History Today

Edward Acton looks to the Tsarist ancien regime of the 19th century to set the scene for a historical understanding of Russia that does not throw out the baby with its Marxist bathwater.

Columbus braved superstition and ignorance by sailing across the Atlantic when his contemporaries thought he would fall off the edge. So runs the legend, but Jeffrey Russell reveals here how the Middle Ages were maligned by the creative fiction of subsequent generations.

Richard Cavendish on the 60th anniversary of the National Trust for Scotland.

Richard Vinen compares and contrasts the corner shop visions of British Thatcherism and French Poujadism.

Roger Knight looks at the National Maritime Museum's acquistion of the papers of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.

Jeremy Black takes a fresh look at the career and reputation of the 'great outsider' of Hanoverian Britain.

Jackie Latham compares Victorian and current school inspection theories for history and other subjects

Trevor Fisher takes a fresh look at 1066 and All That and finds it a text for the times.

During the Second World War, Navajo soldiers drafted into the Marines were much like ordinary recruits, with one exception: they were to create and use an unbreakable military code using their native language.