The Decembrist revolt of 1825 saw Russia’s nobility attempt to depose tsar Nicholas I. Dismissed as romantic idealists, they ...

How to finance old age has been a problem since the inception of Britain’s welfare state. Why is pension reform so difficult?

In exile, Hortense Mancini captivated 17th-century Europe – and king Charles II – with her beauty and charm. But her path to freedom was mired in scandal.

How can historians of Tibet – a region whose history is tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities – gain access to its recent past? Comparing newspapers from either side of the Himalayas might ...

The colony of New South Wales did not have its own parliament until 1856, but it did have a tradition of public dinners and ...

Pope Paul III did not mince his words. In the bull of excommunication promulgated on 17 December 1538, he reviled Henry VIII as a tyrant who had ‘transformed himself into a beast’. This was a king, ...

On Sunday 14th November 1501 the wedding of Prince Arthur, Henry VII's eldest son, and Princess Catherine of Aragon was celebrated splendidly in old St Paul's Cathedral. Stands had been erected in the ...

Rome welcomed and tended to the vast numbers of pilgrims who arrived in the 16th century, but its attitude to its own poor ...

Postwar state support for agriculture in the UK has been hailed a great success, but it had unexpected consequences. P rewar ...

The Maginot Line: A New History by Kevin Passmore confronts the myths surrounding the fall of France in 1940.

The ancestor of the London Gazette was launched on 16 November 1665, surviving its bitter rival to become the oldest newspaper in the English-speaking world still in print.