History Today

Inventing the Flat Earth

Columbus braved superstition and ignorance by sailing across the Atlantic when his contemporaries thought he would fall off the edge. So runs the legend, but Jeffrey Russell reveals here how the Middle Ages were maligned by the creative fiction of subsequent generations.

Pride of Place

Richard Cavendish on the 60th anniversary of the National Trust for Scotland.

Chatham Revisited

Jeremy Black takes a fresh look at the career and reputation of the 'great outsider' of Hanoverian Britain.

The Navajo Code Talkers and the Pacific War

During the Second World War, Navajo soldiers drafted into the Marines were much like ordinary recruits, with one exception: they were to create and use an unbreakable military code using their native language.