History Today

Since the end of the Second World War, writes J. Garston, there has been an enormous increase in Aden’s importance, both commercial and strategic.

The revolutionary upheaval that brought down Louis-Philippe swept into power a famous French Romantic poet. Gordon Wright describes how Lamartine acquitted himself with courage and energy; but his fall was as swift and sudden as his rise.

In 1880, the British withdrew from Afghanistan. Abdur Rahman Khan, the new ruler installed after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, unified the fractured nation at a terrible cost.

The Great War raised hopes of Indian independence, but it would take another conflict to make it a reality.

The medievalist Jacques Le Goff was inspired by the work of his fellow historian, Marc Bloch.

Justin Marozzi admires Hugh Kennedy’s article from 2004, which offers a nuanced portrait of the great Abbasid caliph, Harun al Rashid, much-mythologised hero of The Arabian Nights. 

The compact between the British state and those prepared to die for it is a dubious one, argues Sarah Ingham.

The opening naval battle of the First World War took place not in the North Sea but in Central Africa in August 1914. It would change the course of the African conflict in Britain’s favour, says Janie Hampton.

When West Germany won the competition for the first time in 1954 they were the unfancied representatives of a divided nation emerging from defeat and humiliation.

Though it all seems rather mild from the distance of half a century, the riots that took place in English seaside towns during 1964 revealed a shift in values from those of the austere war generation to the newly affluent baby boomers, argues Clive Bloom.