History Today

Churchill’s four-year quest to sink Hitler’s capital ship Tirpitz saw Allied airmen and sailors run risks that would be hard to justify today, says Patrick Bishop.

One of Britain’s finest Renaissance scholars and a ground-breaking study of the night in Early Modern Europe were among the winners­ at our annual celebration of excellence in history.

Albert Speer’s plan to transform Berlin into the capital of a 1,000-year Reich would have created a vast monument to misanthropy, as Roger Moorhouse explains.

A selection of readers' correspondence with the editor, Paul Lay.

How did a quintessential German scholar become an anglicised architectural pundit, broadcaster and national treasure?

The historical debate over the United Kingdom has been led by those who wish to bring the Union to an end. David Torrance believes the public deserves a more balanced discussion.

Jeremy Paxman's book on Britain's imperial story is an idiosyncratic, droll but ultimately useful introduction to the subject.

Kate Retford explains how the artist Johan Zoffany found ways to promote a fresh image of royalty that endeared him to George III and Queen Charlotte – a relationship he subsequently destroyed.

Global history has become a vigorous field in recent years, examining all parts of the empires of Europe and Asia and moving beyond the confines of ‘top-down’ diplomatic history, as Peter Mandler explains.

Two new books show that 16th-century history is about more than Henry VIII.

Guibert of Nogent was a flawed abbot in northern France, who found it difficult to adapt to the changes wrought by the 12th-century Renaissance. Yet his newly translated writings are among the first works in the West to examine man’s inner life, says Charles Freeman.

Barack Obama’s admiration for the progressive Republicanism of Theodore Roosevelt ignores the true nature of both early 20th-century America and the president who embodied it, argues Tim Stanley.

Intelligence is the hidden hand of history, as three new books demonstrate.