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Battle of Culloden. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

General prehistory

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Scottish history

12 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Wars of the Roses

Peaceful war: was the 19th century a time of relative peace?

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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, 1934. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)

Nietzsche’s dangerous ideas

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In the news

Today’s events in historical context…

A scene from 'They Shall Not Grow Old', showing how film director Peter Jackson digitally remastered footage of the First World War. (Photo courtesy of THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD/ WingNut Films/ Peter Jackson. Original black and white film © IWM)

First World War

“There was no feeling sorry for themselves”: Director Peter Jackson on the soldiers of the First World War

Suez-Crisis-2-dcbe422

How significant was the Suez Crisis?

British former field marshal Douglas Haig, inspects poppies before Armistice Day, October 1922. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

First World War

Remembering the First World War: blood, poppies and poetry

Engraving of frost fair on the frozen Thames, 1897. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

6 of the most catastrophic weather events in British history

Armistice Day 2018

Ae we mark the centenary of the end of the First World War…

The First World War promoted advances in medicine, and in sectors such as aviation, that had not just military but also peacetime benefits, says David Stevenson. Here Captain Francis Derwent Wood treats the face of a patient, creating a mask which matches as closely as possible to the man's faces before he was injured, c1916. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ IWM via Getty Images)

First World War

The First World War: what was it good for?

Dan Snow on shell shock.

First World War

Dan Snow on shell shock

London crowds celebrating the signing of the armistice at the end of the First World War. "The armistice brought church services and tears, but it was a day of joy, spontaneity, noise and fun," says Guy Cuthbertson. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

First World War

5 things you need to know about Armistice Day

British troops go over the top of the trenches during the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The Somme was one of the bloodiest clashes of the First World War, causing more than one million casualties over five months. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

The First World War: Was it worth it?

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11th November 1918: An army lorry in a London street on Armistice Day, carrying jubilant passengers. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

First World War

11 November 1918: The day the world turned upside down

British war correspondents and press officers, western front, c1917. From the Great War Vol .10 published in 1918 FR left to right: Percival Phillips; Colonel Hutton Wilson; Beach Thomas; Captain Stewart. Standing: Basil Clark; Perry Robinson; Percival Gibbon. (Photo by Alamy)

First World War

Censorship in the trenches: why didn’t journalists report the horrors of the First World War?

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The Library

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A portrait of Catherine Howard. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Catherine Howard: The death of innocence

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Entrance to Lincoln Castle. (Dreamstime)

Lincoln: the battle that gave birth to medieval England

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A photograph of the battle of Moscow, 1942, first printed in Signal, a magazine published by the German Third Reich from 1940 to 1945. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Second World War

Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s greatest mistake

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Gustave Doré’s famous engraving

Was Victorian life really so grim?

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More from The Library

The Second World War

Everything you need to know...

German women carrying children believed to be part of the Lebensborn programme, which aimed to raise the birth rate of blonde-haired, blue-eyed ‘Aryan’ children through interbreeding. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Second World War

The woman who gave birth for Hitler

Hawker Hurricane in flight, Battle of Britain, World War II, 1940. A Hawker Hurricane of Fighter Command on its way to intercept German bombers as they crossed the south coast of England. Fought between 10 July and 31 October 1940, the Battle of Britain was the first major battle to be won in the air. The RAF's victory in the battle effectively prevented the Germans from attempting an invasion. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Second World War

6 Battle of Britain myths

Sir Winston Churchill leaves his London home for Chartwell, Kent. (Photo by PA-Images)

A new life of Churchill

Members of the Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) LDV (Local Defence Volunteers) dressed in their civilian clothes march along a platform passing a steam locomotive on 1 July 1940 in London. (Photo by Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

The Dad’s Army guide to defending Britain

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Calculated risk: Adolf Hitler makes plans at his headquarters in Bruly-de-Peche, Ardennes, Belgium. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

The fall of France: Hitler’s greatest gamble

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The Pearl Harbour attack, 7 December 1941: sailors at the Naval Air Station, Ford Island, stand amid wreckage watching as the USS Shaw explodes in the centre background. The USS Nevada is also visible in the middle background, with her bow headed toward the left. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Second World War

The 11 most significant battles of the Second World War

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Women's history

Queen Victoria. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

Queen Victoria timeline: 9 milestones in the monarch’s life

Historians Joanne Paul, Olivette Otele and June Purvis dissect the results of our recent poll: 100 women who changed the world.

Video: 100 women who changed the world

Britain's Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, make the journey by carriage procession to Buckingham Palace following their wedding ceremony on April 29, 2011 in London. (Image by Matt Cardy/AFP/Getty Images)

Kate Middleton: a modern royal woman

Podcast Website large Gillian Paston

Ruth Ellis: the last woman to be hanged in Britain

Vienna Plague Hospital, 1679. (Getty Images)

Women of the plague

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In 1926, 19-year-old New Yorker Gertrude Ederle made history by becoming the first woman to swim the English Channel – and in a faster time than the five men who had already achieved the feat. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Gertrude Ederle: the first woman to swim the English Channel

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History Extra Podcast

The latest episodes from the History Extra podcast

Equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, Richmond (Photo by Library of Congress)

Who should we commemorate?

News of the end of World War I hostilities is joyfully received by the men of the 64th Regiment Infantry, 7th Division. Min de Jaueny, Moselle, France on November 11, 1918. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

First World War

The end of the First World War

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

Mike Leigh on Peterloo

18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

The Peterloo Massacre

Thomas Cromwell (Illustrated by Sarah Young)

Thomas Cromwell reconsidered

Director Peter Jackson in 2015 in Beijing, China (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

First World War

Peter Jackson on the First World War

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Latest articles

A wounded soldier of Company K, 110th Regiment Infantry, receives first-aid treatment from a comrade in Varennes-en-Argonne, France, 26 September 1918. (Photo by Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

First World War soldiers: life after the Armistice

A line-up of girls ready to play football, somewhere in England during the First World War, c1917. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

10 facts you (probably) didn’t know about the First World War

A British officer stands alongside two of his Japanese counterparts in 1914 in Tsingtao (now Qingdao). Japanese troops played a key role in the capture of that strategic German concession in north-east China. (Photo by Getty Images)

First World War

First World War: Beyond the western front

Aerial view of the outside of Treblinka extermination camp, Germany, 1943. (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

Second World War

Laurence Rees on the Holocaust: “What they told us was, at the time, they felt it was the right thing to do”

History Quizzes

How much do you know about history? Test out your knowledge with our quizzes:

The Romanovs, 1913: Nicholas II with his wife and children. (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

History quiz – The Romanovs

great fire 4

Great Fire of London quiz – how much do you know?

Second World War soldiers

Second World War

Second World War quiz

The results of the poll: 100 women who changed the world. (Photos by Getty Images/Alamy)

Quiz: 100 Women Who Changed The World

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Portrait of King Henry VIII, Jane Seymour and Prince Edward. (Photo by Getty Images)

Tudor

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Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) gives his famous v-sign as he opens the new headquarters of 615 (County of Surrey) Squadron of the RAAF (Royal Auxiliary Air Force) at Croydon, 1948. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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Photo of Mabel Capper and Patricia Woodlock advertising a meeting, Manchester, Lancashire, July 1908

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