History Today

Atahualpa, the last true emperor of the Incas, was killed on 26 July 1533.

Technology affects Chaucer‘s telling of the Miller’s Tale.

Amílcar Cabral, global figure in anticolonialism.

The recently discovered chronicle of an opinionated, elderly aristocrat provides a vivid portrayal of Paris during the most febrile days of the French Revolution.

Two heroes of the 1821 Greek Revolution found themselves cast out of the national pantheon because of their gender. In the centuries that followed, their legends would be used to justify a range of nationalist causes.

The visitors’ books of 19th-century hotels, pubs and inns show Victorians on holiday, revealing them to be irreverent pleasure seekers, capable of highfalutin pomposity and touristic wrath.

Does the intelligent sea mammal, long associated with Venus, the goddess of love, offer a clue to a lost jewel of the Renaissance? 

A visceral history of of American soldiers in Belgium, France and Italy, 1943-45.

The mild anarchy of piles of second-hand books reminds us of the simple, contingent encounters we have all missed during lockdown.