Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

English cavalry attacking the Sikh at the Battle of Aliwal

Victoria the warrior queen

Britain’s Swinging Sixties: everything you wanted to know

How historians helped build the British empire

A composite image of Joseph Stalin (left) and Adolf Hitler

Second World War

Hitler and Stalin’s utopian dreams

Statue of Leif Erikson (Leifur Erikssonn) in front of Eric the Red's home. (Photo by Draper White, Getty Images)

Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland

Félix Kir in 1947, when he was the mayor of Dijon

Second World War

History heroSimon Farnaby chooses Félix Kir (1876–1968)

19th century advert for snuff

Q&AWhat was snuff?

The battle for Sicily, 1943

German Jews in WW1

Bonnie Prince Charlie: hero or coward?

Alexander Ludwig as Bjorn Ironside, son Ragnar Lothbrok and king of Kattegat

Vikings Season 6: plot recap, plus 8 historical questions answered

British from the 11th Brigade 4th division and German soldiers at Ploegsteert in Belgium on Christmas Day 1914. (Photo by The Art Archive/Alamy)

First World War

Did the First World War Christmas truce football match really happen?

Alex Hogh Andersen as Ivar the Boneless

The real Vikings: the early medieval world behind the hit drama

The effigy of Eleanor of Castile on her tomb

The love lives of medieval queens

Habsburg dynasty: Maria Theresa, her husband Francis I

The Habsburgs: the dynasty that wouldn’t die

Invention or adaptation: what did the Romans really do for us?

A WW2 story of survival

Vahalla is depicted as a round-topped building in this funerary stone from 8th-century Sweden

Valhalla: fighting and feasting in the Viking warrior afterlife

A miller and a donkey

9 things you could do with a medieval ass

Ten things to do with a medieval donkey

Marble bust of Nero

Rethinking Nero: was the Roman emperor really so bad?

Magna Carta: everything you wanted to know

Nelson's passion for Emma – with whom he had a six-year affair – is writ large in his letters

Nelson in his own words

Georg Elser, a little-known carpenter-turned-assassin whose daring attempt to kill Hitler almost succeeded

Georg Elser: the man who nearly assassinated Hitler

One of the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo

How dark were the Dark Ages?

This 15th-century painting from a manuscript shows men fishing in a river. In medieval England, eels were both meals and de facto currency. (Photo by Bridgeman)

Fishing for gold: how eels powered the medieval economy

The International Brigades: fighting fascism in Spain

Alfred Nobel (Bettmann/Getty Images)

The history of the Nobel Prizes

The Glorious Revolution: everything you wanted to know

The orphan hero who fought at Trafalgar