Rhys Griffiths

History Today was first published 75 years ago this month to make sense of a world undergoing ‘bewilderingly swift’ change. Announcements of History Today’s launch. The January 2026 issue marks the 75th anniversary of History Today’s first publication in January 1951.

History Today was first published 75 years ago this month to make sense of a world undergoing ‘bewilderingly swift’ change. The January 2026 issue marks the 75th anniversary of History Today’s first publication in January 1951.

When Indonesia’s former president Suharto died aged 86 in 2008, the nation began a week of mourning and conflicted reflection. It was, wrote the Jakarta Post, the end of a ‘remarkable life’; it was also, it hoped, the end of autocratic presidencies. Foreign obituaries were less measured: ‘Dictator brought order and bloodshed’, said the New York Times. The contours of Indonesia’s independent history might broadly be told as a tale of a revolution, two presidencies, and a reformation.