History Today

Richard Cavendish remembers the life of Louis B. Mayer, who died on October 29th, 1957.

Philip IV had every Templar arrested on October 13th, 1307.

Continuing his series on how cartoonists have seen events great and small, Mark Bryant looks at the impact of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth orbit and a Soviet triumph in the Cold War.

Sudeshna Guha looks at the archaeology of the Indus Civilization, the Bronze Age phenomenon of South Asia, whose study began under the British and has continued since independence and partition of the country. 

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.