January 2011

Articles from the January 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine

Ministers vomit taxes into a large bag labelled 'budget', while the Prince Regent lurks with a list of expenses in this illustration from 1816. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

10 terrible taxes in history

Aftermath of a smash-and-grab raid at a shop in London, c1929. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Ruby Sparks: the smash-and-grab gangster

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British prime minister Edward Heath with Olympic gold medal winner Mary Peters. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Communist sport: Cold War copycats

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Scottish poet Robert Burns. His poetry captured a familiar if rapidly disappearing rural way of life, says Christopher Whatley. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Robert Burns: the people’s poet

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Christopher Clayton Hutton smuggled everything from currency to forged ID discs into German PoW camps. (Public domain)

Second World War

My history hero: Christopher Clayton Hutton (1893–1965)

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This engraving by Charles Grignion (1717–1810) is taken from a lost bust of John Leland at All Souls College, Oxford. Leland's bibliography of British writers is a unique record of the country's medieval literature before it was decimated by Henry VIII's agents. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

John Leland: The man who saved medieval knowledge

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Trawler crew, c1900. (Photo by Past Pix/SSPL/Getty Images)

Toilers of the deep

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The Abingdon Sword, an iron sword fragment and hilt found near Abingdon in Oxfordshire in 1874. The decoration on the sword hilt indicates this was a high status weapon dating from around AD 875. (Ashmolean Museum/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Fighting the Vikings

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Stonehenge: Not a henge, but certainly a stone circle, and a very long-lived centre of human activity. (Getty Images)

Where history happened: Britain’s prehistoric stone circles

Stonehenge, aerial view

General prehistory

Book review: A History of Ancient Britain