History Today

Barbara Yorke considers the reputation of King Alfred the Great, and the enduring cult around his life and legend.

Charles Baudelaire described Edgar Allan Poe's death, on October 7th, 1849, as 'almost a suicide, a suicide prepared for a long time'.

Daniel Snowman meets the co-founder of the University of Sussex and doyen of Victorian history.

When did the British government know of the true role of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the ‘Final Solution’?

Christopher Harvie examines Scottish cultural identity since the Act of Union, and argues that writers and intellectuals have been the real keepers of the national flame.

Clarissa Campbell Orr explains the recent revival in the history of courts, from those of the Byzantine emperors to that of Hitler.

Paul Dukes welcomes the current boom in historical fiction - but says novelists need to ground their stories in a soil of solid fact.

Peter Catterall dives into the history of the alphabet soup in which electoral reform has become enmired.

Loyd Grossman explains how a gifted teacher from Maine inspired his love of the past, and encouraged him to plunge his hands into a mixing bowl of Plaster of Paris.

Tony Aldous on the changes afoot for a historic area of south London in Millennium Year and beyond.