History Today

Historians ask what constitutes the history of the developing world.

A rage for Mesmerism gripped society in London at the end of the 18th century, as it had in Paris and Vienna. But it was to be short-lived. The excesses of its devotees soon discredited the 'science' in the eyes of the public and it eventually became a vehicle for unbalanced fringes of society.

The great frustration in visiting naval dockyard towns has always been that they keep their most exciting parts hidden from view behind unassailable walls.

Anniversaries are, by definition, a time not only for celebration but also for self-examination, for dimly gazing into the future as well as for happily recalling the past.

For readers of this magazine the quality of the articles presented in its pages month by month will have provided, one hopes, ample evidence for the continuing intellectual vitality of historical scholarship, and indeed ample confirmation of the value of communicating this to the widest possible audience.

The history of ecclesiastical structures? The link between denominations and social change? The history of Christian doctrine? The study of formal beliefs? What people believed? Eight historians answer the question...

Christopher Haigh outlines the historiography of the reign of the first Elizabeth.

Widowed at the age of thirteen, three months before the birth of her only child, the devout mother of Henry VII showed herself a master of political intrigue.