History

Anything to do with History

Delia @Delia - over 4 years ago

Good Time Charlie | History Today

This is a terrific book – but that statement needs context. Charlemagne does not lack biographers. Jinty Nelson in an early footnote lists ten, just in the last 20 years. Why, and why add another? As to the first of these questions: Charlemagne was, as Nelson says on her ...continued

6 minutes read

Abbie @Abbie - over 3 years ago

Museum or Mosque? | History Today

Mehmet the Conqueror converted the cathedral of Hagia Sophia to a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was a symbolic move. The conversion involved minimal physical transformation and even the name remained the same: Ayasofya Camii. Since its constructi...continued

5 minutes read

Anderson @Anderson - over 4 years ago

Stauffenberg: Portrait of a Plotter

We know too little about the lives of saints. If we knew more, they probably wouldn’t be saints. We know that St Augustine was a happy sinner, once, and that he repented; but we don’t know what the Virgin Mary was like when she had a headache; maybe, as she was the Virgin...continued

6 minutes read

Sandrine @Sandrine - over 1 year ago

Filling the Gaps | History Today

17th-century manicule and notes in the margin of translations of Aristotle. Courtesy of the Penn Library.Writing in a book is a divisive action in the modern day. The degree of severity of this potential offence often depends on the nature of the book being marked and th...continued

5 minutes read

Elliott @Elliott - 9 months ago

Look and Learn | History Today

Detail from the ‘Henry Unton Memorial Portrait’, unknown artist, c.1596. © National Portrait GalleryArt reveals the past – if you know how to look. Not just through the record of a lost landscape, or the personality inherent in a portrait, but in its structure, ingredient...continued

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Alan @Alan - almost 5 years ago

The Lost Voice of Notre-Dame

On an August evening a century ago, Marcel Dupré lifted his hands from the keyboard of the Grande Orgue of Notre-Dame de Paris at the end of his final improvisation for vespers that evening. At the moment that his dazzling toccata came to an end, the building continued to...continued

5 minutes read

Grayce @Grayce - about 2 years ago

Little White Lies | History Today

Alcibiades receiving the lessons of Socrates, by François-André Vincent c. 1776. Fabre museum.Is it ever right to deceive on purpose? In the West’s philosophical tradition, the answer, shaped by early and medieval Christian thinkers for whom lying was incompatible with a ...continued

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Rex @Rex - over 4 years ago

Building the Roman Republic | History Today

Pope Francis’ dispute with Italy’s outgoing Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, is a reminder that in Italy relations between Church and State can be fraught. Pitching the Christian message of charity towards the destitute in opposition to Salvini’s ‘crusade’ against the p...continued

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Alvah @Alvah - almost 4 years ago

A Modern Martyr | History Today

Seventy-five years ago, with the Allied victory in Europe merely a month away, a German pastor was led to the scaffold. As far back as February 1933, when many observers saw little threat in the new chancellor, he was one of the earliest to denounce Hitler. Off and on for...continued

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Geovany @Geovany - over 1 year ago

Jane Austen and the King of Skiffle

Lonnie Donegan, 1960 © Gai Terrell via Getty Images.The London Folks themselves beguile,And think they please in a capital stile;Yet let them ask as they cross the Street,Of any young Virgin they happen to meet,And I know she’ll say, from behind her Fan,That there’s none ...continued

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Meggie @Meggie - about 1 year ago

Outlaws at War | History Today

English army with banner, from the Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, late 14th century © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images.Edward I’s unconventional methods of recruiting an army for war against the French in 1294 have received a substantial a...continued

5 minutes read

Leda @Leda - about 1 year ago

The Death of Stalin’s Son

Yakov Dzhugashvili following his capture, on a German airfield, 1941. Alamy.Shortly after the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Allied military intelligence agents unearthed a container of top secret files in the garden of a senior German diplomat. One set of microfilme...continued

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Kristina @Kristina - about 4 years ago

The Humans Behind the Sacrifice

Everything you thought you knew about the Aztecs is wrong. Or, as Camilla Townsend more tactfully puts it at the start of her wonderful new book: ‘The Aztecs would never recognize themselves in the picture of their world that exists in the books and movies we have made.’...continued

5 minutes read

Alexzander @Alexzander - about 1 year ago

Rocks of Ages | History Today

Charles Darwin, 1881 © Bridgeman Images.Charles Darwin experienced what he recalled as one of the most significant events of his five year voyage aboard HMS Beagle on 20 February 1835: his first earthquake. He was resting from specimen gathering in woods near the southern...continued

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Bart @Bart - over 4 years ago

Divided Loyalties in the Medieval World

Jo Johnson, the younger brother of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, recently blamed divided loyalties for his resignation as Cabinet minister and MP. Citing ‘unresolvable tension’ between family loyalty and the national interest, he found the time had come to qui...continued

6 minutes read

Jerrold @Jerrold - over 3 years ago

The Lessons of Shell Shock

Free mental health care began 100 years ago, after the First World War, when a handful of doctors and voluntary workers established clinics and hospitals that drew on the ‘talking therapies’ used to treat shell-shocked soldiers. One of the first outpatient psychotherapy u...continued

5 minutes read

Elvie @Elvie - over 4 years ago

There’s Something About Marie | History Today

In August 1855, during a state visit to France, Queen Victoria was treated to a tour of Versailles in the company of Napoleon III. The visitors’ final stop was the Queen’s Hamlet, the collection of mock-rustic buildings constructed in 1783 as a retreat for Marie-Antoinett...continued

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Elian @Elian - over 1 year ago

The Prime Minister and the President

John F. Kennedy signs a proclamation declaring Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the US, 9 April 1963 © Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.On 12 April 1961 Winston Churchill sailed into New York harbour aboard a lux...continued

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Jerrold @Jerrold - almost 5 years ago

In purgatory with Dante | History Today

Those destined for an afterlife have been consigned to many different places. Christians often dispatched the damned to an eternity of suffering deep inside the earth. Jean-Paul Sartre pronounced that Hell was other people, while a recent illustrated version of The Divine...continued

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Bart @Bart - over 1 year ago

Putting Up Fences | History Today

Mr and Mrs Andrews, by Thomas Gainsborough, 1748-50. Wikimedia Commons.Enclosure in Britain was a long, slow process. Bit by bit and then all at once, swathes of the countryside were fenced off for the exclusive use of landowners. It arguably began with the Norman Conques...continued

5 minutes read

Minnie @Minnie - almost 2 years ago

You and Whose Army? | History Today

Plan of the operations of the New Model Army, drawn in 1903. Wiki Commons.Henry Marten has the distinction of being the only member of the Long Parliament who can be identified as a republican before the outbreak of the First English Civil War in 1642. He remained true to...continued

5 minutes read

Cyril @Cyril - over 4 years ago

News from Otherwhere | History Today

Though hardly so central today, anthropology had some claim in the middle of the 20th century to be a kind of ‘master key’, unlocking the secrets of humanity for large swathes of the educated public. It had achieved this status in relatively short order by, if not vanquis...continued

5 minutes read

Devin @Devin - 10 months ago

Pulp Fiction | History Today

Shake up: Orangina bottles, 1993. Getty ImagesIn a sleek advertisement poster designed by the French artist Bernard Villemot in 1953, an orange peel curls in the shape of a parasol against a blue background. It suggests carefree summer skies and the Mediterranean – ideali...continued

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Felicita @Felicita - over 1 year ago

Assassin’s Creed | History Today

Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, early 20th century. Library of Congress.There has been a welcome proliferation of publications marking the centenary of the Irish Civil War. This book from the Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy should be required reading on that conflic...continued

5 minutes read

Monserrat @Monserrat - over 4 years ago

Catholicism and its Critics | History Today

Tom Holland’s stupendous new book argues that while we might think we live in an irreligious culture, almost everything about the West is actually an inheritance from Christianity. ‘To dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a revolution is ...continued

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