History

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

Thirty years ago this month, the August Coup that preceded the crack up of the Soviet Union played out before an astonished world. Britain's man in Moscow had a ringside seat.

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

Images of Ian Botham with his bat aloft and the pageantry of the Royal Wedding have created a popular memory of 1981 as a summer of national pride for Britain. But the reality was quite different

Looking back at one of the most notorious episodes in the Games' history, when sport and politics combined in ferocious violence

The buildings and monuments of Antwerp can still take your breath away. But in a long-ago golden age, it was the centre of Europe

Berlin journalist Annette von Broecker’s life has spanned her city's division and reunification. Sixty years ago this summer, she was on the scene as the Wall went up. She talks to JOHN KAMPFNER about those momentous moments, with photographs from a dramatic month that gripped the world.