History Today

Bernard Porter says that today’s advocates of humanitarian intervention would do well to ponder what J. A. Hobson and Ramsay MacDonald had to say a century ago about the dangers of liberal imperialism.

Piers Brendon asks how we can arrive at a fair judgement of the benefits of the Empire for those who enjoyed – or endured – its rule.

Kenneth Baker discusses the many facets of King George and shows how these were depicted by the great caricaturists of the day.

George T. Beech traces the origins of the word England to the period 1014 to 1035 and suggests how and why it came to be the recognized term for the country.

Why is the sordid murder of Horst Wessel, a young Nazi storm troop leader in Berlin in early 1930, so important? Nigel Jones recalls his death and the black legend that sprang from it.

Malcolm Chase recalls the life of the Soho tailor William Cuffay, the son of a freed slave from St Kitts, who overcame poverty and disability to become one of the leaders of the Chartist ‘conspiracy’ of 1848.

Her race, sex, and a murder mystery were all factors blocking the career of Edmonia Lewis, a 19th-century black American sculptress struggling against the odds at the height of the US Civil War, yet she succeeded in overcoming all three. Here Patricia Cleveland Peck tells her remarkable story.

Graham Gendall Norton explores the opportunities open to those who like to sail into the past.

David Childs argues that Mary Rose, the Tudor battleship which was raised from the depths in 1982, represented the beginning of British naval greatness.

T.G. Otte goes to the heart of Whitehall to explore the origins and future of an important government archive which is becoming far more accessible to historians.