Volume 61 Issue 6 June 2011

Brazil may be one of the 21st century’s emerging superpowers, but its independence from Portugal was not inevitable, nor was its survival certain.

History Today was launched in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. Barry Turner challenges Arthur Marwick’s impressions, first published in 1991, of the year that austerity Britain glimpsed a brighter future.

Adam Hochschild looks at an unlikely pair of siblings whose high profile yet very different approach to the events of the early 20th century reflect a turbulent age.

Medieval knights were the sporting superstars and military heroes of their day, who performed before an adoring public in the tournament. Nigel Saul explains their appeal.

Richard Bosworth looks at the Vittoriano, the Italian capital’s century-old monument to Victor Emmanuel II and Italian unification and still the focus of competing claims over the country’s history and national identity.