Georgian

Norman Davies introduces a long-maligned and overlooked monarch, George II, and reveals that there are in fact many reasons to remember his reign. (Image from Getty Images)

George II: reassessing a much-forgotten monarch

Dr Freya Gowrley reveals how Georgian satirists used images of fatness to comment on the anxieties of the age (Image from Getty Images)

Why were the Georgians fixated with fatness?

Alex Renton shares the story of his own family’s involvement in the slave trade, and considers how best to deal with this unwanted inheritance. (Image from Getty Images)

The slave trade: a family history

French Revolution Quiz – test your knowledge with our history quiz

Quiz How much do you know about the French Revolution?

An 18th Century cartoon satirises reactions to Louis XVI's attempt tp flee France. The french Revolution shows what can happen when the state fails on a catastrophic scale

Are revolutions doomed to failure?

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle

Q&A Who wrote the French national anthem?

Napoleon portrait by Jacques-Louis David shows is perhaps the most famous painting of the French emperor with one hand tucked out of sight

Why do Napoleon’s portraits often show him with one hand inside his shirt? The story of the French emperor’s missing hand…

Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier’s painting portrays the Declaration of the Rights of Man

How progressive was the French Revolution?

Kissing the Blarney Stone: a women hangs over the precipice with the aid of a friend as she attempts the feat at Blarney Castle in 1935

What is the Blarney Stone, where did it come from and why do people kiss it?

Britain & France: enemies or economic partners?

Britain & France: enemies or economic partners?

A late 18th-century painting depicting the execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The smile revolution against the Reign of Terror

The execution of Louis XVI in the Place de la Revolution

What is a revolution?

An illustration of the head of Louis XVI

Guillotined in the French Revolution: the bloody story through 7 severed heads

Camille and Lucile Desmoulins

How the architects of the ‘Terror’ after the French Revolution ended up among its victims

Fern Riddell

Contraception, consent & erotic connection: sex through history