History Today

Three wise men, guided by a star, search for the new-born Christ.

Covering Hong Kong, the anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre, porcine inebriation and the Battle of Algiers, nine historians select their favourite books of the past year.

Who was the ‘Father of History’? Do you know which was the first city to be bombed from the air?

How did the East India Company become ‘an empire within an empire’?

What’s the most important lesson history has taught me? To try to see things from multiple angles.

The year 529 had great consequences for Justinian I, the Neoplatonic school in Athens and St Benedict.

Which presidents are depicted on Mount Rushmore? Who apologised for dying? 

In an age when nationalism is on the rise, the role of the historian becomes ever more valuable – and controversial.

In this podcast, Simon Heffer reflects on the year 1916, as conscription was introduced and the Battle of the Somme claimed huge casualties.

A scene of ancient Arcadian bliss which hints at the coming of modernity.