History Today

Bruce Nelson traces how the magic of FDR and his practical social programmes welded American labour to the Democratic Party, and discusses the tensions that eventually weakened that union.

Solidarity forever? Not by 1951, Robert Zieger argues, when the visit of one of American labour's great heroes to a celebratory rally at a Ford Motors complex near Detroit revealed just how deep the split between old- and new-style unionism had become.

Irrational chauvinists or fearful protectionists? Gordon Daniels looks at the new research and arguments reshaping our view of Japan's rulers before and after Pearl Harbour.

He may have crystallised our image of the Victorian Christmas, but is there a Dickens for all our seasons? Raphael Samuel embarks on an investigation of how film and stage treatments of his work illuminated changing attitudes to the inheritance of 19th-century Britain.

Nancy Mitford takes a perceptive and ironic look at the reaction of 18th-century French 'society' to the Enlightenment's great philosophe. The author was one of the 'bright young things' who cut a dash in literary society between the wars, but then found more permanent fame through her elegant novels that displayed a sharp observation of class and

David Keys uncovers London's German enclave.

Penelope Johnston examines Kodak photography's past.

Jonathan Clark probes the anti-Catholic actions and millenarian rhetoric of 18th-century America, challenging the assumption that 1776 was solely a product of secular and constitutional impulses.

Rowan Williams examines the career of the 2nd-century theologian whose powerful and idiosyncratic vision illuminates the tensions and development of the early Church.

William Bird looks at how American business and commerce turned to the techniques of advertising and Hollywood to extol the merits of capitalism and free enterprise in response to the anti-corporate liberalism of the New Deal.