History
Anything to do with History
Moises
@Moises -
about 2 years ago
No More Windfalls | History Today
Nelson Mandela, 1961. Bridgeman Images.Writing a history of South Africa is no simple task. As South Africans will tell you, it is a country with 11 official languages and with these come 11 different histories. Thula Simpson’s History of South Africa manages to avoid som...continued
5 minutes read
Joe
@Joe -
about 5 years ago
Rivers of Silver, Cities of Gold
When Elizabeth Fulhame embarked upon a series of experiments exploring the colouring of textiles, she began a project that would lead her to invent the process of photoreduction, introduce the concept of catalysis and lay the foundations for photography. That all this wou...continued
5 minutes read
Gregoria
@Gregoria -
over 1 year ago
Continental Shame | History Today
A woman with children at Auschwitz II in May or June 1944. Part of the Auschwitz Album. Wiki Commons. German Federal Archives.One might wonder why we need another book on the Holocaust. As Dan Stone points out, ‘the historiography of the Holocaust has been unimaginably la...continued
5 minutes read
Elian
@Elian -
over 2 years ago
Dire Straits | History Today
Maris Pacifici by Abraham Ortelius, published 1589. Helmink Antique Maps/Wiki Commons.Among the many, and possibly apocryphal, ‘student bloopers’ that have amused readers over the decades – think of the Greeks with their ‘Ironic’ columns, or Martin Luther nailed to the ch...continued
5 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
over 2 years ago
Moscow’s Divide and Rule | History Today
A Red Army tank in Rakov during the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, 1939 © akg-images/Universal Images.The overwhelming support for Ukrainian refugees in Poland suggests that the two nations have overcome decades of mutual hatred which had allowed Russia to divide and ...continued
5 minutes read
Clarissa
@Clarissa -
11 months ago
London’s Pig-Faced Urban Legend | History Today
Her name was Tannakin Skinker. Or perhaps Miss Atkinson. Often, she had no name at all. But Londoners all agreed on one thing: somewhere in the city, a rich gentlewoman with the face of a sow was searching for a husband.One of the earliest sources to describe the pig-face...continued
5 minutes read
Alexandro
@Alexandro -
over 1 year ago
The Wing of Friendship | History Today
Charles Dickens with family and friends on the porch of Gad’s Hill. Georgina Hogarth is on the bottom right, c.1865. Bridgeman Images.Georgina Hogarth was one of the most important women in Charles Dickens’ life. He called her his ‘best and truest friend’ and said that sh...continued
5 minutes read
Joe
@Joe -
about 2 years ago
Liar Liar | History Today
Titus Oates in the pillory, 1685. Bridgeman Images.Titus Oates was a nasty piece of work. He was venal, grasping and corrupt: a bully, a coward and a grifter. He was a serial failure: dismissed from teaching after falsely accusing his schoolmaster of buggery; dismissed fr...continued
5 minutes read
Moises
@Moises -
almost 2 years ago
Hotel Days | History Today
Some of the participants of the Cairo Conference, photographed in March 1921. Wiki Commons.As a historian who is also a consummate consumer of thrift-shop clothes, I cannot resist identifying a lurking similarity that brings the two activities together; keep wearing your ...continued
5 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
2 months ago
Free French Bombers Over France
During the Second World War the Allies waged a bombing campaign over occupied France that cost the lives of more than 57,000 civilians. As the raids intensified in 1944 they provoked a fierce backlash from the French population. Among the bombers, however, were French squ...continued
5 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
almost 2 years ago
Death from Above | History Today
The fumigation of Westminster Hall, 1971 © Hulton Deutsch/ Contributor via Getting images. Corbis Historical Collection.In the late summer of 1917, as a weary and grieving Britain braced itself for a fourth year of the First World War, a battle against a millions-strong a...continued
5 minutes read
Pablo
@Pablo -
11 months ago
Queen Victoria’s Stalker | History Today
In autumn 1837 Captain Jonathan Childe, an officer in the 12th Lancers, became convinced that the young Queen Victoria had become romantically attached to him. That a handsome, well-born man might have caught the queen’s eye was not impossible. She was very young, of an a...continued
5 minutes read
Monserrat
@Monserrat -
almost 5 years ago
Here Be Monsters | History Today
Anglo-Saxon literature, in both Latin and Old English, chiefly preserves the beliefs and learning of the cultural elite. We have comparatively little knowledge of how the illiterate majority who worked the land interpreted the world around them. However, an often-overlook...continued
5 minutes read
Meggie
@Meggie -
over 3 years ago
The Shocking Truth | History Today
Writing in the tenth century, the Italian bishop and diplomat Liudprand of Cremona was horrified by the Byzantine imperial court at Constantinople. Liudprand sneered that the Emperor Nikephoros II dressed and acted more like a woman than a man and jeered that he did not d...continued
5 minutes read
Rowan
@Rowan -
over 4 years ago
Fallen Idols | History Today
In 1971, excavation of a well in the Athenian Agora produced two pieces of a large, bronze statue of a mounted warrior – a leg and a sheathed sword. Pottery found in the well dated their deposition to around 200 BC, the year of a dramatic episode of Athenian history. Enga...continued
5 minutes read
Jaydon
@Jaydon -
about 4 years ago
City and Centre | History Today
The mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna have featured on the covers of books and have inspired jewellery, perfume, fashion and theatre. Karl Lagerfeld based his 2011 collection for Chanel on Theodora; her very name ...continued
5 minutes read
Torey
@Torey -
almost 3 years ago
Invisible Hands | History Today
‘Children’s Christmas Dinner At Sea’, illustration by G. Durand from The Graphic, 1889.Caroline Pereira was a frequent business traveller. For a woman and a low-status ‘native’, this was unusual. Pereira was an ayah. As a nanny and maid for British families coming ‘home’ ...continued
5 minutes read
Gregoria
@Gregoria -
over 5 years ago
Nothing to fear but Russia itself
Mark Smith has written a fluent meditation on Russian history, a gallant attempt to reason with those who believe that Russia is condemned to an endless cycle of failed reform and resurgent authoritarianism because Russians have despotism and imperialism ‘in their genes’....continued
5 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
about 5 years ago
Wellington’s Spy Network | History Today
There was a saying at the old army staff college in Camberley: amateurs talk of tactics, professionals talk of logistics. Not that it made any difference: ‘proper’ officers continued to talk about tactics, leaving logistics to those in the transport and ordnance corps. It...continued
5 minutes read
Delia
@Delia -
about 5 years ago
Good Time Charlie | History Today
This is a terrific book – but that statement needs context. Charlemagne does not lack biographers. Jinty Nelson in an early footnote lists ten, just in the last 20 years. Why, and why add another? As to the first of these questions: Charlemagne was, as Nelson says on her ...continued
6 minutes read
Ariel
@Ariel -
11 months ago
Victorian Romantic Rituals and Charms
The setting is Christmas Eve, after a rollicking holiday party in North Yorkshire. While the rest of the family retires, the young woman of the house sets to work. She pulls a single mistletoe berry and leaf from the pocket where it has been stowed since her beloved kisse...continued
5 minutes read
Abbie
@Abbie -
over 4 years ago
Museum or Mosque? | History Today
Mehmet the Conqueror converted the cathedral of Hagia Sophia to a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was a symbolic move. The conversion involved minimal physical transformation and even the name remained the same: Ayasofya Camii. Since its constructi...continued
5 minutes read
Anderson
@Anderson -
almost 5 years ago
Stauffenberg: Portrait of a Plotter
We know too little about the lives of saints. If we knew more, they probably wouldn’t be saints. We know that St Augustine was a happy sinner, once, and that he repented; but we don’t know what the Virgin Mary was like when she had a headache; maybe, as she was the Virgin...continued
6 minutes read
Sandrine
@Sandrine -
about 2 years ago
Filling the Gaps | History Today
17th-century manicule and notes in the margin of translations of Aristotle. Courtesy of the Penn Library.Writing in a book is a divisive action in the modern day. The degree of severity of this potential offence often depends on the nature of the book being marked and th...continued
5 minutes read
Elliott
@Elliott -
over 1 year ago
Look and Learn | History Today
Detail from the ‘Henry Unton Memorial Portrait’, unknown artist, c.1596. © National Portrait GalleryArt reveals the past – if you know how to look. Not just through the record of a lost landscape, or the personality inherent in a portrait, but in its structure, ingredient...continued
5 minutes read