History Today

Protestant martyr, prodigy of Renaissance learning, star-crossed lover, Hollywood heroine? The changing images of England’s Nine Days Queen of 1553.

The accession of Henry Tudor to the throne of England in 1485, the Crown had been fought over by the great magnates. When Elizabeth I died 118 years later, the Crown was master over them via the Court with the gentry its willing accomplices. Penry Williams examines the means by which the Tudors achieved this political dominance.

The case against swaddling developed by Rousseau, Locke and various others of that time concentrated entirely on its bad effects on the infants' physique.

Historians ask what constitutes the history of the developing world.

A rage for Mesmerism gripped society in London at the end of the 18th century, as it had in Paris and Vienna. But it was to be short-lived. The excesses of its devotees soon discredited the 'science' in the eyes of the public and it eventually became a vehicle for unbalanced fringes of society.

The great frustration in visiting naval dockyard towns has always been that they keep their most exciting parts hidden from view behind unassailable walls.

Anniversaries are, by definition, a time not only for celebration but also for self-examination, for dimly gazing into the future as well as for happily recalling the past.