Britain

Will the new super-casinos bring about the demise of the commercial bingo hall? Carolyn Downs traces the history of the game back to the eighteenth century and finds that then – as now – it had a strong attraction for women gamblers.

Mark Bryant describes the life and works of Abu Abraham, the Observer’s first ever political cartoonist.

David Mattingly says it’s time to rethink the current orthodoxy and question whether Roman rule was good for Britain.

Christopher Phipps introduces one of the capital’s great private institutions, and invites History Today readers to visit on June 28th.

Richard Cavendish recalls May 17th, 1257.

R.S. Taylor Stoermer takes a transatlantic perspective on the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707.

John Jackson exhumes the extraordinary case of a middle-aged woman from Derby convicted of plotting to murder the Prime Minister.

During the Seven Years War, Admiral Byng was charged with 'failing to do his utmost'. He was executed on board the Monarch on March 14th, 1757.

British traders in enslaved Africans found ways around the Slave Trade Act of 1807, while commerce flourished through the import of slave-grown cotton.

Kevin Shillington looks at the impact on Africa of the slave trade, and its abolition 200 years ago this month.