History

Anything to do with History

Priscilla @Priscilla - about 2 months ago

‘A Great Disorder’ by Richard Slotkin review

In 1938 the American literary critic Howard Mumford Jones published an article in The Atlantic titled ‘Patriotism – but How?’ As Europe teetered on the brink of war, Jones observed how fascist dictators were skilfully manipulating their nation’s myths to rally their popul...continued

5 minutes read

Dayton @Dayton - almost 4 years ago

The Story of Peru’s Cloud Warriors

Recent archaeological discoveries have shed new light on the history of Peru’s Chachapoya people. Until the 1990s most of what we knew about this pre-Columbian culture – referred to as the ‘Warriors of the Clouds’ by the Inca – was based on third-hand stories from unreli...continued

6 minutes read

Giovanni @Giovanni - 24 days ago

Doc Holliday: The Perennial Sidekick

For most of his adult life, the Old West gambler and gunslinger John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday (1851-87) had a reputation for violence. When he died of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis on 8 November 1887, aged 36, he was popularly reported as having killed anywhere between eight...continued

6 minutes read

Ryleigh @Ryleigh - 3 months ago

‘The Lost Queen’ by Sophie Shorland review

Charles II’s Restoration court has long been associated with hedonism and frivolity. Lurking in the shadows – at least in history books – was his long-suffering wife, Catherine of Braganza, often remembered (if remembered) for being forced to put up with her husband’s man...continued

5 minutes read

Giovanni @Giovanni - 2 months ago

‘Catherine de’ Medici’ by Mary Hollingsworth review

In early 1579 the 25-year-old Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre and future king of France, was in talks with a seasoned negotiator. It was neither a government minister nor a monarch, but the French king’s mother and Navarre’s own mother-in-law: Catherine de’ Medici. A do...continued

6 minutes read

Immanuel @Immanuel - almost 4 years ago

Illuminating Conspiracy | History Today

New Haven, Connecticut, 4 July 1798. The President of Yale, Timothy Dwight, announces the name of an apocalyptic and conspiratorial threat facing America. Referencing the Book of Revelation, he declared that the end was close, the Antichrist was abroad in the land and ag...continued

6 minutes read

Leda @Leda - over 2 years ago

An Irish Cuba? | History Today

Members of the Official IRA manning a barricade, the Bogside, Derry, April 1972. Getty Images.In the early 1970s, as paramilitary and state violence escalated in Northern Ireland, British and American diplomats feared that the Soviet Union might take advantage of the cris...continued

1 minute read

Marie @Marie - 9 days ago

‘Who Really Wrote the Bible’ by William M. Schniedewind review

As sure as chickens come from eggs, books have authors. Knowing the author’s identity gives a book authority; that’s how we know it’s authentic. No wonder that so many people have asked the question in this book’s title. The traditional answer – it was God, obviously – ma...continued

6 minutes read

Ericka @Ericka - 3 months ago

‘The Tame and the Wild’ by Marcy Norton review

Sometime in 1543 on the island of Hispaniola, a group of Spanish soldiers searching for runaway slaves came across three seemingly feral pigs in the wilderness. The Spanish slaughtered them without a thought. But then they met an Indigenous man. He was distraught. He had ...continued

6 minutes read

Patrick @Patrick - 5 months ago

‘Broken Archangel’ by Roland Philipps review

In 1937 W.B. Yeats wrote that: ‘The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.’ Just under eight decades later, as the country marked the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016, it seemed as though Ireland had finally welcomed Casement’s ghost inside and invited him ...continued

5 minutes read

Ezequiel @Ezequiel - 8 months ago

‘Impossible Monsters’ by Michael Taylor review

Darwin once speculated that the first spark of life had originated long ago, ‘perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind’. According to his dark Malthusian vision, the natural world resembled ‘one great slaughter-house, one universal scene ...continued

5 minutes read

Cameron @Cameron - 10 months ago

‘American Journey’ by Wes Davis review

In 1918 the American industrialist Henry Ford undertook an auto-camping road trip in the Great Smoky Mountains at the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. The grand culmination of various shorter trips exploring rural America, his companions – as on the previous s...continued

5 minutes read

Kari @Kari - 9 months ago

‘Reading It Wrong’ by Abigail Williams review

In a radio sketch from John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, a secondary-school teacher diplomatically attempts to negotiate the dubious interpretations of Macbeth offered by his students: ‘That’s an interesting reading …That’s a really interesting answer’ – and, at the su...continued

5 minutes read

Leda @Leda - 9 months ago

Reading It Wrong by Abigail Williams review

5 minutes read

Meggie @Meggie - 2 months ago

‘Crimean Quagmire’ by Gregory Carleton review

The history of the Crimean War, at least from the British point of view, has been written many times, with full emphasis on the scandalous waste of life in futile cavalry charges against cannon, in military hospitals that ensured the death of more than half their patients...continued

6 minutes read

Maureen @Maureen - almost 4 years ago

The Battle of St Louis

Louis statue, St. Louis, Missouri. Bill Grant/Alamy.Protesters gathered in June 2020 at the foot of the monumental equestrian statue of Louis IX of France that stands in front of the Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. Crossing out the word ‘Saint’, they scrawled ‘persecut...continued

1 minute read

Giovanni @Giovanni - 7 months ago

‘Bluestockings’ by Susannah Gibson review

The problem with 18th-century women, for the feminist public historian, is that they just won’t fit the narrative. We all know about the Suffragettes, so the thinking goes, and we are fairly sure that their forerunner Mary Wollstonecraft can be called a proto-feminist. Su...continued

5 minutes read

Cynthia @Cynthia - about 1 month ago

What Makes Good Historical Fiction?

Helen Cam (1885-1968), the first woman to be elected to a chair at Harvard, was a formidable English medievalist. Unusually for a legal historian, she had a keen eye for the human dramas not entirely concealed behind the formulae of legal records – for instance, in Year B...continued

6 minutes read

Americo @Americo - 4 months ago

‘Massacre in the Clouds’ by Kim A. Wagner review

At the turn of the 20th century, like so many otherwise clever men of his class, the English explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor succumbed to the siren of race science. Fancying himself as something of a craniometrist, he pronounced the Muslim Moros of the Philippines mor...continued

6 minutes read

Giovanni @Giovanni - 6 months ago

‘Age of Wolf and Wind’ by Davide Zori review

The Viking Age was characterised above all by movement. The geographical range of Viking voyages was vast, and those adventurous journeys are a large part of the fascination and the challenge of studying the Vikings. To follow Viking warriors and settlers on their voyages...continued

5 minutes read

Adelia @Adelia - 9 months ago

‘Rites of Passage’ by Judith Flanders review

Alfred, Lord Tennyson died a poet’s death. His son Hallam wrote that, after listening to a prayer taken from his own verses, he lay in bed, a ‘figure of breathing marble, flooded and bathed in the light of the full moon streaming through his oriel window’, clasping a volu...continued

6 minutes read

Bart @Bart - 8 months ago

In Defence of Boring Books

In December, the press – this magazine included – was full of recommendations of the best history books published during the preceding year. Simultaneously, I was asking candidates for undergraduate admission what was the most interesting history book they had read, and w...continued

6 minutes read

Alexzander @Alexzander - 29 days ago

‘The Writers’ Castle’ by Uwe Neumahr review

In late 1945 and 1946 reporters from around the world were accommodated at a peculiar-looking castle in the Franconian town of Stein. It was an appropriate setting. The castle belonged to a dynasty of pencil makers, the Faber-Castells. Their pencil sets are still made tod...continued

6 minutes read

Americo @Americo - 10 months ago

Arguing with the Dead | History Today

The dominating feature of Committee Room 10 in the Houses of Parliament is an enormous painting of King Alfred, by George Frederick Watts. Alfred, striking a heroic pose, is, in the words of the caption: ‘inciting the Saxons to resist the landing of the Danes’. Beneath th...continued

6 minutes read

Mariano @Mariano - 3 months ago

‘A Revolutionary Friendship’ by Francis D. Cogliano review

One cannot imagine the founding of the United States without George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The first was a leader who commanded the Continental Army through hardship and a series of defeats to ultimate triumph in the American War of Independence. The other was a...continued

5 minutes read