History Today

It’s the most tired of historical clichés, but is it so for a reason? Who writes history? Four would-be winners debate.

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope is a Whiggish history of humanism from the Renaissance to the present.

Prison hulks were a flawed system, but that was not what finished them off. 

The Windrush generation witnessed the Caribbean colonies from which they had emigrated achieve independence. Despite being an ocean away, they were not passive observers. 

The Anglo-Portuguese alliance is the oldest of its kind. Concluded in June 1373, it has survived world wars, the rise and fall of empires and globalisation. How?

Witch-hunting happened when and where states were weak. What does a newly discovered witch-hunt in 1582 reveal about France and its ‘enlightened’ officials? 

Zionism has been seen either as a movement of national liberation or as a form of settler colonialism. In reality, it is both.

Disaster struck on the morning of 7 May 558, when repair works to the Sancta Sophia caused it to collapse.

Not every Renaissance queen was remarkable, but that does not make them insignificant. 

Mongolians have always lived with wolves. During the imperial era, the relationship was an ambiguous one. Under socialism, it became existential.