History Today

Television and The Great War

80 years after The Great War's outbreak Hugh Purcell looks at how film moulded its popular image and fused fiction with reality.

The First Spanish Seaside Resorts

The tradition of the seaside holiday first originated in the 19th century, aided by some discreet royal patronage. John Walton and Jenny Smith tell the story.

Child's Play in Classical Athens

Lesley Beaumont looks at how children's games were not just seen as pastimes but as active stimuli to learning and good citizenship in the world of Plato and Aristotle.

Crash-Course Americanism

Mark Meigs uncovers a fascinating initiative enacted in France at the end of the First World War designed to turn American soldiers into students empowered with all the virtues of the Progressive era.