History

Anything to do with History

Zackery @Zackery - almost 4 years ago

Worlds Little and Large | History Today

The events of the past few months have changed all our lives in ways we could not have imagined at the start of the year. Back in January, historians were playfully predicting what our version of the ‘Twenties’ might look like: would it be a repeat of the Roaring 1920s, o...continued

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Devin @Devin - about 4 years ago

Breaches and Bridges | History Today

Underneath York Minster, in a dimly lit part of the crypt which has been turned into an atmospheric exhibition space, a small book is displayed in a position of honour. It is a beautifully decorated Anglo-Saxon copy of the Gospels, made in Canterbury and brought north by ...continued

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Marie @Marie - about 4 years ago

Poland’s Resistance | History Today

The purpose of this very valuable addition to the literature on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 is straightforward. Roger Moorhouse insists that too little attention has been paid in the West to the heroic resistance of the Poles to German aggressio...continued

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Devin @Devin - over 4 years ago

Hungary's Golden Squad | History Today

When Hungary visited Wembley for a friendly in 1953, some of the English players thought they were in for an easy game. That impression lasted all of 45 seconds, when the Hungarians scored their first goal of a famous 6-3 victory. Led by the great Ferenc Puskás, Hungary u...continued

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Ezequiel @Ezequiel - over 2 years ago

The Best Articles of 2021

We’ve put together our annual selection of some of our favourite articles from the past twelve months, in which a new language is invented, riot and rebellion stalks Restoration London, rivalries emerge over tourists and ghosts become politically partisan.Read for free fo...continued

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Cameron @Cameron - over 4 years ago

Classics for the Working Masses

The study of Classics has long been associated with expensive schools and elite universities. But this is not the whole picture. With Henry Stead, I am writing a book on ways in which, from the 18th century onwards, working-class Britons embraced ancient Greece and Rome....continued

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Madalyn @Madalyn - over 4 years ago

Catching Fuchs | History Today

Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant German nuclear physicist, was condemned by a British court to 14 years in prison on 1 March 1950. He had confessed to the British security service, MI5, that for seven years he had handed the Soviets everything he knew about the British and Americ...continued

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Torey @Torey - about 3 years ago

Unsettled Legacy | History Today

The southern writer Robert Penn Warren claimed that the Civil War was the United States’ ‘only “felt” history – history lived in the national imagination’. If ongoing debates about the management of Confederate statuary teach us anything, it is that its reverberations con...continued

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Americo @Americo - about 1 year ago

Reflecting on the Past | History Today

Clio, Greek Muse of History, by Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch, 1558-1617. Alamy.In the last ten years, I’ve written some 50-odd columns for this magazine – enough words to fill a small book. They add up to a manifesto of how I think we should do history, the value of history i...continued

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Alvah @Alvah - almost 5 years ago

Heads Turned by Treasure | History Today

As a medievalist who works mostly with books, I confess that I sometimes envy archaeologists. The work they do is long, difficult and painstaking, but the reward – at least in terms of public interest and enthusiasm for their findings – is incredible, far surpassing anyt...continued

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Colin @Colin - almost 2 years ago

All That Is Not Good

Stained glass window showing Julian of Norwich, Norwich Cathedral. Alamy.When the news is full of images of suffering, it feels difficult – almost wrong – to concentrate on anything else. How can ordinary work, meetings, emails, teaching or writing matter, when the world ...continued

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Alexzander @Alexzander - about 4 years ago

Lies, Damned Lies and History

Post-truth politics, and the way it is reshaping the public sphere, poses an existential threat to the study of the past. On 27 January 2020 we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The existence of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps and, s...continued

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Alvah @Alvah - over 1 year ago

Object Lesson | History Today

Conscientious objector Sidney Spencer on his way to plead his case at Liverpool tribunal, 25 March 1941. Alamy.On 6 April 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the Queen made a speech invoking the spirit of the Second World War. Asking the British public to ‘remain united a...continued

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Alexie @Alexie - over 3 years ago

The Lives of Others | History Today

‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other’, says the heroine of Jane Austen’s Emma, playfully trying to reassure her ever-anxious father that other people can enjoy amusements he would never himself like. In Austen’s novel, Emma is often wrong, b...continued

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Elian @Elian - almost 5 years ago

For Argument’s Sake | History Today

The coming of spring, for medieval poets, usually means the chance of something exciting happening. Once flowers, birdsong and sunshine tempt a poet to roam outdoors, spring may be the time for encounters with fairies, lovers and all kinds of marvellous adventures. The 13...continued

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Jeffrey @Jeffrey - over 3 years ago

Memento Mori | History Today

The past and the present talk to each other continually. As a historian, I tend to obsess over this communication. Two weeks of broken central heating in winter a few years back was uncomfortable but, at least, an insight into how people lived historically. For me, then, ...continued

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Zackery @Zackery - over 4 years ago

The Cultured Women of Essex

‘It is asked of all who hear this work that they do not revile it because a woman translated it. That is no reason to despise it, nor to disregard the good in it.’ Many female writers have probably said, or wanted to say, something very like these words. They were written...continued

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Devin @Devin - over 4 years ago

All At Sea | History Today

The title of Australian historian Joy McCann’s chronicle of the Southern Ocean says it all: a sea wilder than any other, striated by latitudinal bands whose crescendo of nicknames (Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, Screaming Sixties) give more than a hint of its character...continued

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Allene @Allene - almost 2 years ago

Matters of Importance | History Today

Clockwise from top: Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, Kateryn Parr and Jane Seymour. Lithograph, c.1860. akg-images.For a long time – in the view of my publisher far too long a time – I’ve been writing a new history of the women who were ...continued

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Zackery @Zackery - over 1 year ago

Written in Heraldry | History Today

Henry VI on horseback with a coat of arms, 15th century. Bridgeman Images.In the largely illiterate 14th to 17th centuries, heraldry could be read by all. As Victor Hugo wrote: ‘For those who can decipher it, heraldry is an algebra, a language. The whole history of the se...continued

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Bobby @Bobby - almost 4 years ago

How To Live Forever | History Today

A few years ago, on a grey and rainy day in April, I happened to be in Folkestone in Kent. Since there’s not much to do in a seaside town on a drizzly Sunday morning, a visit to a church seemed like the best idea. This church, dedicated to St Mary and St Eanswythe, is an ...continued

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Jimmy @Jimmy - about 2 years ago

Mind the Authority Gap | History Today

Choose wisely: Woman in a Bookshop, cover design for the quarterly magazine, ‘The Yellow Book’, by Aubrey Beardsley, c.1895. The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images.This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Wolfson History Prize, the UK’s most prestigious prize for hi...continued

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Rex @Rex - over 4 years ago

Don’t Dismiss Damsels | History Today

One day in 1420, the East Anglian mystic Margery Kempe visited a church in Norwich. In her extraordinary Book, a frank, personal and deeply engaging narrative of her life that has a claim to be the first autobiography in the English language, Kempe tells of many such visi...continued

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Priscilla @Priscilla - over 4 years ago

Gossiping with the Dead | History Today

It says something of my previous ignorance about the state of motherhood that, before giving birth, I agreed to be a judge on a literary prize in the months that followed. As we reach the end of the year, however, it does mean that I have read an enormous number of biogra...continued

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Jarod @Jarod - over 4 years ago

The Lure of the Local

I recently visited a local history museum in a small English town. It does not exactly matter where; there are some features that all such museums have in common. If you think of one you know, you are probably imagining a place much like this. As I wandered through the qu...continued

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