History Today

Lord Harmsworth tells how an accident of birth resulted in his running Dr Johnson’s House in London.

This swashbuckling chancer lived two lives, the first English, the second Italian. Raymond E. Role chronicles the chameleon career which ranges from Elizabethan privateer, explorer and courtier to Stuart expatriate, religious renegade, shipbuilder, architect, inventor, engineer, cartographer and paterfamilias.

Bevis Hillier investigates the alleged abduction 250 years ago, of a young servant girl, which divided London society at the time and has puzzled historians ever since.

Gilbert Shama looks at the German research into penicillin during the Second World War.

The English polymath died in London on March 3rd, 1703.

The Soviet leader died on March 5th, 1953.

Paul Wingrove examines the starkly different interpretations that seek to explain the career of Joseph Stalin, who died fifty years ago this month.

The 14th President was inaugurated on March 4th, 1853.

Maurice Keen looks at the significance of female lines of descent in heraldic arms, and what this tells us about women of noble and gentle birth in medieval England.