History Today, Vol. 76 #6

Bringing serious history to a wide audience since 1951. Published monthly, the magazine asks the world’s leading scholars to write informatively and engagingly on all periods, regions, and themes of history.

This is the June 2026 issue of the magazine launched by Winston Churchill in 1951 and initially criticised for its silver-spoon nature, now independently run and praised for its accessibility to in-depth global history. The edition leads with a cover feature on gambling on ‘papal conclaves’—the covert process in which a new pope is elected—a lucrative, albeit risky, tradition Nicholas Baker traces back to Renaissance Italy. Elsewhere, Paul Cartledge investigates the elusive personal history of Athenian statesman Pericles and S.R. Ashton asks ‘Who killed Aung San?’, in a feature delving into the unsolved 1947 assassination of the soon-to-be Burmese Prime Minister.