Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

A 19th-century illustration depicting the battle of Agincourt.

Books interview with Ranulph Fiennes: "The Hundred Years' War was caused by my ancestor's advice being ignored"

Avaldsnes Church, Norway

My favourite place: Avaldsnes, Norway

The Berlin Wall and the return of Charles II

A portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte

Why Napoleon merits the title 'the Great'

A brief history of how people communicated in the Middle Ages

A portrait of Joan of Arc,

The real Joan of Arc

The battle of Agincourt and the Spanish communists

A painting in the cave of Altamira, Spain

The rise of Homo sapiens

Red Army tank drivers on a street in the city of Rakov, Poland

1939: When Poland was torn to pieces

An elevated view over Stiftskirche & surrounding township, Baden-Baden, Germany

My favourite place: The Black Forest, south-west Germany

First World War

Why is WW1 called the 'Great War'?

From a collection of reflective landscape photographs of the Somme battlefield.

First World War

The Somme battlefield revisited

Photo of people eating spaghetti

Q&ADid the Italians invent spaghetti?

A mad is tied to a stake and burned alive as a crowd, including priests, look on

Heresy: a brief history

Bust of Emperor Alexander Severus

The LibraryAncient Rome in crisis

Quiz - Would you have been accepted to join the army and fight in WW1 in August 1914?

A colour image of military guns during World War One

First World War

The First World War in colour

James Bond and Vichy France

A portrait of Janice Hadlow

Janice Hadlow"The picture of George III’s family is often sad – these are genuinely thwarted lives"

The ruins of the Temple of Apollo, Delphi, Greece. (Getty Images)

My favourite place: Delphi, Greece

5 facts about Caligula

A detail of a fresco of Hannibal riding his elephant. It is estimated he took as many as 40 elephants when he marched an army across the Alps and into northern Italy. (Photo by Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)

Q&AHow many elephants did Hannibal take over the Alps?

Trees and snow. Photo taken by British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews as part of her series focussing on the locations at which individuals were shot during the First World War.

Shot at dawn: the First World War soldiers executed for desertion and cowardice

First World War

10 things you (probably) didn't know about the bloody eastern front in 1914

Photo of a poppy growing in a preserved WWI trench

First World War

Q&ADid the Somme offensive achieve anything?

Relief of a charioteer

Q&AWho was the highest-paid sportsman in history?

An oil painting by John Cleveley The Elder depicting the Royal Naval Dockyard

The quest for longitude: the men who mapped the surface of the earth

Mont Saint Michel (Getty Images)

My favourite place: Mont Saint Michel, France

How did it become a gesture of well-wishing to say to an actor before they go on stage "break a leg"? (Photo by Andrys Lukowski via iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Q&AWhy do we say ‘Break a leg’?

My favourite place: Janina Ramirez