History Today

The Making of the Mendes Myth

Readers of Zuleika Dobson will recall the occasion when Mr Pedby, the Junior Fellow, read grace. As they listened to the false quantities of his Latin, the occupants of the high table experienced an unusual pleasure. They knew that they were present at an occasion which was to become an Oxford Legend.

There Died a Myriad...

War is prominent among the forms of human experience that have most readily stimulated poetry. In combat both mind and body strain at the end of their tether.

End of Empire

The British Empire was the largest in the history of the world. Brian Lapping explains how the end of that Empire was charted for television.

Mohawks, Axes and Taxes: Images of the American Revolution

At the Boston Tea Party the Americans not only flouted the unpopular tax laws on tea imposed on the colony, they also retrieved the image of the Mohawk from the hands of British cartoonists and reinstated him as the symbol of American liberty.

Liberator of the Past

To historians he seemed to be a philosopher, to philosophers an historian. But in spite of the difficulty of categorising the late Michel Foucault (1926-84), or perhaps because of that very difficulty, he has had a considerable impact on historical writing and deserves to have more.