England

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?

A scene from 'They Shall Not Grow Old', showing how film director Peter Jackson digitally remastered footage of the First World War. (Photo courtesy of THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD/ WingNut Films/ Peter Jackson. Original black and white film © IWM)

First World War

“There was no feeling sorry for themselves”: Director Peter Jackson on the soldiers of the First World War

Kit Harington as plotter Robert Catesby in the BBC drama 'Gunpowder'. (BBC/Kudos)

What if the gunpowder plot had succeeded?

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

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

“Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now”: 5 minutes with Mike Leigh

Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (1864-1892) was the eldest son of Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). He was known to his family as Eddy. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

The trouble with Prince Eddy: Britain’s fascinating ‘lost’ king

Sir Walter Ralegh (c1554–1618, shown here in a painting attributed to William Segar) is often remembered as a favourite of Elizabeth I and an adventurer, yet he was also one of the most influential political philosophers of his era. (Photo by Alamy)

Walter Ralegh: the traitor who inspired Cromwell

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Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a "giant of a book", and part of a new exhibition at the British Library. (Photo by Sam Lane Photography/British Library)

Watch: Highlights from the British Library’s new Anglo-Saxon exhibition

18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

The Peterloo Massacre

Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, c1507-1536. (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Guilty or not guilty: why did Anne Boleyn have to die?

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Pit Brow Lasses from an unknown colliery in Wigan, Lancashire, c1887. (Photograph by Herbert Wragg. Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Coal Mining Museum for England)

The ‘Pit Brow Lasses’ of 19th-century coal mines

British author Bernard Cornwell, author of 'The Last Kingdom' and 'Sharpe' series. (Photo by Daniel Sorabji via Getty Images)

Bernard Cornwell on writing historical fiction and his blockbuster series ‘The Last Kingdom’: your questions answered

York History Weekend 2018. (Photo by Mark Bickerdike)

York History Weekend

Highlights from our History Weekends 2018