History Today - August 2019

THE August edition (Vol 69 issue 8) of History Today starts off pretty well, if you ignore the twerp at the front who claims "racial divisions" are the "most enduring legacy" of the American Civil War.
Articles on so-called witch marks in limestone caves in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, Graham Greene in Havana, thefts of antiquities in Renaissance Italy, military slaves in Islamic states and de Gaulle's righthand man Philippe Leclerc all held my interest.

August's History Today … promising start

But then the right-on brigade gets its turn with reams of space devoted to Peterloo (what a foreigner would think of such detailed coverage beggars belief) and to 18th-century women who did not go to university but were nevertheless scholarly. Perhaps the magazine should be renamed Social History Today.
The final straw, for me, comes at the back with 20 questions to a woman who specialises in "contemporary history," a contradiction in terms to say the least. Asked to name "which history book has had the greatest influence on you," she lists The Handmaid's Tale, The House Of The Spirits and 1984.