20th-century history

Fighting every inch of the way: the Italian Campaign of 1943

30 September 2023 9:00 am

When Allied forces landed at Salerno on 9 September, they expected an easy run to Rome. But the intelligence proved dangerously faulty, as James Holland explains

The phoney mystics who fooled the West

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Many suspect mystics have exploited naive westerners in search of spiritual enlightenment over the past century, Philip Hensher discovers

A divided city: the Big Three fall out in post-war Berlin

19 June 2021 9:00 am

Adam Sisman describes the toxic atmosphere in Berlin after the end of the second world war

Yalta was a carve-up — and the Poles are understandably still bitter about it

16 November 2019 9:00 am

‘The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.’ Thucydides’ principle expresses an uncomfortable truth. The eight-day…

How on earth did North Vietnam prevail against the world’s greatest power?

20 October 2018 9:00 am

The 50th anniversary of the Vietnam war has produced an outpouring of books, along with Ken Burns’s 18-hour television spectacular,…