History Today

In October 1860, writes E.W.R. Lumby, a humane and liberal-minded British emissary felt obliged to order an act of vandalism in Peking.

John Raymond assesses the life and career of one modern history's “unswerving inflexibles”.

In the coastal regions of the modern colonies of Kenya and Tanganyika,  the Portuguese, first among Europeans, came into contact with the Arab-African civilization that flourished on the edges of the Indian Ocean.

Since Sir Rowland Hill evolved the Penny Post in 1839, C.W. Hill describes how postage stamps all over the world have come to play a part in recording their countries’ history.

Henry D'Avigdor-Goldsmid describes an insider trading scandal that embroiled the House of Commons in 1912.

The leader of the British Communist party, in reminiscence, described 1919 as ‘a period of golden opportunities’ that were lost by left-wing disarray. By David Mitchell.

One of Nelson’s proteges, William Hoste, patrolled the Adriatic Sea at a time when its coasts were largely under Napoleon’s control, as P.C. McFarlan writes.

‘Why not seize Malta?’ Napoleon asked Talleyrand, ‘We could be masters of the Mediterranean’. By Christopher Hibbert. 

Harold Kurtz describes how for nearly ten years, in two spells of office, the Republican Fouché was the virtual head of the internal government of France under the increasing Traditionalism of Napoleon’s rule.

Former terrorist, responsible for some of the bloodiest excesses of the Revolution, Joseph Fouché, thanks to his intellect, his ruthlessness, his political flair and his unequalled “knowledge of men and circumstances,” lived on to play an important role under both Napoleon I and Louis XVIII. By Harold Kurtz.