History Today

‘What historical topic have I changed my mind on? I used to give the powerful a lot of agency and the oppressed little.’

Mutiny and murder at sea ended in capture for the crew of the pirate ship Revenge. Their trial was a deliberate display of the authority of the British state. How did it unfold?

Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 by Noel Malcolm is an ambitious comparative study that raises plenty of questions.

Once maligned as a record ‘of the dullest kind’, a 1535 audit of Church wealth – the Valor ecclesiasticus – offers a unique view of England’s religious, social and cultural life just months after the break with Rome.

In March 1824 the East India Company declared war on Burma, the opening salvo in a series of conflicts that would see one empire fall, another expand and leave divisive wounds still felt today.

Alongside the great successes of Roman architectural feats were expensive failures. Who was to blame? 

Reading It Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature by Abigail Williams argues that misunderstanding popular literature was a sign of its success.

General elections in Britain were once weeks-long affairs of corruption and chaos. The shift to one-day polling was slow.

Europe panicked when astrologers predicted a huge flood in 1524. When it failed to appear, astrology had to defend itself.

On 7 February 1497, the Piagnoni of Florence set sin ablaze in the original ‘bonfire of the vanities’