Early comic panel illustration

England

A c1520–40 portrait of Henry VI

The miraculous afterlife of Henry VI

A c1638 oil painting of Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny

History heroJulia Donaldson chooses Katherine Howard, Lady Aubigny (d1650)

Harold Godwinson is proclaimed king of England in the Bayeux Tapestry. It may have been commissioned by a Norman but this magnificent artwork repeatedly acknowledges the English leader’s piety and courage. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Why is Harold Godwinson a hero of the Bayeux Tapestry?

17th-century London: a city shaped by catastrophe

Volunteers shovel sand in Fulham in 1941, filling bags used to protect windows from bomb blasts. Our clichés of the Blitz don’t tell the whole story, writes Lucy Worsley. (Photo by Mary Evans)

Lucy Worsley on Blitz Spirit: the courageous stories of six Londoners

1962: London’s big freeze

Mary Tudor with her five stepmothers

Mary Tudor and her five stepmothers: what was their relationship like?

Edward I’s letters

Cary Grant: from humble beginnings to Hollywood icon

Blitz spirit or broken morale?

An account of the story of James Allen, whose sex at birth was revealed only by an autopsy conducted after their death

'Female husbands': the secret lives of 18th-century transgender pioneers

Actor Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster in James Whale's classic 1931 film

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: the birth of a gothic monster

The ruins of the once magnificent Roche Abbey

The dissolution of the monasteries: mindless violence or planned precision?

Photo of an Anglo Saxon helmet found at Sutton Hoo

Sutton Hoo: a brief guide to the Anglo-Saxon burial site and its discovery

A depiction of Robin Hood, the heroic archer in English folklore who supposedly robbed the rich and gave to the poor. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Robin Hood: 7 myths about the legendary outlaw of Sherwood Forest

The Sutton Hoo excavations are the focus of a new film, 'The Dig'. Carey Mulligan stars as Edith Pretty, and Ralph Fiennes portrays Basil Brown

Second World War

The Dig: the real history of the remarkable Sutton Hoo excavation

A scene from an early rugby union game

The history of rugby: when was the sport invented?

Spectacular discoveries at Sutton Hoo

The inner courtyard of the old pottery factory at Gladstone Pottery Museum, with its five towering bottle ovens. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

History explorerThe Gladstone Pottery Museum

Photo of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria: how and why did she become Empress of India?

Princess Feodora (left), half-sister of Queen Victoria (right)

Princess Feodora: the little-known sister of Queen Victoria

English cavalry attacking the Sikh at the Battle of Aliwal

Victoria the warrior queen

Britain’s Swinging Sixties: everything you wanted to know

A portrait of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with five of their nine children, by Frederick Winterhalter

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: was their union a marriage of misery?

How historians helped build the British empire

When British pop invaded America

Richard III

What if…Richard III had won at Bosworth?

Domesday Book: medieval big data

The decline and death of Henry VIII

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie in profile: facts about her life