Volume 63 Issue 3 March 2013

Martin Evans offers a frank reassessment of his article on 30 years of Algerian independence, published in History Today in 1992.

The civil war between Roman Catholics and Huguenots reached a brief peace on March 19th, 1563.

The notorious prison was closed for good on 21 March 1963.

Canberra was born on March 12th, 1913.

A new exhibition at the British Museum on the aftermath of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 raises questions about the relationship between past and present, says Daisy Dunn.

Stephen Bates on the divisions that split Peel’s Tory administration in the mid-1840s, resonant of splits in the Conservative Party today.

Pevsner Architectural Guides still bear the mark of their founder, despite ample revision. Jonathan Meades plots their glorious evolution.

Following his disastrous Russian campaign, the emperor of France needed money quickly. The desperate measures he took are revealed by Noelle Plack.

Jonathan Fenby looks at a brief experiment in Chinese democracy, brought to an end by political assassination.

Sean McGlynn reconsiders the origins of the popular myth and suggests a new contender for the original folk hero; not an outlaw from Nottingham but a devoted royal servant from Kent, who opposed the French invasion against King John in 1216.