General Early Modern

A purported portrait of Elizabeth Báthory as a young woman

General Early Modern

Elizabeth Báthory: a 17th-century ‘serial killer’

An illustration of a crow chasing a silhouette of a man running away in the distance

General Early Modern

The supernatural signs that unmasked murderers in early modern England

Photo of Hiram Bingham

General Early Modern

How a proto-Indiana Jones rediscovered the Inca stronghold of Machu Picchu

Jai Singh II (third from left) built astronomical observatories across northern India in the 18th century, incorporating knowledge he’d sourced everywhere from China to Portugal (Photo by Dinodia Photos/Alamy Stock Photo)

General Early Modern

Why the scientific revolution was far from just a European phenomenon

Athénaïs de Montespan, one of the official mistresses of Louis XIV, was a suspect in a scandalous plot to murder the French king (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

General Early Modern

The Affair of the Poisons: who plotted to kill King Louis XIV?

A mermaid combing her hair

General Early Modern

Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories

Paris became a charnel house during the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, as shown in this painting by François Dubois (Photo By DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images)

General Early Modern

Catholics vs Huguenots Your guide to the French Wars of Religion

An engraving of the pirate Henry Avery with his ship in a notorious raid that almost pushed England and India to war (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

General Early Modern

Hell on high water: the rise and fall of the golden age of piracy

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Pod Blessin Adams WL

General Early Modern

Grisly killings & mysterious motives: murder in early modern Britain . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Historian Caroline Dodds Pennock (Photo by Ellie Grace)

General Early Modern

Caroline Dodds Pennock “Indigenous Americans were horrified by inequalities in European society”

Circa 1510, Babur Shah (Zahir ud-Din Muhammad, 1482 - 1530), first of the mughal emperors of India. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

General Early Modern

15 minutes of fame Margaret MacMillan chooses Babur

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Pod Jerry Brotton 1500 WL

General Early Modern

A whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500 . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Coloured engraving of Malintzin

General Early Modern

15 minutes of fame Caroline Dodds Pennock chooses Malintzin

The leader of the Luddites, 1812. Found in the collection of British Museum. Anonymous artist. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

5 of the worst years in British history

Photo of Ginger Rogers

Q&A When did people start wearing sunglasses?