History Today

Despite its popularity in France, the political memoir took a while to get going in Britain. It was Lord Clarendon’s epic attempt to make sense of the turbulent 17th century that slowly set the ball rolling.

In the absence of a European democratic model, the Founding Fathers turned to the apparently perfect state of the Iroquois Five Nations as a template for a federal United States, combining the best of both worlds.

Kate Wiles on Auldjo’s artistic map of Vesuvius across 200 year of major eruptions.

Viking sagas tell of conflict and heroic voyages but are prone to fantasy and exaggeration. How accurate are their scant accounts of the treatment of those injured in battle? Brian Burfield examines the elusive practice of Viking medicine.

Few episodes in the history of the British Labour movement have been as mythologised as that in which six Dorset farm labourers were shipped to Australia for their trade union activities.

Iran, despite its conquest by the armies of Islam, retained its own Persian language and much of its culture. Khodadad Rezakhani examines the process by which a Zoroastrian empire became part of the Islamic world.  

Ralegh's fateful attempt to discover El Dorado began on March 17th, 1617.