History Today

Robert Gildea describes a new Europe-wide project to investigate the impact of 1968 and its sometimes bitter legacy.

Anthony Pagden describes how the conflict between Europe and Asia, which began over two millennia ago, hardened into an ideological, cultural and religious struggle between the West, which has always cast itself as free, and – despite frequent outbursts of religious fanaticism – secular, and an enslaved East governed not by the laws of man, but by the supposed laws of god.

Richard Cavendish marks the first day commemorating mothers, on May 10th, 1908.

The two dictators met on May 3rd, 1938.

Richard Cavendish charts the life of Robespierre, who was born on May 6th, 1758.

John Lawton visits the fabled cities of the Silk Road.

Edmund West looks at attitudes to deafness and the education of the hard of hearing, over the centuries.

An obsession with Aryanism and eugenic theory was the catalyst for Nazi policies of repression and extermination against gypsies and other ‘asocials’ – the forgotten victims of the Third Reich.

Martin Evans talks to Helen Dunmore, whose historical novels range from the worst horrors of twentieth-century warfare to the luxurious world of late Republican Rome.

Mark Bryant on cartoons of the man who shook Victorian society to the core.