History Today

Sir Nicholas Henderson on a misunderstood Enlightenment ruler.

Barbara Donagan discusses the variable treatment of captives by captors between Crown and Parliament and what light it sheds on the manners and mores of the times.

Timothy Jacobson with a plea for America's 'history for all'.

The production of gin was actively encouraged in Britain during the Restoration period, but its increasing grip on the London poor had disastrous effects for the following century. Thomas Maples examines the gin problem and what it took to stem the flow.

Tony Aldous examines the tensions over digging and conserving in historic town centres such as Lincoln.

Until the late 18th century, few criminal defendants thought it worthwhile to engage a lawyer on their behalf; but in the 1780s things suddenly changed. John Beattie looks at the part William Garrow, a brilliant young defence lawyer, played in altering the course of justice.

Anne Hills on shutting up shop at Spitalfields.

Ann Hughes continues our articles on the Civil War period by investigating the controversies in public debate and the printed word that fuelled religious arguments before and after the Interregnum.

Andrew Boyd tells the story of the ill-fated mission of a papal nuncio whose blundering zeal doomed the hopes of Irish Catholics of profiting from the civil war between Charles I and his Parliament in England.