Georgian

A Maria Spilsbury painting of a group sat at a drawing room table

Romance and reality in Jane Austen’s world

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Castaways: 5 remarkable shipwreck stories from history

The Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819 was the bloodiest political event of the 19th century on English soil. Troops under the authority of the Lancashire and Cheshire magistrates attacked and dispersed a rally of some 50,000 reformers on St Peter’s Field, Manchester. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

Peterloo: the English uprising

Peterloo Massacre podcast.

Peterloo: the story of a massacre

Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard Pass (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Napoleon Bonaparte: the rise and fall of a dictator

A cartoon of Napoleon and King George III.

Q&A How tall was Napoleon Bonaparte?

18 August 1819: British soldiers charging the crowd at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, during a meeting called in support of political reform. (Photo by Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A “more shocking” massacre? How we might have overestimated the Peterloo crowds

US soldiers in Vietnam

From the Napoleonic Wars to Vietnam and Iraq: a history of war trauma

Cavalry charge into a crowd of protesters at St Peter's Field, Manchester, as depicted in an 1819 engraving. What followed was the worst violence ever to occur at a political meeting in Britain. (Picture by Alamy)

The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve?

A late 19th or early 20th-century painting entitled 'Mother and Child'. As fertility rates fell, sentimental idealisations of mothers and babies developed. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The motherhood revolution: how the great fertility decline affected the lives of women

Literary women through the ages: Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Brontë all enjoyed female friendships which enriched their writing, say Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. (Getty Images)

From Austen & Brontë to Woolf: literature’s forgotten female friendships

For our forebears, the secret to a good night's sleep lay in the contents of your gut. (Photo by Leemage/UIG via Getty Images)

6 sleeping tips and tricks from history

Illustration by Owen Davey

A brief history of human filth

An episode of the naval battle at Trafalgar: the ship Redoutable (French) against the vessels Victory (British), Téméraire (British) and Thunderer (British). (Photo by Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images).

Britain didn’t “rule the waves” after the battle of Trafalgar, says historian Sam Willis