History Today

Susan-Mary Grant looks at the motivations of ordinary citizens to fight their fellow Americans under either the Confederate or the Union flags.

Tony Stockwell looks behind the exotic facade to examine the role of the kings of Siam and Thailand in modernising their country.

To Cold War hawks the ambitions of Stalin lay behind Kim Il Sung. Only with the opening of archives some 50 years later did Soviet responsibility for the Korean War become known.

Consumer historian Robert Opie tells how he first came to recognise the value of everyday discarded things, and suggests the need for a new awareness of our recent past.

R.I. Moore considers what the new generation of world history atlases tells us about the state of history at the start of the third millennium.

Heather Shore challenges the view that the 19th century was a pivotal period of change in the treatment of young offenders.

As we approach the true end of the century, Peter Waldron argues that those who describe Europe’s experience of the last hundred years as bleak and dark are missing part of the story.

Desmond Shawe-Taylor on the re-opening of the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the history of its foundation.

Penny Young explores the astonishingly rich archaeological heritage of Oman.

Bruce Campbell argues that a unique conjunction of human and environmental factors went into creating the crisis of the mid-14th century.