History Today

With a line on a map, the Treaty of Tordesillas split the world between Spain and Portugal. Was it a grand refutation of papal authority or an extension of it?

When the English and Nazi German football teams met for the first time on British soil in 1935, the game was not the headline.

Following his accession, the majority of James I’s new English subjects accepted their Scottish king with ‘comforte and contentmente’. Such sentiments would not last.

Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes follows the reinvention of the cat from working animal to purrfect pet.

In spring 1944 the Allied invasion of France seemed inevitable. D-Day’s success was contingent on deception of the enemy. For that, officials turned to the press.

The Loch Ness Monster’s first appearance on film captured both the hype and the scepticism surrounding cinema’s newest star.

The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain by Nicholas Popper explores the Elizabethan revolution in record keeping.

‘The most common misconception about my field? That the Arabs are unusually prone to conspiracy theories to explain political developments.’

Forty years of opening and reform persuaded a lot of people that the Chinese are not really communists. But modern China was modelled on the USSR, and its leaders want to revert to their Leninist roots.