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

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

Communist sport: Cold War copycats

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

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)

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

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

Toilers of the deep

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

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