History Today

History Today is a monthly magazine dedicated to making serious history accessible to a broad audience. Located in London, it features contributions from top scholars covering various periods, regions, and topics in history. Each article is thoughtfully edited and accompanied by illustrations, ensuring that the magazine is both enjoyable and informative for its readers.

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Execution of the Thief-Taker General

1 month ago | historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons

‘As soon as anything is missing, suspected to be stolen’, the British Journal reported wearily in February 1725, ‘the first course we steer is directly to the office of Mr Jonathan Wild.’ That office was in the Old Bailey. Wild himself was the self-styled ‘Thief-catcher General of Great Britain’. And it was true: he delivered dozens of criminals to justice. The reason for that was simple: Wild had likely also organised the theft.
The Otsu Incident

1 month ago | historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons

For one terrifying moment it seemed that history was repeating itself. In early 1881 the Russian tsar Alexander II had been assassinated. And now, a decade later on 11 May 1891, an assassin brought a sabre down on his grandson Nicholas’ bowler-hatted head. The 22-year-old tsarevich was in Japan on a tour of the East. He had already seen Sri Lanka, Singapore, and China.
Stalin’s Man in Belgrade

2 months ago | historytoday.com | Shaun Walker

On the morning of 27 April 1953 Yugoslavia’s communist leader Josip Broz Tito received the Costa Rican diplomat Teodoro Castro in a simply furnished room at the White Palace in Belgrade. Tito had split with Stalin and the Soviet Union in 1948, and the meeting with Castro was one more small step in a plan to forge new alliances across the globe and cement Yugoslavia’s status as a communist power independent from Moscow.
‘The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism’ by Martyn Percy review

2 months ago | historytoday.com | Michael Ledger-Lomas

The morning after Edward VII was crowned King of Great Britain and Emperor of India in Westminster Abbey, Canon Welldon treated the colonial troops who had attended the ceremony to a valedictory sermon. An Old Etonian and a former headmaster of Harrow who had until recently been bishop of Calcutta, Welldon was the embodiment of upper-class and imperial purpose.
‘Vietdamned’ by Clive Webb review

Mar 24, 2025 | historytoday.com | Yuan Yi Zhu

In 1966 and 1967 a group of left-wing intellectuals and radical activists, recruited by the nonagenarian philosopher Bertrand Russell, constituted themselves into a self-proclaimed ‘tribunal’ to try the United States of America for its conduct in Vietnam. After holding hearings in Sweden and in Denmark, they convicted the US of waging an illegal war of aggression against Vietnam, of war crimes and, most sensationally, of ‘genocide against the people of Vietnam’. Then, nothing much happened.
The Affair of the Sausages

Mar 3, 2025 | historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons

The Reformation in Switzerland began quietly. On the evening of 9 March 1522, the first Sunday in Lent, what one historian has called ‘the ostentatious eating of sausages’ took place in the parlour of Zurich printer Christoph Froschauer. It was a provocative act, in breach of church rules on fasting. Twelve people were present. Some later became Anabaptists; one, a bootmaker named Hottinger, would be beheaded in Baden two years later for challenging the Mass.
Forgeries, Fakes, and Phantom Time

Jan 28, 2025 | historytoday.com | Alexander Lee

Except for aliens, there are more conspiracy theories about history than anything else. There are people who believe that Shakespeare’s plays were really by the Earl of Oxford, that JFK was assassinated by the Illuminati, that the Merovingians were descended from Christ. But none of these come close to the weirdness that Jean Hardouin dreamed up.
‘Man-Devil’ by John J. Callanan review

Jan 22, 2025 | historytoday.com | Joseph Hone

Imagine a beehive. The inhabitants are nasty little things: venal, selfish, and corrupt; greedily buzzing around guzzling honey and flaunting their stripes. Even so, the hive prospers. Then, one day, by a sudden act of God, the bees clean up their act. They become virtuous. And before they know it, the hive is in free-fall. Without vanity, there is no need for fashionable clothing. Without pride or luxury, the construction industry falls apart.
The Rebecca Riots: Why Did Wales Rise Up?

Jan 8, 2025 | historytoday.com | Rhian E. Jones

A sustained campaign of attacks blazed across the Welsh counties of Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, and Pembrokeshire from 1839. Tenant-farmers and labourers, infuriated by increased charges on road travel that made their working lives and finances even more burdensome, took matters into their own hands by destroying tollhouses, gates, and bars in what became known as the Rebecca riots.
Archdruid William Price Challenges Funerary Rites

Jan 1, 2025 | historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons

On the evening of 13 January 1884, the congregation of Llantrisant were making their way home from church when they saw flames climbing in the darkness from a nearby hilltop. Villagers raced there to find 83-year-old archdruid Dr William Price, clad in a white robe, chanting medieval Welsh over a burning petrol barrel. But what was that other smell amid the fumes? A policeman kicked the barrel over. Out tumbled the charring body of a five-month-old boy.