History Today

A.D. Harvey recalls the career of the Swedish king whose assassination inspired a famous opera.

Steve Smith shows that those who control the present are sometimes able to control interpretations of the past.

Jerry Brookshire shows that the ‘special relationship’ in 1945-51 was in safe, and curiously similar, hands.

The treaty to bring parts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico into the United States was signed on December 30th, 1853.

Adrian Mourby shows that the nightmare scenario can be both dire warning and escapist fantasy.

Stalin's security chief Lavrenti Beria was executed on December 23rd, 1953.

An introduction by Bob Scribner to our November series on Martin Luther.

Margarette Lincoln and Colin White debate the significance of a recently discovered cache of letters from Frances Nelson to her husband’s prize agent written at the time of the collapse of her marriage to Britain’s greatest naval hero.

Christopher Follett describes the St George restoration project.

Mark Steel, stand-up comedian and presenter of history on television and radio, describes how punk rock helped politicise a generation, and whet his own appetite for enquiring about the past.