Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

Notre Dame of Paris at first light (Photo by Captblack76-Dreamstime.com)

Notre-Dame.

The photogenic Trevi Fountain is a highlight of most visits to Rome. (Image by Getty Images)

My favourite place: Rome, Italy

Melvyn Bragg speaks to the History Extra podcast about the 12th-century love story of Heloise and Abelard. (Photo by Awakening/Getty Images)

Melvyn Bragg on Heloise and Abelard.

c1943: Soldiers enjoy a baseball match at Wembley Stadium in London between the United States Army and Canadian Forces. With them sits Bobby, the mascot of the Canadian Highland Scottish regiment. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Animals at war: 12 amazing pictures

The food served at the wedding of Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell may be inspired by accounts of ancient Roman excess, says Ayelet Haimson Lushkov. (© Home Box Office, Inc/Sky Atlantic)

Power plays and scheming queens: the ancient history behind Game of Thrones.

Gerald Heard had a peculiar idea that the UFOs then being sighted all across the globe, as such as this ‘sighting’ in Sicily, were piloted not by humanoid ETs, as you may have presumed, but by alien super-bees from Mars. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

6 of history’s strangest ever theories about outer space.

A US soldier teaching two junior 'rookie' recruits how to clean a gun during the First World War

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about America’s entry and involvement in the First World War.

British Indian soldiers stand at attention prior to inspection at Singapore, December 1941. (Photo by Alamy)

World War Two’s ‘ordinary’ soldiers.

Nationalist troops escort captured Republican militia during the Spanish Civil War. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The Spanish Civil War: an avoidable tragedy.

A French print by the Thierry bothers depicting the appearance of the landscape and inhabitants of the Moon

How to carry off a great hoax.

An ancient Roman relief shows a midwife delivering a baby. Many midwives had other occupations, and undertook the task as a contribution to their community. (Wellcome Images)

Call the (Roman) midwife

In only two years, Hernán Cortés brought about the downfall of an efficient military civilisation through a combination of diplomacy, warfare, tactics, luck and sheer force of personality, writes Caroline Dodds. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Cortés and Montezuma: the conquering of Tenochtitlan

Towards the end of the third century BC, the First Emperor of China sought to make his new state immortal by shielding it with what would be the earliest predecessor to the Great Wall. (Photo by Jean-Luc PETIT/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

A brief history of border walls – from 2,000 BC to Trump’s Mexico wall.

Queen Victoria with her children and grandchildren. Kaiser Wilhelm II is pictured left in the front row. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)

Friends, family and rivals: Queen Victoria and the European empires

Prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

5 myths of the Second World War's Great Escape.

Viking ships sailing towards unknown land. (Photo by Getty Images)

The global Vikings.

The legendary Varangian (Viking mercenary) Rurik and his brothers arrive in Staraya Ladoga. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Global Vikings: how the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain.

"It was in Ireland that King John revealed himself as a monster," writes Nicholas Vincent. (Image by Alamy)

King John: the making of a medieval monster.

Pocket-sized paintings: Elizabethans in miniature.

A rocky relationship: Eleanor of Woodstock with her husband, Reginald II of Guelders. (Photo by Alamy)

The medieval rebel princesses.

The ancient Greek theatre at Epidaurus, which boasts superb acoustics and aesthetics. (Photo by Alamy)

My favourite place: the Peloponnese, Greece

A c1830 portrait of the scandalous but sublimely talented Lorenzo da Ponte. (Photo by Alamy)

My history hero: Katie Derham chooses Lorenzo Da Ponte.

(Photo by Alamy)

Brexit lessons from history.

Comedian Rhona Cameron and political activist Peter Tatchell help to hold a banner at an LGBT Pride event in London, 1998. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The historians’ view: is the world finally waking up to transgender issues?.

Is it true that an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their own prime minister in 1672? (Illustration by Glen McBeth)

Q&AIs it true that an angry mob of Dutchmen killed and ate their own prime minister in 1672?

British military behind a barricade in Dublin, 1916. (Photo by ullstein picture via Getty Images)

Bullets and ballot boxes: a history of Anglo-Irish relations since the Easter Rising.

Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty in WWI. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

Churchill’s navy.

Your guide to Karl Marx: who was he, what was the Communist Manifesto and why is he important?

Rutger Bregman. (Photo by Maartje ter Horst)

Rutger Bregman: historian in the news.

Bill Edwardes, who at the age of 16 joined the army to fight during WW2.

Second World War

The boys who lied about their age to fight in WW2