History Today

What does it take to establish a new scientific truth? In the case of Galileo and heliocentrism, the death of its sceptics. 

Hollywood’s golden age was born of the popularity of swords and sandals on the Victorian stage.

During the Franco-Prussian War a British wine merchant was imprisoned in Cologne, accused of being a spy. The public clamoured for the government to secure his release, but wartime diplomacy was not so straightforward. 

Class interest and ostentatious generosity are the hallmarks of elite charity. So, too, is a fixation with posterity. 

The First Crusade unleashed shockwaves felt across all of Christendom. New chapters to a story started in 1099 are still being written.

In 17th-century Tuscany and Malta some women were able to hold their abusers, members of the clergy, to account.

The Ukrainian-Polish border is a symbol of both international solidarity and the continuing threat that xenophobia poses to the European project.

Three generations of the cursed House of Dudley stained the executioner’s block in 16th-century England. Were its members murderous villains working to overthrow the monarchy, or shrewd political agents struggling to survive? 

In the 1930s several prominent Black intellectuals visited Shanghai, bringing politics, culture and anti-colonial fervour with them.