History Today

Stuart Andrews shows how, in his person and in his writings, Tom Paine forms a link between the two great revolutions of the late eighteenth century - the American and the French.

Carl Degler asks 'Can the American past be put back together again?'

'The dullest man in English politics (who) looked more pathetic than dangerous' wrote an American journalist in 1941, yet with Churchill, Attlee dominated politics in the 1940s and his name is increasingly evoked in the current battle for the soul of the Labour Party.

Five hundred years after Richard III came to the throne, Jeffrey Richards seeks to evaluate those 'tales' and explain the continuing fascination of the short reign of the last Plantagent king of England

Douglas Johnson considers whether anecdotes are a mark of the self-indulgent historian.

Martin Stanton shows that to take a dip in the sea at Margate is to take part in a long historical process with cultural, sexual, medical, economic and social overtones.

Anthony Sutcliffe considers the contribution which urban history has made to our understanding of the past – and its likely use in the future.

Coffee from Ethiopia to Brazil, rubber from Brazil to Malaya... Lucile Brockway shows how the transfer of seeds and plants across continents has had enormous implications for the development of the economies of the countries concerned.