People watching the Royal Wedding

United Kingdom

BBC History Magazine

Pistols at Dawn

Local Heroes

The medieval castle in the English county of Kent

The King and his castle: how Henry II rebuilt his reputation.

The LibraryThomas Becket and 16th-century swimming.

The Industrial Revolution is revisited and Big Ben turns 150.

Recreating a Victorian farm and the life of Captain Cook.

Thomas Paine on both sides of the Atlantic and the plight of the suffragettes.

A Nazi serial killer and a Tudor gentleman.

British history: the turning points.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announces the outbreak of the Second World War in a BBC broadcast, 1939. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

History hero: Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914).

Hampton Court and the Amritsar massacre.

The Matchgirls strike and back to 1918.

The legend of King Arthur and fighter pilots.

Official First World War Photographers

Britain’s First World War flying aces.

The LibraryAn adulterous scandal and a grisly end.

Attenborough on Darwin.

Robert Burns and Francis Bacon.

Life in a London slum and the Last Judgement.

Ancient civilisations and Victorian shopping.

Made of basalt, this inscribed stone dates to the sixth century BC. The figure is Nabonidus who was the last king of Babylon before the Persian invasion under Cyrus II. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

Babylon: From riches to ruins.

A portrait of William Hogarth, whom Simon Jones admires for possessing an extraordinary eye for pictorial detail and social nuance. (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

My history hero: William Hogarth (1697–1764).

King Arthur addresses his knights in a 12th-century Arthurian manuscript now held in Rennes, France. (Photo by: Leemage/UIG via Getty Images)

Would the real King Arthur please stand up.

Secrets of WWII, the French Revolution and 'The History of Scotland'.

Britain’s green pioneers

A second-century bronze head of Roman Emperor Hadrian

Hadrian: rescuer of the Roman Empire.

An illustration depicting inhabitants of Hawaii making an offering to Captain Cook

The LibraryThe mystery of Cook’s lost journal.

The school leaving age: what can we learn from history?

The 14th-century Gough Map

The Gough Map: a map of medieval Britain

An aerial view of Wilton House

Going Dutch: the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

West Kent Territorial Army

One hundred years of voluntary service.