History Today

A slave-state where despotic superstition ruled - Herberstein's vision of sixteenth-century Russia set the agenda for future European attitudes.

Early Russian architects adopted and adapted foreign influences to suit their native styles, but the late seventeenth century saw this trend reversed and western movements came to dominate native architecture.

Peter Biller looks at the restoration of one of England's finest remaining early town halls.

Not just 'the Comet man' - Halley's achievements as a polymath testify to the breadth and vigour of English scientific enquiry and experiment in the years after 1660.

'You are what you eat' was as relevant an observation for the ancients as for more modern thinkers, argues Helen King

Gibbon may have been a man of his time but he was also master of his craft in deploying facts to show history (through the medium of the Roman Empire) as self-generating and self-explanatory, writes Roy Porter.

Mike Curtis explroes an important collection of papers from the Cavendish-Bentinck family, Dukes of Portland.

The hazards of medieval pregnancy were met by attitudes that were a curious mixture of folklore, obstetrics, religion and common sense.

An overview of Kedleston Hall, as the National Trust launch an appeal for money to restore the property which was once the home of Viscount Curzon.