Indian Summer

This month’s History Today continues its Indian Summer with articles on the Untouchables of Western India, and the founding of the city of Bombay. Future issues of the magazine will extend this coverage of India and its history in conjunction with the Festival of India, which was opened in March by Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. The idea of having a special theme running through many issues is, however, nothing new for the magazine, and it is something that will continue in the future, for it has always been the intention of History Today to encourage the study of history in its widest meaning. In the first issue of the magazine in 1951 the founding editors, Peter Quennell and Alan Hodge, wrote that the magazine ‘will be written by experts, and will cover many specialised subjects; but the main intention is to interest the general reader’. I was privileged to inherit this tradition when I became editor of History Today and now pass it onto Juliet Gardiner who will be the new editor of the magazine from this month.