History Today

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.

Richard Cavendish remembers the events of December 12th, 1905.

Historians have often stressed the modernity of America’s Civil War. Yet Gervase Phillips argues that the dependence on often weary, sickly horses on both sides in the war had a significant impact on the development, and final outcome of, the struggle.

Two hundred years after William Pitt took on Napoleon, Europe is in crisis again. Keith Robbins warns Tony Blair that there are no easy fixes to the issues of democracy that have thrown the ‘European project’ off course.

At court, the twelve days of Christmas were a time for politics, intrigue and manoeuvre as well as for merry-making. Leanda de Lisle explores the mixed feelings induced in a courtier embroiled in the great affairs of the day, by two very different Christmases, just twelve months apart.

Judy Greenway recalls a colourful trial involving an Italian anarchist and a policeman in the year of the Aliens Act.

Andy Lynes experiences a colourful and tasty vocation lesson in the history of the Regency period.