History Today

Historian June Purvis gives her very personal reflections on attending the ceremonies on HMS Victory on Trafalgar Day 2005.

The first result of the Liberal Party landslide was reported on January 12th, 1906, with a Liberal victory in Ipswich.

Having already resigned the sovereignty of the Netherlands in 1555, Charles V resigned Spain on January 16th, 1556.

Gavin Schaffer argues that the British have always been ambivalent in their attitude towards refugees, especially at times of war.

Jim Downs finds that the reasons the Federal government was slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina are rooted in the South’s racial and economic history, and wonders if the catastrophe may lead at last to genuine Reconstruction.

John Foxe’s graphic and angry work depicting the persecutions inflicted by the Roman Catholic church, was partly a response to the rising tide of intolerance across Europe in the mid-sixteenth century, but more specifically to the recent persecution of Protestants in England. David Loades describes the impact of one of the most significant books of its time.

The founder of Mormonism was born on December 23rd, 1805.

The bride was fifteen and the groom twenty-two, when they married on December 1st, 1655.

A Tudor portrait in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, once believed to be Mary I when princess, has recently been relabelled ‘Possibly Lady Jane Grey’ as the result of research by Ph.D student J. Stephan Edwards. Here he explains how the iconography in the painting prompted the discovery.

The greatest battle of Napoleon’s career took place on December 2nd, 1805. Although it is often called the Battle of the Three Emperors, Michael Adams sees it as a very personal clash between two men struggling for the mastery of Europe.