History Today

‘The past has not gone.’

It took an Irish Gothic novelist to tie up centuries of demonic mythology surrounding the bat with the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

In its earliest days, the East India Company was seen not as a threat to Asia’s elites, but as a means of strengthening their powers.

A Dutch conspiracy trial in the Indonesian archipelago gave birth to a sadly enduring English word.

Ambitious Sikh queen Jind Kaur faced division among the Sikh Empire’s subjects and the might of the British in India.

Hildegard of Bingen died on 17 September 1179.

Cures and treatments have always offered potential riches to their inventors. But how was one supposed to know what worked and what didn’t?