Caught between the antagonistic states of India and Pakistan, Kashmir is stuck in geopolitical limbo. Its location – and its ...

Chevaliere d’Eon or Chevalier d’Eon? An 18th-century legal dispute between two French spies unravelled into a public battle ...

Prague, under the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, became the centre of the Renaissance world, where cultures mixed and learning ...

A new book for the new year is an old British custom, but an old book can be even better.

‘Marley was dead: to begin with.’ It is perhaps the finest opening to a ghost story. But where did A Christmas Carol begin for Charles Dickens? The answer seems to be a report from the Children’s ...

On 10 December 1948, after months of negotiation led by Eleanor Roosevelt, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ...

So when Raúl Castro called for an end to the embargo based on economic and humanitarian grounds in late December, he was ...

In May 1756, an elderly governess died in the household of the Duke and Duchess of Portland, and was quickly and quietly buried in the churchyard of St Margaret’s, Westminster. Elizabeth Elstob left ...

The remarkable fall of absinthe: from 19th-century ‘Green Fairy’ to scourge of society.

Nile Green is Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA and author of Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah (W.W. Norton) In the mid-1500s, the ...

As convicts celebrated Queen Victoria’s birthday on remote Norfolk Island, debates raged over the purpose of punishment and ...

If you haven’t yet read the History Today Books of the Year Part 1, you can find it here. But this year has also been a time of small miracles. We were so glad to welcome a new generation raising ...