A Tyrant goes on Trial
Charges were brought against Peter von Hagenbach at the ‘first international war crimes trial’, held on 9 May 1474.
History Matters
Thoughts, opinions and commentary on all things historical.
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Polling in a Pandemic
The general election of 1918 was a ‘cynical muddle’ held as influenza killed thousands across a country emerging from the First World War.
The Man who Haunts America
John Brown, the abolitionist firebrand, remains a potent figure in the United States’ febrile politics of race.
Book of Remembrance
A signature in a collection of autographs reveals a story of Indigenous service that extends from Australia to Canada and Trinidad.
Sheppard’s Warning
A thief who had been dead for more than a century caused a moral panic in the theatres of Victorian London.
Meeting an Urgent Need
The First World War threw widows and their brothers-in-law together, but their marriages were considered incestuous.
A Radical Pocket Book
A miniature Emancipation Proclamation helped to recruit Black soldiers during the Civil War.
Life after Death in Ancient Egypt
Despite the belief of their Pharaohs, not every ancient Egyptian was convinced of the certainty of an eternal afterlife.
Roosevelt’s Southern Connection
Was the US president ‘dealing with the devil’ in his relationships with segregationist politicians or was his ‘the art of the possible’?
Stakhanovite Shopping
Even the retail sector became part of the second Five Year Plan imposed on the Soviet Union by Stalin.