20th Century

Dancers demonstrate the Charleston, c1926. The dance is often associated with ‘flappers’ – newly enfranchised women with bobbed hair, short skirts and supposedly looser morals – and characterised by frenetic up and down movements and swivelling, akimbo limbs. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Strictly history: 5 facts about the history of dancing

Members of the Ku Klux Klan march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC in 1925. The Klan of this era was a terrorist group in the precise meaning of that term, says Linda Gordon. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

When the Ku Klux Klan was a mass movement

A Red Cross worker in the United States wears a mask to reduce the risk of contracting or spreading the disease in 1918. Though doctors didn’t initially understand the nature of the infectious agent, ‘social distancing’ helped slow the propagation of the flu. (Photo by Paul Thompson/FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Spanish flu: the virus that changed the world

In 1945 there were two million more ‘potential’ households than actual homes, in part exacerbated by the wartime damage to housing stock (Coventry, for example, lost one third of its homes in the Blitz). Here, displaced people in east London wait on the street. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A history of homelessness

Elizabeth II poses for a portrait in Buckingham Palace in December 1958. (Donald McKague/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

12 surprising facts about Queen Elizabeth II

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Issue 12 of BBC World Histories is out now

(Illustration by Davide Bonazzi for BBC History Magazine)

The big question: Has the European Union been a success?

Princess Margaret attends the premiere of Captain Horatio Hornblower, Leicester Square, 1951. (Photo by Ron Burton/Keystone/Getty Images)

The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret

Sergeant Stubby, an American dog who served as the mascot of America's 102nd Infantry Regiment during the First World War. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)

First World War

Sergeant Stubby of the First World War: the heroic story of America’s most decorated war dog

Floral tributes to Diana, Princess of Wales, outside Kensington Palace. (Photo by Liba Taylor/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Princess Diana: when grief gripped a nation

From The Library

Princess Margaret attends the premiere of Captain Horatio Hornblower, Leicester Square, 1951. (Photo by Ron Burton/Keystone/Getty Images)

Princess Margaret: The rock ’n’ roll princess

From The Library

Neville Chamberlain holds aloft the famous piece of paper at Heston aerodrome on 30 September 1938. (Picture by Alamy)

Second World War

The Munich crisis: The battle of appeasement

From The Library

William Beveridge was determined to fight the five "giant evils" of "want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness." (Photo by Hans Wild/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

My history hero: William Beverage (1879–1963)

From The Library

Protesters on the streets of Prague during the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968. Of all the history books Ian Kershaw has authored down the decades, his two wide-ranging volumes on modern Europe have proved the most difficult to write. (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Ian Kershaw on the trials of writing modern history

From The Library