History Today

Japan has had a vexed relationship with Jesus ever since European missionaries arrived on its shores. Banned until 1873, successive leaders have asked whether love of the ‘two Js’ is compatible.

Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jessica Cox looks at the engine of the Victorian population boom: motherhood.

Repulsive revelations of bodily infestations were viewed by some in medieval Europe as proof of sanctity. But for most, parasites were just plain disgusting.

In the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler was in prison and the Nazi Party banned. But its failure taught him valuable lessons.

There are ghosts in the archives. Floating nuns, joy-riding cyclists and things that go bump in the night. Four historical ghost stories and their meanings.

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was an unexpected bestseller, whose success rose and fell with its author.

‘In the US, people often think of British history as quaint or niche, instead of a central force in the making of global modernity.’

Klaus-Michael Bogdal’s Europe and the Roma: A History of Fascination and Fear is a history of a people’s battle to tell their own story on their own terms.

Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man by Peter K. Andersson is the first full length study of William Somer’s life and posthumous mythos.

What will future generations judge us most harshly for? Failure to write on vellum.