July 2020

Expert articles from the July 2020 issue of BBC History Magazine

Charles Dickens used his novels as a platform from which to attack the injustices that he believed blighted 19th-century Britain. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Charles Dickens: prison reformer, scourge of capitalists, champion of the poor

A girl, with her brother on her back, trudges past a stalled American tank, South Korea, June 1951. (Photo by Alamy)

How we forgot the Korean War

A gilt-bronze effigy of Henry III in what is his greatest legacy, Westminster Abbey. (Photo by Alamy)

Henry III in his own words: the medieval king as you’ve never seen him before

Women load up scrap metal at a major steelworks, 1942. During the Second World War, the government opened hundreds of nurseries to encourage women into work but, as Britain returned to peace, most closed. (Photo by Fred Ramage/Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Who’s holding the baby? How working mothers navigated the 20th century

A bust of Ludwig van Beethoven before the original handwritten score for his Piano Sonata no. 28 in A major, Op. 101. The composer stood at the vanguard of a new artistic movement that celebrated emotion and nature. (Getty Images/Alamy/Dreamstime)

The soundtrack of Beethoven’s life

c1935: Beatrice Shilling sits astride her Norton motorcycle. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

My history hero: Cathy Newman chooses Beatrice Shilling (1909–1990)

Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France meet (in marquee, top) at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, June 1520. “For all their expressions of friendship,” writes Glenn Richardson, “the two kings spent most of the summit attempting to outshine one another”. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Fields of the Cloth of Gold: the greatest show on earth

John Nichol is a historian, author and RAF veteran who was captured and paraded on Iraqi television during the Gulf War, before returning to active service. He has since written several works of military history as well as a number of novels, and is a regular commentator on military affairs

Second World War

Your guide to the Lancaster bomber

Equestrian portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from the Ellesmere manuscript of his Canterbury Tales (14th century).

Cosmopolitan Chaucer: Marion Turner on the 14th-century poet’s inventive, international life