History Today

During the years that led up to the Anglo-American Treaty of 1842, writes Henry I. Kurtz, both countries played a dangerous game of “brinksmanship” along the Canadian border.

Court-martialled in 1760 for disobeying military orders, Sackville rose to the office of Secretary of State for War, writes David Fraser.

As wealthy Russians continue to take up residence in London’s smartest districts, Helen Szamuely reflects on the contributions to Anglo-Russian relations of those diplomats who paved the way from the 18th century onwards.

Though he didn't invent it, the guillotine was named for a French doctor, who died on 26 March 1814.

The archaeologist Howard Carter died on 2 March 1939.

A proto-mutiny took place in Ireland on March 20th, 1914.

Life in a First World War field hospital is depicted in a new exhibition.

Hungary’s authoritarian government is rewriting the nation’s troubled past.

The use of the sword as an effective military weapon has been abandoned since the First World War, but its decline had begun at a very much earlier period. T.H. McGuffie describes how, during the Franco-German struggle of 1870-1871, among some forty thousand cavalry engaged, only six men are believed to have received a mortal sabre-wound.

Ernest A. Gray analyses the Navy’s role on land and sea in the Crimean Campaign.