February 2012

Articles from the February 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine

Chris Patten, the last governor of colonial Hong Kong, is pictured here receiving the Union Jack flag shortly before Hong Kong was returned to China, ending over a century of British rule. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

The British empire: 10 big questions

British troops marching in celebration of Bastille Day, c1944. (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

The Library On the same side: homosexuals during the Second World War

A photograph of Queen Victoria and her descendants, taken in April 1894 in Coburg, Germany. The photograph shows Queen Victoria's position at the centre of a network of alliances created by strategic marriages, which gave her the name 'the grandmother of Europe'. (Alamy)

The art of monarchy: the web of royalty

In the 16,000 years after the end of the last Ice Age, societies in Eurasia and the Americas followed radically different trajectories. Here, an Aztec priest offers the heart taken from a living person to the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. (Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

General prehistory

The old world and the new

Aftermath of the Staplehurst rail crash, a derailment at Staplehurst, Kent in 1865, that killed ten passengers and injured forty. Author Charles Dickens was among the passengers who escaped unscathed. “He spent hours aiding the hurt and dying and extricating the dead,” says Jonathan Grossman. (SSPL/Getty Images)

Dickens on the move

Line engraving depicting the burning of Rawlins White, c1555. From a late 18th-century edition of John Foxe's 'The Book of Martyrs'. (Alamy)

The Making of Martyrs

German scientists Dr Carl Eisenmann, Dr Mersch, Dr Trabat and Dr Stocklin. (Express/Getty Images)

Second World War

The intelligence war for German scientists

Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in the centre of Florence (Getty)

A big day in history: Florence’s bonfire of the vanities

Illustration by Jonty Clark.

Ye Olde Travel Guide: Corfu 1864

Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917). (Alamy)

First World War

My history hero: Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917)

English medical student Roger Bannister

A history of British sport