Britain

All Singing, All Dancing

Sexually explicit jigs were a major part of the attraction of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration stage, as Lucie Skeaping explains. 

The Battle of Britain: The Many and the Few

Richard Overy looks behind the myth of a vulnerable island defended by a small band of fighter pilots to give due credit to the courage of the redoubtable civilian population.

Pietro Pazzi: The Making of an Englishman

At a time of widespread concern about the patriotism of 'economic migrants' and political refugees, Peter Barber tells the story of one 19th-century immigrant whose affection for Britain grew as political crisis severed his attachment to home.

Changing Ends: The History of Cricket

Mike Marqusee revisits S.M. Toyne’s article, The Early History of Cricket, on the origins and growth of the game, first published in History Today in June 1955.

Kim Philby: Living a Lie

Almost everything written about and by Kim Philby is wrong, claims Boris Volodarsky. The Soviet spy and his KGB masters sought to exaggerate his successes against the West, beginning with the fictions that surround Philby’s first mission during the Spanish Civil War.

Chatham House and the Lessons of History

The Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House, celebrates its 90th birthday this summer. Roger Morgan looks at the organisation’s original aims and its pioneering role in the study of contemporary history. 

History in Schools: A Tsar is Born

Following an invitation to help advise the government on the school history curriculum, what can a high-profile ‘telly don’ like Niall Ferguson bring to the classroom? Seán Lang wonders.

The Great Exhibition: Commerce & Christianity

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was not only a celebration of Victorian Britain’s scientific and economic pre-eminence but also a hymn to the religion that underpinned it, argues Geoffrey Cantor.