History Today

Ronald Hutton takes a closer look at Charles II's Secret Treaty of Dover.

The equation of sound money and balanced budgets with moral probity became difficult to maintain once the high point of 'laissez-faire' had been reached in Gladstone's mid-Victorian financial policies.

Philip Collins argues that Dickens' writing reflects not only a marvellous rapport with a cross-section of Victorian society but an integration of populism with a concern for 'the raising up of those that are down.'

A look at the Georgian Group, who campaign for the protection of ancient buildings.

A historical pioneer of the 'longue durée' who found his own liberal vision of a European Russia clouded by the contradictions and pessimism of his own times.

Keith Nurse on an urban archaeological undertaking in Blackfriars Bridge, London

Ann Hills looks at the impact of the Derbyshire Historic Building Trust

Paul Rich describes how the aggressive imperialism of the late Victorian age co-existed uneasily with the intellectual search for English 'roots' in a pre-industrial and mythical past.

The Argentinian writer Borges described the combatants in the Falklands War as being like 'two bald men fighting over a comb.' But thirty years before, Britain and Argentina nearly came to blows over territory far more remote and inhospitable.