December 2011

Articles from the December 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine

Queen Victoria pictured c1862 during her period of mourning after the death of her husband, Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Prince Albert: the death that rocked the monarchy

An illustration of Nikephoros II. (Photo by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo)

General ancient history

A big day in history: the all-conquering Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II loses his head

A portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from an early 15th-century manuscript of the poem ‘De Regimine Principum’ by Thomas Hoccleve. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Library Chaucer and the idea of Englishness

A c15th-century vellum shows the Squire from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For Adam Nicolson, the essence of the gentry was “government-through-networking”. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Stories of the gentry

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the leader of a network of French resistance agents during the Second World War. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Second World War

My history hero: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (1909–89)

Angela Burdett-Coutts, an English philanthropist who supported a wide variety of charitable causes assisting the church, the poor and the hungry. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Philanthropy: the root of all good

Guy Gibson (centre) with members of his squadron. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Second World War

The triumph of the Dambusters

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Pompeii 79 Ad

The prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III. Famous for being the location of the ‘Great Escape’, it was home to Ron Last for ten months. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

The long road home

An 1860s coloured engraving of Lake Victoria’s outflow at the Ripon Falls, which John Speke discovered in 1862 and correctly declared to be the source of the Nile. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Explorers of the Nile