History Today

History does not reveal the identity of the masked executioner who severed Charles I’s head from his body, or of his assistant who held it up to the waiting crowd. Geoffrey Robertson QC re-examines the evidence.

Robert W. Thurston looks at the politics of demonology and rethinks attitudes to witches and women between 1400 and 1700.

The political fallout of the Suez Crisis was keenly felt at home, but how did it change Britain’s approach to the Middle East? And what did it mean for the British Empire?

Timothy Benson, whose new book explores how the Suez Crisis was viewed in the world’s press and by cartoonists in particular, here tells the story of a tumultuous year.

James Exelby unearths the activities of a forgotten British spy whose documents and memoir provide a fascinating insight into the circumstances surrounding the British occupation of Egypt.

When the Suez Canal was opened its creator predicted that he had marked the site of a future battlefield. When Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, it seemed inevitable they would be the ones to fight for it.

Jonathan Conlin asks what the National Gallery has meant to the cultural and civic life of Britain since its foundation in 1824.

Did Hitler intend to provoke a general war over Poland in September 1939 or was it a serious miscalculation? Adam Tooze examines the views of leading historians before offering his own, new, interpretation of the decisions and events in Germany that ignited the Second World War.

Eamon Duffy tells how a careful study of surviving medieval Books of Hours can tell us much about the spiritual and temporal life of their owners and much more besides.