History
Anything to do with History
Alan
@Alan -
over 5 years ago
The Lost Voice of Notre-Dame
On an August evening a century ago, Marcel Dupré lifted his hands from the keyboard of the Grande Orgue of Notre-Dame de Paris at the end of his final improvisation for vespers that evening. At the moment that his dazzling toccata came to an end, the building continued to...continued
5 minutes read
Grayce
@Grayce -
over 2 years ago
Little White Lies | History Today
Alcibiades receiving the lessons of Socrates, by François-André Vincent c. 1776. Fabre museum.Is it ever right to deceive on purpose? In the West’s philosophical tradition, the answer, shaped by early and medieval Christian thinkers for whom lying was incompatible with a ...continued
5 minutes read
Alvah
@Alvah -
over 4 years ago
A Modern Martyr | History Today
Seventy-five years ago, with the Allied victory in Europe merely a month away, a German pastor was led to the scaffold. As far back as February 1933, when many observers saw little threat in the new chancellor, he was one of the earliest to denounce Hitler. Off and on for...continued
5 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
about 5 years ago
Building the Roman Republic | History Today
Pope Francis’ dispute with Italy’s outgoing Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, is a reminder that in Italy relations between Church and State can be fraught. Pitching the Christian message of charity towards the destitute in opposition to Salvini’s ‘crusade’ against the p...continued
5 minutes read
Geovany
@Geovany -
almost 2 years ago
Jane Austen and the King of Skiffle
Lonnie Donegan, 1960 © Gai Terrell via Getty Images.The London Folks themselves beguile,And think they please in a capital stile;Yet let them ask as they cross the Street,Of any young Virgin they happen to meet,And I know she’ll say, from behind her Fan,That there’s none ...continued
5 minutes read
Meggie
@Meggie -
over 1 year ago
Outlaws at War | History Today
English army with banner, from the Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, late 14th century © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images.Edward I’s unconventional methods of recruiting an army for war against the French in 1294 have received a substantial a...continued
5 minutes read
Leda
@Leda -
over 1 year ago
The Death of Stalin’s Son
Yakov Dzhugashvili following his capture, on a German airfield, 1941. Alamy.Shortly after the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Allied military intelligence agents unearthed a container of top secret files in the garden of a senior German diplomat. One set of microfilme...continued
5 minutes read
Kristina
@Kristina -
over 4 years ago
The Humans Behind the Sacrifice
Everything you thought you knew about the Aztecs is wrong. Or, as Camilla Townsend more tactfully puts it at the start of her wonderful new book: ‘The Aztecs would never recognize themselves in the picture of their world that exists in the books and movies we have made.’...continued
5 minutes read
Alexzander
@Alexzander -
almost 2 years ago
Rocks of Ages | History Today
Charles Darwin, 1881 © Bridgeman Images.Charles Darwin experienced what he recalled as one of the most significant events of his five year voyage aboard HMS Beagle on 20 February 1835: his first earthquake. He was resting from specimen gathering in woods near the southern...continued
5 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
almost 5 years ago
Divided Loyalties in the Medieval World
Jo Johnson, the younger brother of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, recently blamed divided loyalties for his resignation as Cabinet minister and MP. Citing ‘unresolvable tension’ between family loyalty and the national interest, he found the time had come to qui...continued
6 minutes read
Jerrold
@Jerrold -
about 4 years ago
The Lessons of Shell Shock
Free mental health care began 100 years ago, after the First World War, when a handful of doctors and voluntary workers established clinics and hospitals that drew on the ‘talking therapies’ used to treat shell-shocked soldiers. One of the first outpatient psychotherapy u...continued
5 minutes read
Elvie
@Elvie -
almost 5 years ago
There’s Something About Marie | History Today
In August 1855, during a state visit to France, Queen Victoria was treated to a tour of Versailles in the company of Napoleon III. The visitors’ final stop was the Queen’s Hamlet, the collection of mock-rustic buildings constructed in 1783 as a retreat for Marie-Antoinett...continued
5 minutes read
Elian
@Elian -
about 2 years ago
The Prime Minister and the President
John F. Kennedy signs a proclamation declaring Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the US, 9 April 1963 © Abbie Rowe, White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.On 12 April 1961 Winston Churchill sailed into New York harbour aboard a lux...continued
5 minutes read
Jerrold
@Jerrold -
over 5 years ago
In purgatory with Dante | History Today
Those destined for an afterlife have been consigned to many different places. Christians often dispatched the damned to an eternity of suffering deep inside the earth. Jean-Paul Sartre pronounced that Hell was other people, while a recent illustrated version of The Divine...continued
5 minutes read
Bart
@Bart -
about 2 years ago
Putting Up Fences | History Today
Mr and Mrs Andrews, by Thomas Gainsborough, 1748-50. Wikimedia Commons.Enclosure in Britain was a long, slow process. Bit by bit and then all at once, swathes of the countryside were fenced off for the exclusive use of landowners. It arguably began with the Norman Conques...continued
5 minutes read
Minnie
@Minnie -
over 2 years ago
You and Whose Army? | History Today
Plan of the operations of the New Model Army, drawn in 1903. Wiki Commons.Henry Marten has the distinction of being the only member of the Long Parliament who can be identified as a republican before the outbreak of the First English Civil War in 1642. He remained true to...continued
5 minutes read
Cyril
@Cyril -
almost 5 years ago
News from Otherwhere | History Today
Though hardly so central today, anthropology had some claim in the middle of the 20th century to be a kind of ‘master key’, unlocking the secrets of humanity for large swathes of the educated public. It had achieved this status in relatively short order by, if not vanquis...continued
5 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
over 1 year ago
Pulp Fiction | History Today
Shake up: Orangina bottles, 1993. Getty ImagesIn a sleek advertisement poster designed by the French artist Bernard Villemot in 1953, an orange peel curls in the shape of a parasol against a blue background. It suggests carefree summer skies and the Mediterranean – ideali...continued
5 minutes read
Felicita
@Felicita -
about 2 years ago
Assassin’s Creed | History Today
Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, early 20th century. Library of Congress.There has been a welcome proliferation of publications marking the centenary of the Irish Civil War. This book from the Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy should be required reading on that conflic...continued
5 minutes read
Monserrat
@Monserrat -
about 5 years ago
Catholicism and its Critics | History Today
Tom Holland’s stupendous new book argues that while we might think we live in an irreligious culture, almost everything about the West is actually an inheritance from Christianity. ‘To dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a revolution is ...continued
5 minutes read
Alan
@Alan -
over 2 years ago
Burn in Hell | History Today
The burning of the Orléans heretics, by Jan Luyken, from Martyrs Mirror, 1685. Artokoloro/Alamy Stock Photo.A thousand years ago, in 1022, an extraordinary event took place in the city of Orléans in northern France. A group of about 14 people, led by two canons named Step...continued
5 minutes read
Assunta
@Assunta -
about 1 year ago
The Medieval University Experience
Carving of medieval university students on the tomb of the scholar Giovanni da Legnano, Bologna, 14th century. Sailko (CC BY 2.5).Starting university has always been a difficult time for children and parents – and the experience was no different for medieval scholars and ...continued
5 minutes read
Rex
@Rex -
over 4 years ago
Who’s the Purest of them All?
David D. Hall has devoted his career to restoring the reputation of the religious sensibilities of the first English migrants to New England. His first book, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (1972) recounted the lives...continued
5 minutes read
Devin
@Devin -
about 4 years ago
How To Get Away with Murder
In 176 BC a strange but revealing murder case came before the Roman praetor, M. Popillius Laenas. A woman, unnamed in the sources, was brought before the court on the charge of murdering her mother by bludgeoning her with a club. The woman happily confessed to the monstro...continued
5 minutes read
Jeffrey
@Jeffrey -
over 3 years ago
The Abode of Madness | History Today
The term no man’s land comes with clear connotations of war, especially trench warfare on the Western Front. Yet the concept of ‘none man’s land’, nanesmaneslande, first appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, referring to the area that is now Hyde Park in London. The phras...continued
5 minutes read