History Today

Reforms to divorce law inevitably prompt moral panic as they did in Victorian England. It has not yet proven to be justified.

Two very different volumes, Sparta and the Commemoration of War and The Killing Ground: A Biography of Thermopylae, grapple with the myth of Sparta.

‘Genocide’, the Holocaust episode of The World at War, was pioneering when it first aired. Does it stand the test of time? 

To support ex-servicemen injured during the First World War, charities like St Dunstan’s found creative ways of fundraising. 

Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David Van Reybrouck brings Southeast Asia’s ‘invisible revolution’ into the light.

Did the Greeks really trick their way into Troy inside a gigantic wooden horse?

March is the loudest month. The late survival of a dialect name – Lide – for the month poses a medieval puzzle. 

Was the Earth flatter around the poles or the Equator? In 1735 two expeditions set out to settle a matter of national pride.

In Rites of Passage: Death & Mourning in Victorian Britain, Judith Flanders explores the commercialisation of grief and those who resisted the era’s conspicuous consumption.

The 14th century was a period of great upheaval. People yearned for the good old days, when everyone knew their place, prices were lower and kings were better.