Britain

Wellington’s victories over the forces of Napoleon were critical to Britain’s ascendancy to superpower status. Peter Snow wonders why such a thrilling period of history is too often neglected.

Has the British family undergone an unparalleled breakdown since the 1960s, as is often claimed? Pat Thane argues that there never was a golden age of domestic bliss.

As Coronation Street celebrates half a century in the nation’s living rooms, Andrew Roberts looks at why an intensely parochial television series that has wilfully refused to acknowledge change is still going strong.

Kevin Sharpe revisits an article by C.V. Wedgwood, first published in History Today in 1960, that looks at the diplomatic mission made by the artist Peter Paul Rubens to the court of Charles I. Read the original article here.

Richard Cavendish remembers the execution of a notorious murderer on November 23rd, 1910.

When Penguin Books was acquitted of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a door was kicked open to the social revolution of the 1960s. Geoffrey Robertson discusses the impact of the trial, a defining moment in modern legal history.

Amanda Vickery’s new series on the 18th-century home is part of an enlightened new strategy from the BBC, writes Paul Lay.

A century after the execution of Dr Crippen for the murder of his wife, Fraser Joyce argues that, in cases hingeing on identification, histories of forensic medicine need to consider the roles played by the public as well as by experts.

Britain's connections with Chile date from her War of Independence, and were powerfully re-inforced by a Victorian company-promoter in the City of London.

Peter Donaldson examines how the British people reacted to the various stages of the South African war of 1899-1902.