History Today

So called because it passed without a shot being fired, the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 brought Portugal’s authoritarian Estado Novo to an end. Could the state have survived?

The kapo trials of the early 1960s confronted a difficult question: how should Israel judge Jews accused of complicity in the Holocaust?

Bluestockings: The First Women’s Movement by Susannah Gibson makes a case for 18th-century proto-feminism. Do the Bluestockings fit?

Is Orkney Scandinavian or Scottish? Having passed from the former to the latter during the Middle Ages, for centuries the Danish Crown sought to take the islands back.

As Revolution broke out and turned to Terror, British citizens living in France found themselves transformed from friends of liberty to an enemy within.

As told by one medieval chronicler, Britain’s past and future had been prophesied by Merlin, who foresaw its rise, fall and conquest. Did the magician have warnings for the present?

The Anglo-Saxons knew that life – and land – is precarious, which makes its gifts precious.

Columbine marked the beginning of a new era of high-profile mass shootings in the US. Was the attack the inevitable outcome of lax controls and a culture of gun glorification?

When it was first named in 17th-century Switzerland, nostalgia was a very real – and very dangerous – disease.