History Today

Charlotte Crow reports a recent debate between historians and programme makers on the state of history on the small screen, and a television success in that field.

The background to Manet’s extraordinary series of paintings of the demise of a Mexican emperor.

Robert I. Burns and Paul E. Chevedden describe how a much-besieged citadel became the focus for Christian-Muslim co-existence in medieval Spain.

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of a great fortress being sacked, on August 15th, 1209.

Martin Evans looks at the events of 1956 and the French war on terror, both at home and elsewhere, and how this was a turning point for French fortunes in the Algerian War of Independence.

A recent government initiative suggests Britain is failing in its policies towards children in care. Jad Adams explains how similar concerns a hundred years ago lay behind the development of the first children’s ‘village homes’.

George Bernard Shaw influenced the Abdication Crisis with a short play that has been forgotten in the last seventy years. 

While Hezbollah often hits the headlines, its history is less familiar. The emergence of Shia militancy in Lebanon was centuries in the making.

Sebastian Wormell introduces the Polish city that survived the worst of the Second World War.

The discoverer of the electron was born 18 December 1856.