History Today

Ann Hills on an institution dedicated to the history of the Red Crescent and Cross and a humanitarian approach to war.

Kenneth Fowler examines the motives and connections of an upwardly-mobile 'bon Breton' in the Hundred Years War.

Homes for heroes? Gertrude Prescott Nuding argues that the inspiration behind and debates over the founding of Britain's National Portrait Gallery reveal the Victorian establishment at its most earnest about who was worth celebrating in 'our island story'.

History Today's special issue on the French Revolution's bicentenary focuses on the new ideas that are illustrating its causes and course. To open, Douglas Johnson considers the arguments about the 'Counter-Revolution' and the Terror exercising French historians of the Revolution in 1989.

To export the Revolution's benefits across Europe was the early hope of the French - but the unenthusiastic response from the liberated peoples rapidly soured the vision. Tim Blanning chronicles that descent from optimism to realpolitik.

Olwen Hufton chronicles the varied but influential voices of feminine awareness that intervened, often decisively and despite male misgivings, in the course of the Revolution.

Jean Bloch expounds the new thinking which sees the Revolution as a catalytic period for literature, fusing Enlightenment philosophies with the fervour engendered by a tumultuous time.