History Today

Bernhard Rieger considers how luxury liners became icons of modernity and national pride in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Phil Reed, Director of the new Churchill Museum, gives a personal insight into the development of the new museum housed in the Cabinet War Rooms, which opens to the public this month.

Yehuda Koren tells one family’s remarkable story of surviving Auschwitz.

On January 27th, 1945, the Red Army liberated what was left of the Auschwitz extermination camp. Taylor Downing reveals extraordinary aerial photographs of the camp taken during the summer of 1944, which pose awkward questions about why the Allies did not act to stop the killing.

Simon Chaplin describes the extraordinary personal museum of the 18th-century anatomist and gentleman-dissector John Hunter, and suggests that this, and others like it, played a critical role in establishing an acceptable view of dissection.

Winston Churchill wrote history with an eye to his eventual place in it, David Reynolds tells us. His idea of history also inspired his making of it.

Britain's new Prime Minister took office on February 5th, 1855.

Helen Rappaport on Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale and the Post-Crimean War reputation of the woman recently voted ‘greatest black Briton’: Mary Seacole.

David Anderson looks at the contentious issues raised as Kenya comes to terms with the colonial past.

The meetings of the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire were held on 2 February 1555.