Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

Painting depicting medieval nuns. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

17th-century nuns on the run

'Tirpitz' hiding in a Norwegian fjord in 1942. “She outclassed anything in the British fleet,” says Patrick Bishop. (Getty Images)

The Second World War: sinking the Tirpitz

German scientists Dr Carl Eisenmann, Dr Mersch, Dr Trabat and Dr Stocklin. (Express/Getty Images)

The intelligence war for German scientists

Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in the centre of Florence (Getty)

A big day in history: Florence's bonfire of the vanities

Ye Olde Travel Guide: Corfu 1864

An 18th century village in Germany. Strict laws regulated the goods that each social class could buy. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Beware what you buy: the goods German citizens were forbidden to consume

The Golden Coast

The LibraryYe Olde Travel Guide: Mainz 1455

It was in this villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee that one of history’s most infamous conferences was staged. (Getty)

The Wannsee Conference

A statue of Joan of Arc in the home where she is thought to have been born, in Domrémy-La-Pucelle, eastern France. (PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images)

Where history happenedJoan of Arc

An illustration of Nikephoros II. (Photo by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo)

A big day in history: the all-conquering Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II loses his head

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the leader of a network of French resistance agents during the Second World War. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

My history hero: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (1909–89)

Guy Gibson (centre) with members of his squadron. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The triumph of the Dambusters

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Pompeii 79 Ad

The prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III. Famous for being the location of the ‘Great Escape’, it was home to Ron Last for ten months. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The long road home

Francisco Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru John Everett Millais. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

A big day in history: Francisco Pizarro's tiny Spanish army takes a mighty Incan leader hostage

Dambusters

English soldiers in the ruins of Palmyre in charge of taking over the Syrian Territory occupied by Vichy’s France. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

The untold Second World War

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Kiev 978 AD

Vasily Grossman with the Red Army in Schwerin, Germany, 1945. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A war of words

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Venice 1500

Being a British Missionary and troubles in Ireland

Hans Litten (centre) in court while representing communists, 25 August 1932. Litten’s decision to subpoena Hitler a year earlier was to cost him his life. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Hitler in the dock

BBC History Magazine

French celebrity

In his last official photo, Adolf Hitler leaves the safety of his bunker to award decorations to members of Hitler Youth. (Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Why did the Nazis fight to the death?

Greek slavery, Victorian heroism and Dan Snow on cars

A poster depicting a First World War soldier musing over having caught a venereal disease while on furlough.(Photo by David Pollack/Corbis via Getty Images)

Sex and the First World War: the Tommies who visited brothels

Back to school and Hitler's schemes for war

Clean-up crews salvaging what they can from the ruins of buildings in Hornsey, a north London suburb, 1944. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Hitler's secret weapon

A detail of a funerary monument from Athens, Greece depicting a squire taming a horse. Holding elaborate funerals was one of the many ways in which aristocrats broadcast their great wealth. (Photo By DEA/G.DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

The trouble with luxury