History Today

Franco's traditional image has been as a canny neutral in the struggle between the Allied and Axis powers. But in 1940 his aspirations for an African empire drew him to within an ace of war with Britain.

The continuing struggle in Ireland, and the atrocities which it produces within Great Britain, are given full attention by the media.

With government sponsorship and prodigious fieldwork, Elizabethan cartography reached heights unequalled elsewhere in Western Europe.

Francis Robinson on the collections and ornate palaces of the Top Kapi Saray museum in Istanbul.

Colin Holmes assesses racial violence in Britain from 1911-19.

Distilled 'spirit of the age' or a branch of sociology? Great men and their thoughts - with a lucky dip for culture vultures - or elite ideas whose time had come? Five historians discuss ground rules for the study of intellectual history. 

Four viewpoints - one from its editor, three from reviewers - on the making of a major new historical encyclopedia.