History Today

Leslie Ray argues that politics and football have always been inseparable in the land of the ‘hand of God’.

Nicholas Vincent celebrates the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty.

William Frend, later professor of ecclesiastical history at Glasgow University, explained how he influenced the course of European history in 1944.

Edmund Fryde takes a look at a major English medieval rebellion with far-reaching consequences.

Juliet Gardiner looks at what it meant to refuse to fight or lend support to the war effort in the Second World War, the different reasons people asserted this right, and how their actions were interpreted in wartime Britain.

Have politicians always been seen as liars? Mark Knights finds political spin at work in the early party politics of Queen Anne’s England.

Andrew Cook describes how a chance encounter with Houdini had a profound impact on the methods of Britain’s leading First World War spymaster.

John Lucas rejoices at the return of Christopher Wren’s Temple Bar to London after more than 120 years of ‘exile’ in Hertfordshire.

Historical novelist Linda Proud explains why she thinks fiction can be as truthful as ‘fact’.

David Harrison considers one of the greatest but most underrated achievements of the medieval world: the hundreds of bridges that defined the British communication system up to the 19th century.