History Today

Dan Snow, who has explored historic battles on television with his father Peter, tells Peter Furtado about the rich collection of stories surrounding his family over the last century.

John F. Kennedy’s commitment to put a man on the Moon in the 1960s is remembered as a utopian vision. In reality, it was a purely political project that he soon came to regret.

How did Washington Post cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman – with a little help from Theodore Roosevelt – spark the creation of the world’s favourite soft toy?

British traders in enslaved Africans found ways around the Slave Trade Act of 1807, while commerce flourished through the import of slave-grown cotton.

Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil find shoes a fascinating key to social mores, and discuss what choice and design of footwear can tell us about morality, mobility and sexuality in Europe over the centuries.

Kevin Shillington looks at the impact on Africa of the slave trade, and its abolition 200 years ago this month.

The Renaissance political figure died on 12 March 1507.

Philip Morgan explains why Italians have tended to gloss over the period 1940-43, when Mussolini fought against the Allies, preferring to remember the years of German occupation 1943-45.

Christopher J. Walker asks whether the two religions that frequently appear locked in an inevitable clash of civilizations in fact share more than has often been thought.

This West African state was a focus of the slave trade for centuries, and the first African colony to win independence, exactly fifty years ago. Graham Gendall Norton finds lots of history to explore.