Georgian

Lemuel F Abbott's famous 1797 portrait of Horatio Nelson. In 1805, the British naval hero promised to speak publicly against the abolition of slavery, but was denied the opportunity by his death at Trafalgar later that year. (Picture by Alamy)

The Library Lord Nelson and slavery: Nelson’s dark side

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A 'Thanksgiving Greetings' postcard. (Photo by K.J. Historical/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

A brief history of Thanksgiving

A portrait of Marie Antoinette dated 1783 and painted by Vigée-Le Brun. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

In profile: the life and death of Marie Antoinette

Queen Victoria on an ivory throne, 1876. (W. & D. Downey/Getty Images)

Top 11 monarchs in British history

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

“Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now”: 5 minutes with Mike Leigh

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

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

Mike Leigh on Peterloo

Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London. "We're brought up on a whole ant-heap of myths about Napoleon. The apocryphal stories that swirl around him are legion," he says. (Photography by Frank Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity”

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Trick photograph. (Photo by LM Melander and Brothers) entitled 'The Haunted Lane,' depicts a pair of men terrified by a female ghost, mid-to-late 19th century. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

5 historic hauntings for Halloween

18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

The Peterloo Massacre

Lady Sarah Frances Elizabeth Armstrong-Jones (centre) – the daughter of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon – was born seventh in line to the throne. (Photo by Terry Fincher/Daily Express/Getty Images)

7 royal babies who were once seventh in line to the throne

Illustration from Dante's ‘Inferno’, the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem ‘Divine Comedy’, depicting thieves tormented in hell by serpents. Engraving by Gustave Dore, 1885. (Photo by Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images)

General ancient history

A brief history of the afterlife

The miller Samuel Wood, whose arm and scapula were torn off when entangled in a rope attached to a moving mill machinery in 1737. (Photo by Alamy)

7 bizarre cases in the history of medicine

A portrait of the romantic novelist Jane Austen. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The real reason Jane Austen never married