Interwar period

Julian Piggott shows how, with the help of a puppet state on the Rhine, France between 1919 and 1923 attempted to solve the perpetual problem of her eastern frontier.

Elizabeth Wiskemann recounts the story of one of Europe’s richest and most hotly-disputed industrial territories

The story of penicillin is well known, as are those Nobel Prize winners who were honoured for their part in its discovery. But one man’s contribution has been overlooked. Malcolm Murfett sets the record straight on the biochemist Norman G. Heatley.

Roger Hudson examines a photograph from 1920 taken on the eve of a profound split on the French Left.

Japan flexed its muscles and launched a full-scale invasion of China following an incident on July 7th, 1937.

Hugh Purcell tells how Kitty Bowler, a young American, captured the heart of Tom Wintringham, the 'English Captain' at Jarama.

The Treaty of Versailles, negotiated by the fractious Allies in the wake of the First World War, did not crush Germany, nor did it bring her back into the family of nations. Antony Lentin examines a tortuous process that sowed the seeds of further conflict.

A class confrontation at the Epsom Derby of 1920.

Anne Sebba revisits Michael Bloch’s article, first published in History Today in 1979, on the historian Philip Guedalla’s enthusiastic but misguided support for his friend, Edward VIII.

The idea that the German foreign office during the Nazi period was a stronghold of traditional, aristocratic values is no longer tenable according to recent research, as Markus Bauer reports.