20th Century - Getty Images

20th Century

Bethlehem. (Getty Images)

My favourite place: Bethlehem, West Bank

Fidel Castro: in pictures

(Photo by iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Q&AWhy do Americans call the British ‘limeys’?

First World War

What is the origin of the phrase 'to blow smoke up someone's arse'?

Leopold II statue. (Getty Images)

My favourite place: the Belgian coast

The end game: Britain’s role in Afghanistan 1947–50.

History quiz – Dames, JFK and the house of Gonzaga.

My history hero: Sam Cooke (1931–64).

Viscountess Nancy Astor on her election campaign in 1919. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

The LibraryWomen pioneers in parliament.

Maya Angelou was “the ultimate boundary-breaker”, says Naga Munchetty. (Photo by Craig Herndon/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

My history hero: Maya Angelou (1928–2014).

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr (centre) at a UN Security Council meeting concerning the Suez crisis. (Photo by Lisa Larsen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Blood and sand: Suez, Hungary and the crisis that shook the world.

Londoners read newspaper headlines about Britain's entry to the Common Market, January 1973. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The reluctant Europeans.

Soviet missiles in Red Square during the May Day Parade of 1962, the year the world came closest to nuclear war. (Photo by Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images)

History explorer: the Cold War.

"Welcome home, Charlie": Chaplin’s postwar return to London.

Emil Zátopek. (Photo by Universal/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

The running revolutionary.

Singer Germaine Lubin in conversation with officer Hans Speidel at the German Embassy in Paris, 1941. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Les Parisiennes: how the women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s.

The Cold War and the history of philosophy.

British reserve troops waiting to move up to the forward area during the battle of the Somme, France, 1916. Photograph from the Daily Herald Archive. (Photo by Daily Herald Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)

The Somme: was it really a monstrous failure?.

Adolf Hitler is welcomed by supporters at Nuremberg, 1933. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Enigma before Bletchley: the German spies who betrayed Hitler to steal codes.

Q&AMein Kampf: what happened to Hitler’s money after his death?.

Seve Ballesteros. (Photo by Brian Morgan/Getty Images)

My history hero: Seve Ballesteros (1957–2011)

Men line the rails around Radio City, on an abandoned naval fort in the Thames Estuary. In June 1966, Radio City was at the centre of a murder enquiry that would lead to the closure of Britain’s pirate radio stations. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

1966: when the swing turned sour.

Tony Blair asks permission of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government

Elizabeth II and her prime ministers.

Lyndon B Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. (Photo by Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images)

My history hero: Lyndon Johnson (1908–73).

Miners on strike after the decision from the High Court of Justice to seize all assets of the labor unions, 1984. (Photo by Alain Nogues/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

There was more to the 80s than Maggie.

Behind the scenes of Suzannah Lipscomb’s 'Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home'

A 1954 advertisement for Cooper's Y-Front. (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A revealing history of underwear.

(BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd/Tiger Aspect/Robert Viglasky)

Peaky Blinders: behind the scenes with creator Steven Knight.

The Valletta skyline – in the centre is St Paul's Anglican Cathedral and Carmelite Church. (Photo by Getty Images)

My favourite place: Malta

Guillaume Apollinaire and his wife, Jacqueline Kolb, on the terrace of the boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris, France, in 1918. (Photo by adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images)

My history hero: Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918).