History Today

Fraser Newham finds a connection running from the East India Company’s first mission to Tibet to the completion of the Golmud to Lhasa railway by the Chinese today.

Pat Wagstaff looks at the history of a famous jewel that is reputed to have an association with Mary I, and is now in the possession of Elizabeth Taylor.

David Loades looks at the man who was king of England in his youth, and her bitter enemy thirty years later.

The Agadir Crisis of 1911 was one of several incidents that raised international tensions between Germany and France in the years before the First World War.

The Asian influenza epidemic of 1957 killed more than 16,000 people in Britain and more than a million globally. It exposed the fragility of the antibiotic age.

Debbi Codling looks at the beliefs and spiritual life of the man who usurped Richard II, an anointed king.

Jörg Friedrich’s horrifying account of the Allied bombing raids caused a stir on its first publication in Germany. Now it has been translated into English, and York Membery has canvassed some leading British historians for their views.

Charles Freeman visits the Eternal City, and finds the Castel Sant’Angelo, home to emperors and popes, to be the clue to unravelling its fabulously rich and complex history.

Tony Rothman recalls one of the turning points of early modern history, when a heroic defence prevented the rampant Ottoman forces from gaining a strategic foothold in the central Mediterranean.

Following our article in November about Thomas Cochrane’s plans for chemical warfare, Richard Dale, author of a new book on Cochrane, reveals how the maverick naval hero was disgraced over his association with a stock market scandal.