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VJ Day: turning the tide in the east. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of King Charles I

Your guide to King Charles I, the deposed monarch who lost his head

An architectural grotesque of a woman displaying her vulva

How naughty was the past? The hidden depths of the medieval church

Black and white image of a group of five men sat on the floor in a room in Fiji. One of them is pointing at another with a serious expression on his face.

Cakobau: the first (and last) king of Fiji. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials

Alice Roberts“Graves are like time capsules – little microcosms of prehistoric culture". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Anne of Denmark, wife of James I of England

Anne of Denmark: a killer queen?

Mary, Queen of Scots during her trial at Fotheringhay Castle – where she was also executed for her alleged role in the Babington Plot (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

What if...The Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I had succeeded?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mary Wortley Montagu: the scourge of smallpox

History heroSteven Berkoff chooses Laurence Olivier (1907–89)

Scientists Frederic Joliot-Curie and his wife, Irene, at work in their Paris laboratory in December 1932. The couple were among a wide-ranging group of scientists whose work paved the way for the atomic bomb. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Hiroshima: the race to the atomic bomb. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Women munition workers stacking a reserve of shell castings during WWI

Young guns: the women and children of WW1 munitions factories. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Portrait of Ide B Wells

Ida B Wells: civil rights activist and scourge of lynch mobs

Portrait Of Edward Seymour (Colorized)

Edward Seymour: the fall of the dithering dictator

Students study mathematics in Lahore in 1933

Revising the Raj. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A composite of characters from 21st century period drama

What’s next for period drama?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Emma Dabiri"William Cuffay's story is more relevant now than ever". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Green Knight shows his severed – and still talking – head to King Arthur in this illustration of the beginning of the 14th century legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

“A eulogy to the cult of chivalry”: what can Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tell us about Edward III and the Hundred Years’ War?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A runner is helped across a finish line

21 key moments in the history of the modern Olympics

A group of men observe a body lying on a table.

Early-modern cannibal doctors: why mummified corpse was considered medicine. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Dev Patel stars as Sir Gawain in The Green Knight an adaptation of the Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

The Green Knight on screen: what can we expect from the retelling of an Arthurian epic?

A man runs on an athletics track with a crowd behind him

Harry Edward: Britain’s first black Olympic hero. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Persian ambassador bows before Louis XIV in the Palace of Versailles

King of the world: how Louis XIV turned France into a global power. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Crown Prince Olav on his ice yacht (Getty Images)

From Hollywood to war heroes: 10 Olympians who were more famous outside sport

Belgium and the Netherlands compete in a tug of war at the Antwerp Olympic

Olympic oddballs: 5 unusual Olympic sports from the past. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Jesse Owens sprinting on a track at the Berlin Olympics.

A history of unsporting conduct at the Olympics. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mao Zedong applauds a parade of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. These young militants followed Mao’s call in early August 1966 to defend the party from a ‘white terror’. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Reign of the red terror: Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Tokyo Olympics 1964: Yoshinori Sakai prepares to light the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. Born on the day that the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, he was a symbol of Japan’s postwar reconstruction and peace

Tokyo Olympics 1964: the Games that defined Japan. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Queen Elizabeth I dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Artist unknown. (© Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy)

Tudor tunes: music at the courts of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James VI and I

The first modern Olympics at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens

The first modern Olympics: what happened at the 1896 games?

Are revolutions doomed to failure?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.