History Today

Master mariner or dedicated amateur? Helen Wallis examines the state of geographical knowledge when Columbus set sail, and outlines his use of it.

A new exhibition at the Ashmolean which questions the experience of museum visiting.

Ann Hills discovers a feast of Welsh flowers amid the history of a working-class town

Steve Humphries unlocks the taboo histories of the disabled and handicapped.

Mike Pavasovic puts in a word for Serbia's wartime Cetniks.

David Buttery considers the Warwick Vase, its origins, wanderings and greenhouse home.

Daniel Pick looks at change, melodrama and decay in the creative work of the artists of the Fin de Siècle 1890s period.

Si Fullinwider analyses how the nineteenth-century values of sexless 'respectability' were challenged by the ambiguities stirred up by Freud's delving into the unconcious.

As discussion grows about defence post Cold War, Martin Dedman and Clive Fleay look at an abortive 1950s plan for a 'European Army'.