20th Century

Conrad Nagel and Dorothy Dalton in movie still from Fool's Paradise, 1921.

Hollywood in the 1920s: stars, scandals and the end of silent films

Cover illustration from Le Petit Journal, 1908, showing Ferdinand I of Bulgaria declaring independence (centre) and Franz Joseph I of Austria Hungary seizing Bosnia and Herzegovina from a forlorn-looking Ottoman sultan, Abdülhamid II (Photo by Archives Charmet / Alamy Images)

Divided they fell: how war, revolution and sectarianism led to the end of the Ottoman empire

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)

Forbidden dances and deadly marathons: 5 facts about the history of dancing

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Pod Hilary French WL

How ballroom dancing gripped Britain . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Pod Sarah Colvin WL

Inside Germany’s postwar prisons . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Santa_Surveillance_s Glen McBeth

Q&A Why did NORAD begin tracking Santa Claus in the Cold War?

Mrs Louisa Lee, a widow who went missing from Margate, Kent in 1939.
She left a boarding-house in the Cliftonville area of Margate to go to London but was never seen again.

Historical cold cases The mystery of the vanishing widow

Periodic outbreaks of smog would continue for several years – this image shows a London street in late 1953. (Image by Getty Images)

The Great Smog of London: what caused the 1952 crisis?

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Pod Alwyn Turner WL

Sixties counterculture: everything you wanted to know . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The British Commonwealth of Nations - Together Poster (Photo by Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Why we should remember… The Statute of Westminster

Men of the SAS returning from a three-month trip behind enemy lines during the war in North Africa. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

“They changed the way war is run”: Ben Macintyre on the early SAS

The hammer and sickle, seen held aloft by the figures in this Soviet-era statue, symbolised unity between the working class and the peasantry

When and why did the Soviet Union fall? Your history guide to the USSR

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My history hero Jeremy Bowen chooses Vincent Sheean

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Pod Andrew Scull WL

American psychiatry: a tortured history . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Cuban Missile Crisis WL

Episode 4 The road to resolution . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.