History Today

Richard Cavendish storms the heights of Victorian Francophobia with the Palmerston Forts Society.

Michael Paris looks at how science fiction and popular literature shaped personal prejudices and political agendas about 'destruction from the skies'.

What made medieval monks laugh? Edward Coleman looks at humour, holy men and the sub-texts of comment in 12th-century England.

Missing person or ritual murder? Richard Rathbone probes a cause célèbre from an age of colonial and tribal transition.

Raymond Postgate is well-known today as the founder of The Good Food Guide, but he was also a vivid eyewitness of events as a Londoner under siege from Hitler's bombs. We publish here for the first time, a selection from his wartime correspondence with the American publisher Alfred Knopf, introduced and edited by his son, John Postgate.

Ann Hills looks at a little-known treasure trove: the archives of London Zoo.

Anthony McElligott argues that municipal confrontation and the decline of civic virtue in the 20s and 30s played an important part in letting the Nazis rise to power in Germany.

Anne Kershen asks if Docklands residents have always had a rough deal from developers - Victorian as well as 80s.

Akbar Ahmed looks at the passion and theology behind the great monument to love.

Alexander the Great has gone down as the wonder of the ancient world with his spectacular career and conquests but, John Grainger argues, a niche ought to be left for the junior general who carved out his own empire from the chaos that followed Alexander's death.