History Today

A Correct View of the Stable etc. in Cato Street, Marylebone London

Losing the Plot

One of the most notorious conspiracies in British history.

Maris Pacifici by Abraham Ortelius, published 1589. Helmink Antique Maps/Wiki Commons.

Dire Straits

The duplicitous, disloyal, callous and cruel Ferdinand Magellan.

A Musical Riot

Igor Stravinsky’s ‘shockingly contemporary’ The Rite of Spring premiered on 29 May 1913.

Matters of Importance

There are several obstacles between Tudor women and their biographers. Bypassing them is a slow but necessary process.

Book vendors sit in front of a table piled with books on a street in the Warsaw ghetto., c. June-August 1941. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Rafael Scharf.

The Warsaw Ghetto’s Underground Library

As the Nazis enclosed Warsaw’s Jewish quarter in a ghetto, a librarian set up a secret children’s library.

Elizabethan clown Will Kemp dancing a jig from London to Norwich, 1600.

The Clown that Went out of Fashion

The age of Shakespeare, and its changing notions of what was funny, gave birth to modern comedy.

19th-century drawing of the Battle of the Winwaed (655) between Mercia and Northumbria, by Patrick Nicolle.

The Other 300

The undeniable power of the Gododdin, written by the sixth-century north-British poet Aneirin.

Winston Churchill with a Tommy Gun, Hartlepool, 1940.

War Orgasms

Assessing the Churchill balance sheet.

mural depicting the daughters of Yaroslav the Wise, Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv. Anne is possibly the figure second from left.

France’s Kyivan Queen

Anne of Kyiv married Henry I, king of the Franks, on 19 May 1051.

a Haganah fighter dashes across a human bridge formed by two comrades over barbed wire, Tel Aviv, 1948.

The Hebrew Insurgency

Years of armed resistance by four interlinked Zionist militia groups helped end British rule in Palestine, but led to a bitter civil war between Jews and Arabs.