’s most vibrant monasteries before the Soviet purge.

Concerns about the British primary school curriculum made their way onto the political agenda last year with the publication of the interim Rose Report. With the full report imminent, Richard Willis looks at the history of progressive education and ponders its future.

The conflict between supporters of Darwin’s theory of evolution and Creationists is often portrayed as the latest skirmish in an age-old struggle between science and religion. It is anything but, claims Thomas Dixon, who argues that Creationism, and its pseudo-scientific offspring, ‘Intelligent Design’, are products peculiar to US history.

The ascetic French philosopher Simone Weil spent the last months of her short life exiled in London working for de Gaulle’s Free French. But, her strange, austere vision for a France reborn after the tragedy of the Second World War was very different from that of the country’s future president.

The expulsion in 1609 of more than 300,000 Spanish Moriscos – Muslim converts to Christianity – was a brutal attempt to create a homogenous state.

The reasons why Charles I was executed are understood far better than the legacy of his death. Blair Worden considers the enduring and sometimes surprising consequences.

Already rocked by defeats in the War of the Spanish Succession, Louis XIV’s France faced economic meltdown as the chaotic nature of its finances became apparent. Guy Rowlands discovers striking parallels with the current credit crunch as he charts the crisis that was to lead, ultimately, to the French Revolution.

Edna Fernandes visits a madrassa in northern India founded in the wake of the Indian Mutiny. One of the first Islamic fundamentalist schools, its influence has spread into Pakistan and Afghanistan, among the Taliban and followers of Osama bin Laden.

Mark Bryant on the work of Soviet cartoonists engaged in the epic struggle against Nazi Germany.