History
Anything to do with History
Clarissa
@Clarissa -
almost 4 years ago
A Well-Trodden Road | History Today
British politics on the eve of the Second World War remains a subject of enduring fascination. Recent years have witnessed the publication of a plethora of new books on the subject, from Daniel Todman’s Britain’s War to Nicholas Shakespeare’s Six Minutes in May as well as...continued
3 minutes read
Elvie
@Elvie -
almost 4 years ago
Chaucer: The Poet in His World
It isn’t really possible to write a biography of Chaucer. Painstaking research over many decades has turned up a small number of documents related to his life, which between them give a patchy, at times perplexing, picture. This foremost medieval English poet – always the...continued
3 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
almost 4 years ago
Retracing The Steps | History Today
Consider John Buchan’s output in the four and a half years of war between August 1914 and November 1918. He wrote thousands of communiques from the front, first as a jobbing journalist then as official army spokesman at GHQ. He wrote 24 volumes of Nelson’s History of the ...continued
4 minutes read
Muriel
@Muriel -
almost 4 years ago
Are Empires Always Bad? | History Today
Being part of the Aztec federation was not without its advantages Caroline Dodds Pennock, Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield Stereotyping ‘empire’ as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is not only deeply flawed and ahistorical, but also misses the fact t...continued
8 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
almost 4 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
4 minutes read
Meggie
@Meggie -
almost 4 years ago
A Painter Fit for a Queen
It is July 1571 and Elizabeth I is sitting for a portrait in ‘the open ally of a goodly garden’, almost certainly at Hampton Court. The portrait is ‘in little’ – what we would now call a watercolour miniature, although the latter term didn’t enter English until Sir Philip...continued
6 minutes read
Moises
@Moises -
almost 4 years ago
The Future of God in 1943
Reading Alan Jacobs’ super little book is like prizing open the back of a watch to study the mechanism within: tiny cogs working in clever order, designed by a master craftsman. The cogs are several Christian thinkers whose lives and thoughts connected in 1943, a year whe...continued
4 minutes read
Americo
@Americo -
almost 4 years ago
Travels Through Time #15 – Mary Fulbrook, 1939-45
In this special Wolfson History Prize episode of Travels Through Time we talk to Mary Fulbrook about her book Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice. Last month Reckonings was awarded the Wolfson History Prize. The judges called it ‘masterly’; ...continued
2 minutes read
Colin
@Colin -
almost 4 years ago
Hungary’s Holy Trinity | History Today
The broadcaster and historian Matthew Sweet, who recently debunked in a very public manner the claims of Naomi Wolf that there were widespread executions of gay men in Victorian Britain, drew my attention to one of the most extraordinary autobiographies of the 20th centur...continued
2 minutes read
Assunta
@Assunta -
almost 4 years ago
History Today Quiz: July | History Today
The History Today monthly quiz is back! Questions are multiple choice, and there are no penalties for an incorrect answer. There are 10 questions across a wide range of periods and themes in history, three of which relate to articles from this month's magazine. Good luck...continued
1 minute read
Dayton
@Dayton -
almost 4 years ago
What Have the Romans Done for Us?
Rabbits hit the headlines earlier this year. A fragment of tibia, unearthed in the 1960s during an archaeological dig at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, was radiocarbon dated by researchers at the University of Exeter. The analysis showed it to be almost 2,000 yea...continued
6 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
almost 4 years ago
Lost in Translation | History Today
In early May 2019, the Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono travelled to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to settle an old score. To this day, the Pacific powers have never signed a peace treaty following the Second World War. May’s meeting built...continued
5 minutes read
Torey
@Torey -
almost 4 years ago
On the Spot: Matthew Sweet
Why are you a historian of the Victorian era?I’m more a journalist who loves archives, but I became a Victorianist in 1989 after an epiphanic moment involving a paper knife and the Bodleian’s copy of Wilkie Collins’ Basil. My last book was about Vietnam deserters and the ...continued
2 minutes read
Grayce
@Grayce -
almost 4 years ago
The Hitlers in Our Own Country
Martin Luther King delivered his celebrated ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on 28 August 1963 at the March on Washington. Less well known is that one of the other speakers that day was Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a political émigré who had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. His presence at...continued
5 minutes read
Webster
@Webster -
almost 4 years ago
Can You Keep a Secret?
In February 1649 the Royalist newsbook Mercurius Pragmaticus characterised ‘Parliament Jone’, aka Elizabeth Alkin, as ‘an old Bitch’ able to ‘smell out a Loyall-hearted man as soon as the best Blood-hound in the Army’. Elizabeth later claimed that during the Civil Wars sh...continued
3 minutes read
Sandrine
@Sandrine -
almost 4 years ago
A Hidden Chapter: Women of the Klan
The Ku Klux Klan has entered popular memory as a sometimes menacing, sometimes almost comical, group of angry men, clad in white robes with hooded faces, setting crosses alight, or thundering through Reconstruction-era American towns on horseback. This image, however, fai...continued
11 minutes read
Immanuel
@Immanuel -
almost 4 years ago
The History of the Picnic
It is hard to disagree with W. Somerset Maugham’s view that ‘there are few things so pleasant as a picnic lunch’. Even if ants and wasps occasionally join the fun, picnics are the very epitome of innocent pastoral delight. But they haven’t always been so carefree – nor so...continued
10 minutes read
Raoul
@Raoul -
almost 4 years ago
Longman-History Today Awards 2019: The Winners
This year's awards were presented by History Today editor, Paul Lay, and were held at the Victorian Bathhouse near Liverpool Street. There have been baths on this site since 1817, and the building that still exists today opened in February 1895, and was designed by archit...continued
2 minutes read
Alan
@Alan -
almost 4 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
Jerrold
@Jerrold -
almost 4 years ago
The Bengal Famine of 1943
On an October morning in 1943, a scientist employed by the government of Bengal was travelling by boat along the Brahmaputra river from Bahadurabad to take up his new job in Dhaka (now capital of Bangladesh). All along the 120-mile journey, he saw bodies of dead and dying...continued
2 minutes read
Madalyn
@Madalyn -
almost 4 years ago
The Death of Caesar | History Today
A huddle of conspirators walks away from the lifeless, bloodied body of Julius Caesar, having stabbed the great Roman general and statesman 23 times on the Ides, or 15th, of March, 44 BC.Caesar had recently been declared dictator perpetuo by a Senate fearful of its rumour...continued
2 minutes read
Jarod
@Jarod -
almost 4 years ago
Death of Arjumand Banu Begum
Arjumand Banu was the granddaughter of an impoverished former Persian noble who had arrived at the Mughal Court with only two donkeys to his name. She became known at court both for her beauty and her learning, reading Arabic and Persian and composing poems in the latter....continued
2 minutes read
Jerrold
@Jerrold -
almost 4 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
5 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
almost 4 years ago
Thatcher Breaks Consensus | History Today
When asked who has been the most controversial and radical postwar British prime minister, many historians and academics incline towards Margaret Thatcher. Taking office 40 years ago, and in power between 1979 and 1990 as the UK’s first female prime minister, the circumst...continued
2 minutes read
Abbie
@Abbie -
almost 4 years ago
The First Tanker War | History Today
The war between Iran and Iraq that lasted for most of the 1980s was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the late 20th century. Casualties for both armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands. At times the combat zones bore more than a passing resemblance to the battlefield...continued
6 minutes read