History Today

Charles Townshend evaluates the judgement of General Gordon and the ill-fated British mission in the Sudan.

Gillian Goodwin on traditional recipes for Lent.

A new form of antiquarianism? Celebrating experience at the expense of analysis? Seven leading historians seek to define social history.

It is remarkable how quickly a region, whose peoples shared a long history and many aspects of culture, can be forgotten.

Kathleen Burk looks at the recent history weekend organised at Long Wittenham, a village of less than a thousand residents on the River Thames in south Oxfordshire.

Good quotes are rare in the history of science. The striking utterances which scientists have managed to produce are often over-used.

Museums are getting increasingly self-conscious about the artificialities they embody. Even if they can stave off the claim that objects collected through wealth and conquest ought to be sent home again they are showing more recognition that taking things from their original settings destroys an important part of their meaning.

Tsar Peter drew on the knowledge and experience of Western Europe to benefit a Russia 'still groping in the dark' and attempted to 'put other civilised nations to the blush'

Judging by the anodyne results of the Anglo-Irish summit last November, the Government has ignored the suggestions of the Kilbrandon Inquiry's Report on Northern Ireland published just before the premiers met; but historians should not repeat the omission.