Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world.

c1962: Military personnel in a car pass through the US Army's Checkpoint Charlie on the Berlin Wall. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

A brief history of Checkpoint Charlie

Two lovers rest after a hunt, Codex Manesse

Saturday lecture: Medieval love and marriage.

The Lancaster.

Despite popular misconception, Gladiatorial fighting was not the most popular entertainment in Ancient Rome. (Photo by Alamy)

A brief guide to ancient Rome and the Romans, plus 9 fascinating facts

Bronze effigy of King Henry III on his tomb, Westminster Abbey, London (Photo by Alamy)

Henry III: inside the mind of a medieval king.

The ruined monastery walls of Lindisfarne priory on Holy Island, on 27th June 2019, on Lindisfarne Island, Northumberland, England. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish monk Saint Aidan, and the priory was founded before the end of 634 and Aidan remained there until his death in 651. The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, also known simply as Holy Island, is an island off the northeast coast of England. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic and Anglo-saxon Christianity. After the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England, a priory was re-established. (Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images Images)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #8: Did medieval people care about the time? And did they get bored?.

Francis Drake portrait

Francis Drake’s forgotten role in the English slave trade

Britain and the slave trade.

Marble bust of Nero

Emperor Nero: the tyrant of Rome

Men operate a cotton gin in Dahomey, Mississippi, in 1898

7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered

Nazi Germany: everything you wanted to know.

Saturday lecture: Medieval disease and medicine.

Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, 1521. This was an assembly of the Holy Roman Empire called by King Charles V in Heylshof Garden, Worms, to address Martin Luther and the effects of the Protestant Reformation. (Photo by The Print Collector via Getty Images)

What was the Reformation?

Henry Avery: the legendary 17th-century pirate.

Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I.

The Civil War: everything you wanted to know.

Two members of the BEF (British Expeditionary Forces)

Indian soldiers at Dunkirk.

The US cutter Spencer attacks U-boat U-175

The Battle of the Atlantic: why Britain almost lost to Hitler's U-boats.

King John II made prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers by the English during the Hundred Years War, 1356. Illustration

Medieval prisoners of war.

Medieval punishments, Toulouse, 14th century. (Photo by Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

How bloody was medieval life?

Charles Cundall’s painting ‘The Withdrawal From Dunkirk, June 1940’

Second World War

9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Dunkirk

The crusades: everything you wanted to know.

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained

British ships on convoy duty in the North Atlantic

Danger in the deep: key questions about the Battle of the Atlantic answered.

The Battle of the Atlantic: the "desperate" WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound.

Rutger Bregman. (Rutger Bregman (Photo by Maartje ter Horst)

Rutger Bregman’s optimistic history of the world.

Protesters demonstrate against a US military base at Santo Stefano in 2005

Sardinia: the legacy of the notorious shepherd-bandits of the mountains.

The big question: what have the Romans ever done for us?.

The English Reformation: everything you wanted to know.

Members of 617 squadron, known as the Dambusters

Second World War

How successful was the Dambusters raid?