Cold War

In need of some summer reading inspiration? Check out our list of favourite biographies, era-spanning epics and much else besides. (Photo by Goodluz/Alamy Stock Photo)

Summer reads 2020: the best history books to take on holiday (or staycation)

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon's surface

The history of the moon landing: everything you need to know

President Kennedy gives a televised speech, 22 October 1962. (Photo by Getty Images)

The Cuban Missile Crisis: everything you wanted to know

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world

Sean Connery and Ursula Andress in a scene from the 1962 film 'James Bond: Dr. No' (Photo by United Artist/Getty Images)

The spies who inspired Bond

Astronauts being lifted from the Apollo 13 spacecraft after splashdown in the South Pacific,1970. (Photo by Alamy)

Apollo 13

A Burglar Looks In, Picture Post 1950. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burglary: a modern history

B-17 bombers make their way to England to aid the British in WW2, April 1942. (Photo by Getty Images)

Second World War

From Allies to enemies

Setting a trap: East German soldiers construct the Berlin Wall, 13 August 1961. The barrier was an attempt to stop the flood of Germans fleeing from east to west – yet, as scores of audacious escape bids attest, it didn't entirely succeed. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Escape from East Berlin: an audacious bid to tunnel under the Berlin Wall

Richard Nixon gives a thumbs-up

Presidents under pressure: the resignation of Richard Nixon and the impeachment case against Trump

The famous Checkpoint Charlie crossing point between East and West Berlin, June 1968 (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall

A man attacks the Berlin Wall with a pickaxe on the night of November 9th, 1989 as news spread rapidly that the East German Government would now start granting exit visas to anyone who wanted to go to the West. The announcement was misinterpreted as meaning the border was now open and East German border guards were unable to stop the rush of people to the Wall. Within hours people were smashing sections of the Wall with their own hand tools and these first cracks in the Wall led to the complete opening of the border within days. (Photo by robert wallis/Corbis via Getty Images)

In pictures: remembering the Berlin Wall 30 years on

30th June 1963: Some of the many hundreds of supporters of the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and the Committee of 100 waiting outside Birch Grove, the country home of British prime minister Harold Macmillan, where he and American president John F Kennedy are having weekend talks. (Photo by Kent Gavin/Keystone/Getty Images)

Peter Hennessy on Britain in transition

Changdeokgung Palace in South Korea

Travel Seoul, South Korea: a modern metropolis rising from ruins

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi

Have nuclear weapons helped to maintain global peace?