December 2018

Articles from the December 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine

Cavalry charge into a crowd of protesters at St Peter's Field, Manchester, as depicted in an 1819 engraving. What followed was the worst violence ever to occur at a political meeting in Britain. (Picture by Alamy)

The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve?

British troops in the trenches, Belgium, c1914–15. The horrors of the First World War lived long in the memories of its centenarian survivors. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

First World War

The last survivors of the First World War

Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged almost 700 messages during the Second World War. (Illustration by Hugh Cowling for BBC History Magazine)

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words

Combat helicopters fly over US troops during a search and destroy mission, South Vietnam. Despite their military might, argues Max Hastings, the Americans were doomed to fail during the Vietnam War. (Photo by Patrick Christain/Getty Images)

Max Hastings on Vietnam

The inner courtyard of the old pottery factory at Gladstone Pottery Museum, with its five towering bottle ovens. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

History explorer: Inside Britain’s ceramics revolution

Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor visited the US on several occasions, where he was held in such high regard that he was dubbed the 'African Mahler'. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

My history hero: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London. "We're brought up on a whole ant-heap of myths about Napoleon. The apocryphal stories that swirl around him are legion," he says. (Photography by Frank Monks for BBC History Magazine)

The Library Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity”

A watercolour version of a mural showing Henry VIII (front left) with his father, Henry VII, his wife Jane Seymour (front right) and his mother, Elizabeth of York. The mural, which aimed to validate Henry's right to the throne, adorned Whitehall Palace before being destroyed by fire. (Photo by Bridgeman Royal Collection)

Henry VIII: like father, like son?

Our illustration shows King Arthur leading his troops into battle. The legendary warlord's victories over Saxon invaders first appear in a 'history' written in the ninth-century north Wales. (Illustration by Georgie Gozem for BBC History Magazine)

The King Arthur delusion: a case of medieval fake news?

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