History Today

Alex Goodall looks back at the career of one of the shadiest agents ever hired by the FBI in its history.

When The People’s War was published in 1969 on the thirtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, it set a gold standard for Home Front studies that has never been equalled. It has remained in print ever since, read for nearly forty years by those who remembered and those who never knew.

Mark Bryant looks at the cartoons that adorned one of the Nazis’ most reviled newspapers.

Rebecca Abrams discovers the history of a forgotten Aberdonian doctor who could – if anyone had listened to his ideas  – have saved the lives of countless women in childbirth over the following centuries.

Lucy Riall explores the social and political issues in Italy following the country’s unification. She shows how these issues became the focus for a dynamic new artistic movement of the 1890s, Divisionism, a forerunner to Futurism and the subject of a current exhibition at the National Gallery.

Martin Pugh argues that life during the interwar years was brighter than has often been suggested, in spite of its association with economic depression and the rise of Fascism.

Andrew Watts has investigated the archives of the Cambridge examination syndicate to uncover the history of school exams.

Mark Juddery examines the impact and appeal of the film that has sold more tickets at the US box office than any other.

Jean-François Mouhot traces a link between climate change and slavery, and suggests that reliance on fossil fuels has made slave owners of us all.

Michael Simmons draws on many years experience of living in, and reporting from, central Europe to look back at the upheavals in Czechoslovakia of 1968.