The Xi’an Incident: The Beginning of the End for Chiang Kai-shek
The Xi'an Incident, a tragi-comic sequence of mutiny and kidnapping, marked a crucial stage in the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists.
History Today
Big Bang Reverberations
Keith Nurse on an urban archaeological undertaking in Blackfriars Bridge, London
Doing Up Derbyshire
Ann Hills looks at the impact of the Derbyshire Historic Building Trust
The Quest for Englishness
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.
A Cold War: Britain, Argentina and Antarctica
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.
Chasing a Sphinx: Charles the Bold's Burgundy
Despite his passion for fame and a formal crown, Charles the Bold's Burgundy was a patchwork of territories and not a modern state. Richard Vaughan investigates.
West Africa’s Mary Kingsley
‘England… requires markets more than colonies.’ Mary Kingsley’s espousal of the African cause was founded on the empathy between second-class citizens in a white, male-dominated society, as Deborah Birkett reveals.
Revaluing South Korea’s Heritage
Ann Hills on how Korea’s rich history is displayed.
The Chinese Collections, Royal Ontario Museum
Penelope Johnston takes a look at a Far East collection in Canada
The Sandinista Heritage
Clare Foster examines the history of revolutionary Nicaragua