History Today

Gordon Brown’s promised written constitution – if it happens – won’t be the first in British history, as Patrick Little reminds us.

Mark Juddery introduces The Story of the Kelly Gang, possibly the first-ever feature film, now largely lost, that was made a hundred years ago in Australia about the notorious outlaw with the unusual body-armour. Hugely popular when it was first released in 1906, it spawned a genre of bushranger movies and epitomized the significance of the Kelly legend in Australian cultural identity.

Peter Furtado finds out how hundreds of local historical initiatives are changing the political and cultural climate of Northern Ireland.

The United States’ participation in military conflict has had unexpected results, and often has produced very different political outcomes to those originally intended.

Richard Cavendish remembers how France took Calais, the last continental possession of England, on January 7th, 1558.

Germany's new Chancellor took power on 30 January 1933.

The ill-suited couple were wed on January 25th, 1308.

Mahatma Gandhi was shot on 30 January 1948 by the Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse. His death reverberated across the globe.

Helen Rappaport visits the town on the Russian-Siberian border that has become a focus for Romanov pilgrimage.

Suzanne Bardgett, director of the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, reports on this ambitious new facility which opened in October.