Long reads, from BBC History Magazine

Rosalind Crone delves examines the audacious – and surprising – crimes of female hoaxers, thieves and scammers from the 18th to 20th centuries

Sarah Norton explains why the young heir posed such a threat to the Tudor usurper

Campbell Price sifts the myths from the facts about ancient Egyptian burial rituals – from mummified kittens to deadly curses

Dan Jones reveals how Henry V's youth helped shape him into the pious warrior king we know today

Dolly Jørgensen considers why the pig was so vital to urban life in the Middle Ages

Jerry Brotton explores the origins of the four points of the compass

Eleanor Barraclough reads the runes to find out more about day-to-day life during the age of the Vikings

David Musgrove takes a tour of the historic water closet to uncover how our toilets habits have changed over the centuries

Caroline Burt and Richard Partington chart how the 13th and 14th centuries paved the way for Britain's modern system of governance

Robert Hutton unveils the tricks of the trade of the spy who gave the Nazis a run for their money

Nathen Amin explores how the unprecedented rise of the first Tudor monarch led to his later rotten reputation

Ellie Cawthorne delves into the suffragette brand identity to consider how the success of their political movement was dictated by their PR campaign

Fiona Watson challenges the mythology surrounding the Scottish warrior

Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman uncover the tips and tricks of Oliver Cromwell's secret ring of spies gathering intelligence from 17th-century England's postal system

Steve Tibble reveals how the medieval Holy Land became a hotbed of lawlessness during the crusades

Daisy Dunn writes women back into the story of the ancient conflict

Robert Pike details the horrific 1944 massacre of a French village by a German SS division

Guy de la Bédoyère unveils the hidden stories of the enslaved Romans who shaped the fate of their empire from behind the scenes

Sophie Thérèse Ambler and James Morris explore how the the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Cumbria held out against the invading Normans

Matthew Parker explains why, though an exotic festival of delights, the British Empire Exhibition also revealed an empire that was on its last legs

Helen Cowie marks the RSPCA's 200th anniversary by returning to its roots campaigning against vicious Victorian animal cruelty

Nicky Nielsen traces the progress of a brutal 15th-century BC battle that saw supercharged the rise of Egypt's greatest warrior pharaoh

Nick Lloyd considers why, despite its scale and legacy, the First World War's Eastern Front has been overshadowed by its Western counterpart

Sarah Gristwood delves into the diaries of women that have previously been lost to time to reveal what they can tell us about the past