Volume 63 Issue 8 August 2013

Mushroom Clouds in the Arctic

The collapse of the USSR after 1989 opened up Russia’s Arctic region to a degree of scrutiny previously denied historians. Katherine Harrison and Matthew Hughes examine the Soviet approach to nuclear testing.

The Great War was a Just War

It is time to ditch the Blackadder view of history, says Gary Sheffield. Britain was right to fight Imperial Germany in 1914.

Teachers Telling Tales

Richard Kennett calls on his fellow history teachers to embrace narrative. There is no better way to inspire the historians of the future.

Compton Mackenzie’s Greek Tragedy

The author of Whisky Galore played an active role in the Great War, experiencing both the horror of the Dardanelles in 1915 and the intrigues of wartime Athens. Yet his diplomatic ham-fistedness forced his premature exit. Richard Hughes explains. 

Jews and the Renaissance

The persecution and execution of Jews in 15th-century Italy highlights the ambiguous attitudes of Renaissance intellectuals towards Jewish people, their beliefs and their historical relationship with Christian theology, as Stephen Bowd explains.