History

The man who oversaw the breakup of the Soviet Union was an apparatchik who wanted to keep the Communist Party in power, says former head of MI6

Fast food or multicultural icon? Take a slice of European history via the intriguing tale of the doner kebab

Ten days before Hitler’s suicide, Felix Hartlaub disappeared. But his notebooks live on

A century ago, the most famous Irishman in the world was shot in mysterious circumstances

What happened when pianists from Ukraine and Russia met at a competition set up by a Texan who wowed Moscow at the height of the cold war?

One of the darkest moments in the continent’s history took place less than 30 years ago. Could history be repeated in Ukraine?

It’s impossible to understand France and Macron without understanding the General

How Stonehenge helps to explain Britain’s place in the ancient world

The building of circular structures seems to have coincided with the exchange of a nomadic lifestyle for a more settled one

Our columnist hopes that digitising Holocaust archives in a new government project will help people “never forget” the horrors of the Nazi genocide

A new exhibition reveals the secrets of a forward-thinking heiress whose taste and beliefs transcended her patriarchal age

The Allies beat a Russian blockade in 1948. Now it is incumbent on Germany to help lead a new wave of aid

Vladimir Putin, the man trained to oppose the West, has resurrected it and brought it back to a bygone era

PM Mark Rutte has apologised for atrocities in Indonesia, but some are still nostalgic for days of empire

While Putin's invasion challenges not only Ukraine's democracy but our own democratic system, we have found ourselves in a war between truth and lies

Could Ukraine become a historical hinge point for idealistic initiative when confronted by the forces of tyranny, just like the Spanish civil war in the 1930s?

As Ukraine's residents follow the call of their government and make Molotov cocktails, where did this crude weapon of war come from?

Black History is a rich and complex tapestry. In this spirit, BONNIE GREER introduces one of her ancestors, an African American slave owner

A rediscovered diary charts an abandoned baby’s journey to Trafalgar and beyond

The traditionalists who decry the vandalisation of history actually have very little real appetite for that history, says WILL SELF

Eighty years ago this month, 15 Nazis met to calmly plot the mechanics of the Final Solution – with implications that still reverberate today.

History is home to various Black Fridays. In 1910, one such day had nothing to do with bargains, and everything to do with cost.

MATT KELLY on how the West triumphed over the Soviets in a campaign fought in the aisles and check-outs.

Lily Ebert journeyed from Hungary to Auschwitz to Leipzig, and now, North London. A gold pendant her mother gave her went with her every step of the way - quite literally

The small spa resort in central France which gave its name to Marshal Petain’s pro-Nazi regime carries heavy historical baggage. As the town tries to reinvent itself once more, JOHN LICHFIELD paid it a visit.

She was an actress and a writer, but more importantly Erika Mann spent her life witnessing and fighting injustice

100 years ago today, thousands of people witnessed the R.38 airship explode in the air, fall from the sky and plummet in the Humber estuary

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on his first reading of one of the most important books of the 20th century

JAMES RODGERS was working in Russia in the summer of 1991, when the cracks in the USSR’s system suddenly broke apart.

ARTEMY TROITSKY was on the barricades in August 1991 to prevent the coup from succeeding. He says the freedoms that followed were soon squandered

With the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, Britain's then man in Moscow tells of his ringside seat as the August Coup that preceded the break-up of the Soviet Union played out before an astonished world

The uncaring tyrant of legend may actually have been a pragmatic politician betrayed and then belittled by his opponent