Political

Gordon Marsden revisits Henry Fairlie's prescient obituary of Aneurin Bevan, first published in History Today in October 1960.

Robin Waterfield looks at the influence of the mother of Alexander the Great in the years following her son’s death.

Robin Bayley tells how his great grandfather, a Mancunian businessman, became caught up in the tumultuous period of worker unrest that paved the way for the Mexican Revolution.

Syria was among the most unstable states in the Middle East until Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. But, asks James Gelvin, can his son, Bashar, maintain the regime’s iron rule in the face of growing dissent?

The heart of the last heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was buried on July 17th in Hungary.

Mary Queen of Scots left Calais for Scotland on August 14th, 1561, aged 18 years old.

Louis XII came to the throne in 1498 and ruled France for sixteen years. According to Howell Lloyd, he was a 'ruler in transition': images of Louis XII elevated royal power to divine status, paving the way for the ideology of absolutism to flourish in the era of the Sun King.

Though superb works of art in themselves, the wildlife paintings of Francis Barlow are full of rich metaphors that shed light on the anxieties and concerns of a Britain emerging from the horrors of civil war, says Nathan Flis.

The death of Stalin in 1953 marked a shift in the Soviet Union. Robert Hornsby discusses the underground groups that mushroomed in the aftermath and how the state responded to them.

Colonel Nasser became president of Egypt in 1956. In this article from our 1981 archive, Robert Stephens considers how he has been both acclaimed as a nationalist liberator and condemned as a warmonger. What was his influence on the history of the twentieth century?