History Today

Archaeologist Chris Scarre finds fascination in discovering the past by examining its material remains.

Looking back on the sixtieth anniversary of the surrender of Japan, Rana Mitter finds the political background to the demonstrations in China against Japanese history textbooks are full of complexities.

As thousands of pupils prepare for their exam results, Richard Willis describes the origins of school examinations in England.

Julius Caesar first landed in Britain on August 26th, 55 BC, but it was almost another hundred years before the Romans actually conquered Britain in AD 43.

Jonathan Hughes discovers the humanity of Thomas Charnock, a forgotten Elizabethan alchemist in search of the philosopher’s stone.

John MacKenzie suggests that imperial rule and the possession of empire were an essential component of British identity, life and culture for over 200 years from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

A late-Roman coin unearthed in an Oxfordshire field and on show in the Ashmolean Museum leads Llewelyn Morgan to ponder the misleading messages on the faces of coins.

Robert Pearce gives a historian’s-eye view of George Orwell’s classic novel.

Clive Foss looks at the way in which Kemal Atatürk rewrote history as part of his radical modernization of the Turkish nation.

Richard Almond deciphers the meaning of a set of illuminations illustrating an unusual Book of Hours made in Germany around the year 1500.