BBC History Magazine

The online archive of articles from BBC History Magazine

Supporters of Donald Trump protest in Pennsylvania as the state’s electoral college casts its votes, December 2020

The constitutional crisis behind 2021’s presidential transition

Edward Jenner performs a vaccination, in an 1802 cartoon that lampoons the notion that being vaccinated will turn you into a cow

The race for a cure: how we found vaccines for 4 of history’s most dangerous diseases

An engraving depicting London's Piccadilly Circus heaving with crowds on their way to The Great Exhibition of 1851. A banner reading 'God save the Queen and Prince Albert' has been strung across the street. Within the Crystal Palace some 100,000 objects were displayed – taking up ten miles of space – the work of 15,000 contributors. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain: the decline and fall of the British empire

English cavalry attacking the Sikh at the Battle of Aliwal

Victoria the warrior queen

A portrait of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with five of their nine children, by Frederick Winterhalter. (Photo by © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: was their union a marriage of misery?

A composite image of Joseph Stalin (left) and Adolf Hitler

Second World War

Hitler and Stalin’s utopian dreams

Extract from Domesday Book.

Your guide to the Domesday Book: the most important document in English history?

Muslim women embrace after Ramadan ends, 2012

“Does every generation have to prove itself in Britain?” Kavita Puri on the experiences of South Asians in Britain

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie in profile: facts about her life

Women queue for potatoes in a greengrocer's shop in London, c1945. (Photo by Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer/IWM via Getty Images)

Second World War

Saving food, saving lives: rationing in the Second World War

Nelson stands in the Nile culling crocodiles in James Gillray's cartoon 'Extirpation of the Plagues of Egypt' (1798). The crocodiles represent captured or destroyed French ships at the battle of the Nile, while Nelson is cast as a cross between Moses and Hercules. (Archiv Gerstenberg/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Admiral Lord Nelson: 10 days that created a legend

Professor Robert Tombs, Fellow of French history at St John's College

“Both sides of the Brexit debate have got things wrong about our history”: Robert Tombs on Britain’s complex relationship with Europe

Portrait of Anne of Cleves

Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII’s most successful queen?

A reconstruction of a Viking church

Vikings in America: the Europeans who arrived 500 years before Columbus

A 19th-century engraving. A young woman plays a harp, singing a duet with a man holding the music book, Duets de L’Amour. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A survivor’s guide to Georgian marriage