History, by looking clearly at the past, can help to prepare for the future. This was proposed by the Greek historian Thucydides and expanded in the Renaissance by Machiavelli, whose analysis of power structures can be seen to apply again and again, argues Michael Arnheim, making history relevant “for all time”. Thucydides (c460 – c400 […]
Historia interviews, 2021 Crown Awards shortlists: Linda Colley
Historian Linda Colley is the fifth interviewee in Historia’s 2021 HWA Crown Awards series. Her latest book, The Gun, the Ship & the Pen, was shortlisted for the Non-fiction Crown Award. Subtitled Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World, it begins in Corsica in 1755 and moves through every continent, showing how constitutions […]
The Battle That Changed Britain
On 26 February, 1815, Napoleon, exiled after his defeat by the Allied powers, took ship from Elba. His flotilla of half-a-dozen small vessels was led by the 300-ton 16-gun Inconstant, painted to resemble an English ship. He slipped away while his British jailer, Col Sir Neil Campbell had taken a few days leave to socialise […]