One of the last popes to play a major role in international affairs, Innocent XI defied Louis XIV, the Sun King, and played a decisive part in the defence of Christianity against the spread of Islam under the auspices of the Ottoman empire, as Graham Darby explains.
Michael Dunne remembers the US-backed invasion of Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Ruth Henig reassesses the importance of the League of Nations.
Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha died on 11 April 1985.
As the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton approaches, Jenifer Roberts looks at the series of 18th-century weddings which led the Portuguese royal family into dynastic crisis.
Richard Cavendish remembers King Farouk's succession to the Egyptian throne on April 28th, 1936.
Stephen Alford admires a perceptive article on Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s ally and consummate political fixer, by the distinguished Tudor historian Joel Hurstfield, first published in the 1956 volume of History Today.
Joel Hurstfield's pen portrait of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520-98) appeared in History Today in December 1956.
In the light of current events in North Africa and the Middle East, David Motadel examines the increasing frequency of popular rebellions around the world.
Jacqueline Riding examines how a 19th-century painting, created almost 150 years after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, has come to dominate the iconography of that event.
