Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and husband Willy, photographed c1902. (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)

Who was the real Colette?

The president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt and his staff gathered together in New York to find a solution to the economic crisis. 1935. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Icons: the game changers of the 20th century.

Max Adams. (Photo by Kona Macphee/Royal Literary Fund)

Remarkable women through history.

Paul Morland. (Photo by Frank Monks)

Books interview with Paul Morland: “Even the Spanish flu pandemic wasn’t enough to stop population growth”.

The 17th-century church of Santi Luca e Martina overlooks the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum

ExploreRome, Italy: the 'eternal city'.

How did Henry VIII and Elizabeth I celebrate Yuletide? (Illustration by Becca Thorne for BBC History Magazine)

Tales from a Tudor Christmas.

Wonders of the Middle Ages.

The Nuremberg trials have not been universally praised. To some, the trials were a blown-up case of victors' justice. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)

Second World War

A brief guide to the Nuremberg Trials, where some Nazis faced justice after WW2

Adam Zamoyski offers his views on the iconic French leader, Napoleon. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Napoleon: the insecure emperor.

Four young members of the largest group of Kindertransport refugees arrive at Southampton, England, in March 1939. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Remembering the Kindertransport.

James I of Aragon, depicted in a 15th-century portrait. A king dubbed 'the Conqueror' invested enormous energy in projecting an image of power and authority. But behind the facade lay an insecure ruler who feared failure. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The LibraryJames I of Aragon: inside the mind of a medieval king.

American Flying Fortress bombers and a Mustang fighter practise formation flying over England, training for rain that would help break Nazi resistance. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

The LibraryThe Allies’ big idea: the largest air battle of the Second World War.

Paddy Ashdown. (Photo by Alamy)

The Germans who fought Hitler.

An aerial view showing the courtroom during the Nuremberg Trials, November 1945. (Photo by Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Forgotten trials: the other side of Nuremberg.

A Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) is approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, 6th June 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

Tales from D-Day.

Photograph of the Wounded British Soldiers at the Battle of the Somme. Dated 1916. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

First World War

8 things you (probably) didn’t know about the battle of the Somme

How to throw a medieval feast.

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting a naked man with an erection reaching out towards a naked woman, who is covering both her face and her pudenda with her hands. (© Bayeux Museum)

The Bayeux Tapestry with knobs on: what do the tapestry's 93 penises tell us?

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, 1934. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)

Nietzsche’s dangerous ideas.

The First World War promoted advances in medicine, and in sectors such as aviation, that had not just military but also peacetime benefits, says David Stevenson. Here Captain Francis Derwent Wood treats the face of a patient, creating a mask which matches as closely as possible to the man's faces before he was injured, c1916. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ IWM via Getty Images)

The First World War: what was it good for?.

Dan Snow on shell shock.

Dan Snow on shell shock.

British war correspondents and press officers, western front, c1917. From the Great War Vol .10 published in 1918 FR left to right: Percival Phillips; Colonel Hutton Wilson; Beach Thomas; Captain Stewart. Standing: Basil Clark; Perry Robinson; Percival Gibbon. (Photo by Alamy)

Censorship in the trenches: why didn’t journalists report the horrors of the First World War?.

Women of the Sarah Caswell Angell chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, engaging in war work activities to assist the Allied cause during the First World War, 1918. During their sessions they knitted, made hospital garments, sewed for French children, and made aviators' vests. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

First World War

A–Z of the First World War

An American recruitment poster. “US forces showed an impressive ability to learn at speed,” says Nick Lloyd. (© Getty)

The great misconceptions of the First World War.

British troops in the trenches, Belgium, c1914–15. The horrors of the First World War lived long in the memories of its centenarian survivors. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

The last survivors of the First World War.

News of the end of World War I hostilities is joyfully received by the men of the 64th Regiment Infantry, 7th Division. Min de Jaueny, Moselle, France on November 11, 1918. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The end of the First World War.

The Spanish Armada defeated in the English Channel in July 1588, by Hendrick Cornelis Vroom, c1600. (Picture by DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/Getty Images)

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Spanish Armada

Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged almost 700 messages during the Second World War. (Illustration by Hugh Cowling for BBC History Magazine)

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words.

Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London. "We're brought up on a whole ant-heap of myths about Napoleon. The apocryphal stories that swirl around him are legion," he says. (Photography by Frank Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity”.

Jewelled terminal of aestel, The Alfred Jewel. (Photo by Alamy)

Anglo-Saxon treasures.