20th Century - Getty Images

20th Century

Illustration by Lynn Hatzius

Britain’s Bonnie and Clyde.

The ruins of the Canadian port of Halifax in the wake of the explosion in December 1917. Almost 2,000 people were killed and 9,000 injured when two ships collided at the height of the First World War. (Photo by Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images)

Catastrophe in Canada.

The Carbonniere Tower

My favourite place: the Camargue, France

Blitz

Second World War

The cruel cost of the Blitz: how did everyday Britons rebuild their lives?

General Edmund Allenby walks into Jerusalem on 11 December 1917

The Balfour Declaration: Britain’s unholy mess.

Violeta Parra and the birth of ‘New Song’

Edward, Prince of Wales, in the rear seat of a Bristol F.2B Fighter with Captain WG Barker of No. 139 Squadron during his flight in 1918, while on a visit to the Italian Front. (Crown Copyright/Air Historical Branch image H1608)

Royal flying

Children at the Berlin Wall on Sebastianstrasse, Berlin - Kreuzberg - in around 1964. (Photo by Lehnartz/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

The secret history of the Berlin Wall

Striking workers carry banners through the streets of Petrograd (St Petersburg) at the start of the February Revolution that brought the fall of the Russian monarchy the next month. (Getty Images)

Russia’s revolutions: How 1917 shaped a century.

Gertrude Bell. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

My history hero: Gertrude Bell (1868–1926).

Amber Fort, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. (Getty Images)

My favourite place: Jaipur, India

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, depicted in an undated Communist poster. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The red dawn: the October Revolution.

The death of Stalin.

British prime minister Clement Attlee reading a document in his office, 27 July 1946. (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Attlee’s secret war with Stalin.

Soviet submarines. (Bettmann via Getty Images)

When the world didn’t end.

The May 1940 War Cabinet Crisis: Churchill’s darkest hour?.

The Ukrainian famine.

West Indian immigrants arrive at Victoria Station, London, following their journey from Southampton Docks. Originally published in ‘Picture Post’, 1956. (Photo by Haywood Magee/Getty Images)

Clair Wills on immigrants.

A c1880 advertisement poster for Coca-Cola. The name derived from its extracts of coca leaves and kola nuts – the former did contain small amounts of cocaine. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)

Q&ADid the original Coca-Cola drink really contain cocaine?

A boy sitting on a rock ledge above a refugee camp, October 1947. (Photo by Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

The bloody road to partition: 8 landmark moments in the turbulent story.

A decade of domesticity: how the 1950s made the modern home.

The White House, Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

QuizHow much do you know about US presidents?.

A Calcutta pavement, c1961

After Partition: colony politics and the rise of communism in Bengal.

Icelandic murder mystery.

British prime minister Winston Churchill greeting the crowd from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. From left to right: Princess Elizabeth II; the Queen Mother; Churchill, King George VI and Princess Margaret. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Buckingham Palace’s balcony: a focal point for national celebration.

Living through Partition.

The big question: Is Africa a prisoner of its past?.

The USS Liberty arriving for repairs following the attack by Israeli warplanes and motor torpedo boats

Why did Israel attack the USS Liberty?.

Benito Mussolini with members of the Black shirt Legion

The thorns in Mussolini’s side: the anti-Fascists who opposed the Italian regime.

What happened when the Rolling Stones rocked Warsaw?.