Interwar period

Hugh Purcell tells how Kitty Bowler, a young American, captured the heart of Tom Wintringham, the 'English Captain' at Jarama.

The Treaty of Versailles, negotiated by the fractious Allies in the wake of the First World War, did not crush Germany, nor did it bring her back into the family of nations. Antony Lentin examines a tortuous process that sowed the seeds of further conflict.

A class confrontation at the Epsom Derby of 1920.

Anne Sebba revisits Michael Bloch’s article, first published in History Today in 1979, on the historian Philip Guedalla’s enthusiastic but misguided support for his friend, Edward VIII.

The idea that the German foreign office during the Nazi period was a stronghold of traditional, aristocratic values is no longer tenable according to recent research, as Markus Bauer reports.

Richard Cavendish describes the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary on May 27th, 1936.

Detective stories captured the imaginations of the British middle classes in the 20th century. The fortunes of home-grown writers such as Agatha Christie reflected Britain’s social changes.

Mussolini’s colonial land grab in Abyssinia provoked a political storm in Britain. The links between fascism and imperialism were not lost on the British left nor by the empire’s black subjects.

The League of Nations has been much derided, but it laid the foundations for an international court and established bodies that the United Nations maintains today.

Juliet Gardiner explains why her new book examines a short period of the 20th century and how she attempts to achieve a panorama of experiential history that gives readers a real feel for a slice of time.