BBC History Magazine

The online archive of articles from BBC History Magazine

How did England react to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1751? (Illustration for BBC History Magazine)

What was England’s reaction to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1751?

A statue of Leonardo da Vinci

8 milestones in Leonardo da Vinci’s rise to success

Portrait of Catherine of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon: Spain’s Virgin queen?

British writer Roald Dahl (1916–1990), 11th December 1971. (Photo by Ronald Dumont/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

10 things you might not know about Roald Dahl

King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and their daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret of United Kingdom. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Second World War

The Windsors at war: what did the royal family do during WW2?

Archduchess Ileana’s great grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose birth certificate Ileana desperately needed to get hold of (Getty)

Queen Victoria and the Nazis: the strange tale of the search for the royal family’s Aryan origins

Jan Žižka, the general whose peasant army defied the Holy Roman Empire in the 1420s.

Christ’s communists: the radical religious sect that challenged the Holy Roman Empire

The battle of Agincourt, 1415

True-to-scale battle numbers and 15th-century life: look inside the revamped Agincourt museum

The wrecked remains of an Allied glider that participated in Market Garden

Second World War

Why Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ battle for Arnhem, was a disaster in the planning

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Even after her death in 2013, her record continued to be fiercely contested. (Tom Stoddart/Getty Images)

How should history remember Margaret Thatcher?

The portrait of Queen Elizabeth I known as the Ditchley portrait

What did Queen Elizabeth I really look like at 60?

Chancellor Adolf Hitler with President Paul von Hindenburg, Berlin, 1 May 1933

Second World War

Hitler’s millionaire backers: how Germany’s elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis

A portrait of Russian empress Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great: Hypocrite, reactionary, usurper, sex maniac?

Sir Max Hastings. (Image by Fran Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Second World War

Sir Max Hastings: “While the Dambuster raid’s strategic impact was almost nil, its propaganda value was immense”

Elizabeth I shown in the Darnley portrait of c1575 and (right) the French king Henri III. (Images by Alamy/Getty Images)

Henri III: Elizabeth I’s unlikely ally