On 27 September 1130, a Norman usurper gained a crown from a desperate pope and the Kingdom of Sicily was born.

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ...

The seventh-century prince Mahendravarman Pallava and his cousin Vajrabodhi, the Indian tantric Buddhist answer to Merlin. Hindi, Urdu, French, Italian and a little Persian and Arabic. I am ashamed to ...

The Medieval World is a carefully curated, comprehensive selection of the best History Today articles on one of history’s most captivating periods. This expanded special publication focuses on four ...

In listening to the war’s loudest voices, Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare by Gregory Carleton drowns out the diversity of opinion. Memoirs by British and Russian ...

Eight years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, a choir of 11 African American singers, almost all of whom had been born into bondage, arrived in London. Hoping to raise money for a ...

On 27 October 1924 the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic came into being as part of the Soviet Union, four years after a group of Muslim modernisers had formed an unholy alliance with a cohort of ...

If one is looking for a single definitive cause for Europe’s collective decision to fight in 1914, the only certainty is disappointment. Yet the ready availability of sources and, until recently, ...

A rather unusual petition from October 1716 is tucked away in the pope’s diocesan archives in the basilica of San Giovanni in Rome: Antonio Piervenanzi, parish priest of San Benedetto in Piscinola, ...