Britain

As Britain gets used to the ban on smoking in public spaces, Virginia Berridge looks at the way attitudes to public health have changed in the last fifty years, particularly among the medical profession.

Will the new super-casinos bring about the demise of the commercial bingo hall? Carolyn Downs traces the history of the game back to the eighteenth century and finds that then – as now – it had a strong attraction for women gamblers.

Mark Bryant describes the life and works of Abu Abraham, the Observer’s first ever political cartoonist.

David Mattingly says it’s time to rethink the current orthodoxy and question whether Roman rule was good for Britain.

Christopher Phipps introduces one of the capital’s great private institutions, and invites History Today readers to visit on June 28th.

Richard Cavendish recalls May 17th, 1257.

R.S. Taylor Stoermer takes a transatlantic perspective on the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707.

John Jackson exhumes the extraordinary case of a middle-aged woman from Derby convicted of plotting to murder the Prime Minister.

During the Seven Years War, Admiral Byng was charged with 'failing to do his utmost'. He was executed on board the Monarch on March 14th, 1757.

Britain’s first Anti-Slavery Act was ineffective, says Marika Sherwood – British slave traders found ways around it to carry on their profitable activities, while British commerce flourished through the import of slave-grown cotton.