20th Century - Getty Images

20th Century

Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill in the 2018 Oscar winner 'Darkest Hour'.

Think pieceOur dangerous devotion to the Second World War

The battle for Sicily, 1943

German Jews in WW1

'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' (2020): Viola Davis as Ma Rainey. (Photo by David Lee/Netflix)

Who was Ma Rainey, “mother of the blues”?

Historian Margaret Macmillan

"To destroy a library is to erase part of the cultural memory of humankind": Margaret MacMillan on war

A WW2 story of survival

Hunting down the Portland Spy Ring

The gay MPs who opposed appeasement

Georg Elser, a little-known carpenter-turned-assassin whose daring attempt to kill Hitler almost succeeded

Georg Elser: the man who nearly assassinated Hitler

Toby WilkinsonThe rediscovery of Ancient Egypt

Castro and the trip that shaped the 1960s

George Washington Carver in a laboratory

History heroGillian Burke chooses George Washington Carver (c1864–1943)

Wrens operating the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park, 1943

Second World War

Your guide to Bletchley Park, the key WW2 decryption centre

The death of John Lennon: what happened?

The International Brigades: fighting fascism in Spain

England’s sporting obsession

Ethiopia 1935: The real history behind The Shadow King

David Olusoga“Desks went from a niche furniture item to the work station of millions”

Second World War

Caught off guard: why didn't America see Pearl Harbor coming?

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after her arrest

Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat: what happened next?

British mystery writer Agatha Christie, c1926.

The mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie

US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, meeting during the Casablanca conference in 1943. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Second World War

Churchill and D-Day: did the prime minister oppose the Normandy landings?

Laurence ReesHitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

A brief history of turkeys, plus why we eat a turkey dinner at Christmas

Actress Lily James and actor Michael Huisman looking at each other in a still from the film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Life under Nazi rule: the occupation of the Channel Islands

The future King George VI playing at the Wimbledon tennis championships, 1926

How George VI's sheer ordinariness made him the darling of the nation

Ian Fleming, British author and creator of the James Bond character

James Bond in real life: where did Ian Fleming's inspirations come from?

German writer Hans Fallada (1893–1947), pictured in 1934 with his son Uli in a carriage in Carwitz, Mecklenburg. (Photo by Getty Images)

Germans who resisted the Nazis

Boys playing conkers in 1926. Horse chestnuts played an unlikely role in the war effort just a few years earlier. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Did conkers help win the First World War?

Claudia Jones at the Brixton offices of 'The West Indian Gazette'

Black British historyBritain's black trailblazers