Christmas 2013

Articles from the Christmas 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine

Tom Smith's Surprise Cosaques, Christmas Crackers 1878. (Image by Getty)

The history of Christmas crackers

Tourists at Stonehenge

General prehistory

Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap

Japanese troops celebrate the capture of a British artillery position, Hong Kong, December 1941 (Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

The lion and the rising sun: Britain and Japan’s 400-year relationship

Khudadad Khan

My history hero: Khudadad Khan (1888-1971)

Illustration by Becca Thorne.

Deadly beasts of Tudor England

Illustration by Jonty Clark.

Ye olde travel guide: Prague 1600

Allied convoy PQ 17 is attacked by a German torpedo aircraft on its way across the Arctic Ocean, c1942. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

“The worst journey in the world”: The Arctic convoys of the Second World War

This detail from the Gundestrup Cauldron – a richly decorated silver vessel thought to date from the second-century BC – depicts a Celtic god or druid surrounded by beasts. (Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

The genius of the Celts

Tom Cribb lands a punch on Tom Molineaux while Molineaux's trainer, Bill Richmond, looks on. Molineaux got the upper hand in the pair's first fight – which ended in controversy when a mob stormed the ring – but was defeated in this, the 1811 rematch. (Edward Gooch/Edward Gooch/Getty Images)

The ‘Black Terror’: Britain’s first black sports star

Tourists at Stonehenge. We have no better idea today than 200 years ago what the people who erected these sarsens truly believed. (Getty Images)

General prehistory

The Library Prehistoric religion: a pagan riddle we will never solve

The Black Death, the effects of which are pictured in this medieval miniature, took little more than seven years to wipe out around half of mankind. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

History explorer: the catastrophe of the Black Death