History Today

A bloody massacre in Stockholm’s city square set Sweden on a course for independence under the leadership of Gustav I Vasa. A master of the ethos of 16th-century monarchy, his legacy is complicated.

How do dissent and disagreement tip over into civil war? And is peace, when it comes, ever absolute?

US law requires a stay of execution for pregnant women on death row. In practice, however, this once only applied to mothers considered ‘good enough’.

A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic by Francis D. Cogliano explores a relationship more complex than that of comrades turned rivals.

The Edwardian era is often seen as a peaceful interlude between the violence of Victorian expansion and the First World War. In reality, Edward’s reign bore witness to dozens of conflicts across the Empire.

In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492, Marcy Norton shows through Indigenous American practices and beliefs that colonisation was a catastrophe for the natural world.

Rumours about the sexual proclivities of King William III began to spread as soon as he took the English throne. What went on behind the closed doors of the royal court had implications for the nation.

‘What is the most common misconception about my field? That scholars who study elite white men are more objective.’

The devastation and chaos inflicted on London by wartime bombing raids provided an opportunity for murderers to conceal their crimes.

The loss of his treasure on the road to war was said to have brought about King John’s demise. What happened to it?