The Libyan pharaohs of Egypt
Aidan Dodson explores the history of the kings of Libyan ancestry who dominated Egypt during the 10th to 7th centuries BC.
politics
MHM 147 Letters – July
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
Korea: war without end
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING General The Lord Dannatt, once Chief of the General Staff, has teamed up with military historian Robert Lyman to provide a fascinating new take on the Korean War of 1950 to 1953. Their book has three…
The Story of St Petersburg 1703-1991
Infographics: Calum Henderson / Images: WIPL/Wikimedia Commons
Master and commander
In the final part of our occasional series on the rise of Britain’s imperial navy, Graham Goodlad reviews the remarkable career of Admiral George Anson.
Storming the Presidential Palace, Saigon, 1975
In this dramatic photograph – taken on 30 April 1975, 50 years ago this spring – a North Vietnamese tank is pictured at the climactic moment, as it smashes through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. The fall…
The Last Days of Budapest: spies, Nazis, rescuers, and resistance, 1940-1945
REVIEW JONATHAN EATON In reading about the Second World War, it is easy to lose sight of the brutal realities of the conflict, whether revealed through acts of unfathomable evil or deeds of immense personal courage. In The Last Days…
The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS This latest narrative by Toby Wilkinson is written in his usual engaging style, drawing on the usual Greek and Roman sources, but also some 50 archives of papyri unearthed in Egypt. The three centuries between Alexander…
Winston Churchill
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING The military historian Peter Caddick-Adams has written this witty and enjoyable political biography of Winston Churchill. Unlike the multivolume authorised biography written mostly by Sir Martin Gilbert – which contained more than three million words –…
The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS Finally! An in-depth biography of not just one, but seven Ptolemaic queens named Cleopatra – and a few more besides. There is a plethora of books focusing on the most famous of these queens, Cleopatra VII,…
Being ‘a Greek spy’ back at Butrint
I was in Greece, rolling off a ferry at Kyllini, about to visit its mighty castle, when I received the text message accusing me of being a Greek spy. Almost at once, I got an avalanche of emails from angry…
The Cleopatras – Part 3: Cleopatra III, the female king
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones continues his series on the later Ptolemaic queens
with the ambitious Cleopatra III and her murderous family rivalries.
Crown Prince Ramesses: Pharaoh-in-waiting
Peter J Brand looks at how Sety I ensured his son and heir became the most well-prepared of all Egypt’s pharaohs.
The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The history of a dangerous idea
REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK Edward J Watts, Professor of History at San Diego University, is not a fan of politicians who claim that society is rotten and only they can make it better. This claim, however, is nothing new: the…
The cruel siege of Siena
When the army of Europe’s most powerful monarch besieged the Tuscan city in 1554, it took terror and hunger to achieve what cannon and arquebus could not, as William E Welsh explains.
MHM competition: win a copy of Anthony Tucker-Jones’ ‘Churchill: Master and Commander’
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition!
Sister-Queens in the High Hellenistic Period: Kleopatra Thea and Kleopatra III (Routledge Studies in Ancient History)
Review by Sarah Griffiths There are so very few books on female Ptolemaic rulers (with the exception of Cleopatra VII) that I was excited to see a new volume dedicated to two of the lesser-known and yet immensely important Cleopatras…
The end: Vietnam, 1973
Fifty years ago this spring, the last American troops left Vietnam. Taylor Downing looks back on a conflict that ended in humiliation for the US.
Winston Churchill Quiz
Where was Churchill born on 30 November 1874?
War Classics – The Guns of August
Tuchman aims to explore how a series of political and military decisions, often based on personal factors, faulty intelligence, or naïve assumptions, gradually escalated tensions to the outbreak of war.’
Spain at war: a country divided
Chris Bambery traces the history of the Spanish Civil War and sets the scene for the conflict’s bloodiest battle.
War on Film – Casablanca
TAYLOR DOWNING reviews a classic war film.
Treason: people, power, and plot
A new exhibition at the National Archives in London traces the history of treason since it was first written into English law in 1352. Carly Hilts visited to find out more.
War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes
War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes by Elizabeth N Arkush provides a well-organised analysis of the external/environmental and internal/psychological factors that shaped pre-contact Andean warfare. More specifically, the key argument is that Andean conflict was entwined with the…
The USSR at 100
There were two revolutions in Russia in 1917. In March, tens of thousands of striking workers, peasants, and soldiers — exhausted by the privations of the First World War — took to the streets of Petrograd (St Petersburg) in protest.…
War Classic: Zola’s ‘The Debacle’
La Débâcle prefigures both the changing nature of warfare, and the ongoing struggle of France’s national identity. Within 22 years, another generation would be sacrificed defending their homeland.
Born in blood: the Irish Free State
After years of unrest and escalating violence, the Irish Free State came into being on 6 December 1922. To mark its centenary, Patrick Mercer looks at the grisly events that led to its creation.
Conquer We Must: a military history of Britain 1914-1945
REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND Strategic history may seem dry or even daunting to some, but Robin Prior has broken new ground here. Not only has he tackled a huge subject in a different way, but he has presented his material…
‘The end of the beginning’: Montgomery & El Alamein
Graham Goodlad assesses the career of Britain’s best-known and most controversial general of the Second World War.
The Restless Republic: Britain without a crown
The execution of King Charles I in January 1649 and the subsequent abolition of the monarchy turned Britain into a republic, which it would remain until the Restoration of Charles II 11 years later. Yet it is a period of…
Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921
Over a career as one of Britain’s most prolific military historians, Sir Antony Beevor has produced some of the most compelling narratives of 20th-century conflict. Perhaps most famous for Stalingrad, Beevor has subsequently published a series of well-received studies of…
The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution
REVIEW BY DAVID FLINTHAM. Created in 1645, the New Model Army was a truly formidable fighting force: in the first six years of its existence, it crushed Royalist resistance in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and brought about the execution of…
Abolitionism Quiz
How many enslaved Africans are estimated to have been forcibly transported to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries?
Roman Emperors Quiz
Augustus was the first Roman emperor. When did he come to power?
Ancient Leaders Quiz
Which Egyptian leader is reputed to have been Nefertiti's son-in-law?
Stalin’s War
This book convincingly argues that Stalin’s war began long before the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, and can really be said to have begun in the late 1920s. Initially, this was a war of suppression at home, combined…