Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

A Saracen attack on Crusaders, from the French manuscript 'Chroniques de Saint Denis', c1200. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Traders and crusaders

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Constantinople 976

A portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie), the grandson of James II and VII. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The LibraryWhere history happened: The Jacobites

Operation Barbarossa, which began on 22 June 1941, saw more than three million German troops surge into the Soviet Union along a front of more than 1,000 miles. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Barbarossa and Britain

The Saint-Quentin canal, part of the Germans’ Hindenburg Line, which the Allies broke through on Sunday 29 September 1918. (Photo by 2nd Lt. D McLellan/ IWM via Getty Images)

The LibraryWhy didn’t the Allies march on Berlin in 1918?

German Spring Offensive: reserve troops in Saint Quentin on their way to the front, March 1918. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

How the war was won

The surprisingly long history of humanity's political development

Does Russia need an iron fist?

A big day in history: the debate on whether Britain should join the European Community

Spain's maritime decline

Q&A: Why didn’t Britain attempt to hinder Italy’s 1935 invasion of Abyssinia by preventing the Italian fleet from using the Suez Canal?

The ruined site of Clonmacnoise in County Offaly, Ireland. (Getty Images)

Where history happened: the Wars of the Three Kingdoms part 2

A painting from a new exhibition at the V&A Museum in London. 'The Cult of Beauty' explores the 19th-century artistic movement of Aestheticism.

The cult of beauty

Ye olde travel guide: Olympia 480 Bc

Two women from South America. Six centuries ago South American civilisations matched the west in some respects. (Getty Images)

The wonder of the west

My history hero: Abba Kovner (1918–87)

George III at the end of his reign. He "represented the uncontrollable aspects of humanity that the Enlightenment could not explain," says Stella Tillyard. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period

Communist sport: Cold War copycats

The plague, Sir Walter Ralegh and Jerusalem

Q&A: Why didn't Napoleon invade the Channel Islands?

Was there a guerrilla campaign waged by pro-German elements in what was then German New Guinea during WWI?

Pirates, propaganda and the history of swearing

King John and the French invasion of England

Where history happened: Dunkirk

The Battle of Marathon plus Dunkirk and WWII refugees

The LibraryThe fall of France: Hitler’s greatest gamble

Guernsey’s child evacuees

Charles Théveneau de Morande: an 18th-century French spy in London

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), pictured here c1895, is one of the most important figures in modern Russian literature. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

My history hero: Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

Russian and Polish women liberated from a forced labour camp

Voices of the Holocaust