History Today

The ancestor of the London Gazette was launched on 16 November 1665, surviving its bitter rival to become the oldest newspaper in the English-speaking world still in print.

Postwar state support for agriculture in the UK has been hailed a great success, but it had unexpected consequences.

On 14 November 1848 the Fox sisters conjured up a movement when they made contact with the dead – or so they claimed.

As the medieval book trade declined, Oxford scribes had to turn their hands to other crafts to get by.

The Heretic of Cacheu by Toby Green and Worlds of Unfreedom by Roquinaldo Ferreira, painstakingly recreate the worlds at the beginning and end of Portugal’s slave trade.

The past is full of unfamiliar ideas and beliefs, but – as Evelyn Underhill has proven – some things are timeless.

Chernobyl Children: A Transnational History of Nuclear Disaster by Melanie Arndt discovers how Soviet civil society flourished – and then faltered – in the fallout.

In November 2025 we reach 25 years of continuous human presence in space. Did reaching orbit alter the trajectory of the planet below?

El Generalísimo: Franco: Power, Violence and the Quest for Greatness by Giles Tremlett considers the making of the mediocrity at the heart of modern Spain.

It is 40 years since the death of Fernand Braudel, the historian who sought the perspective of ‘God the Father’.