Illustrated Medieval scene from the Romance of Lancelot

Medieval

Arundel Castle, West Sussex

Durham Cathedral on a sunny day. Taken near to the water of the River Wear. (Dreamstime)

Where history happened: pilgrimage.

Richard I (also known as Richard the Lionheart) frequently dated documents with the 'regnal year'. An example of this might be "Winchester on the 23 day of April in the fifth year of our reign", which would translate to 23 April 1194. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

A legacy of the lionheart.

Pickering Castle, North Yorkshire

Is there evidence of prejudice against left-handers in the medieval period?.

General prehistory

Clearwell Caves, Gloucestershire

Provost Skene's House, Aberdeen

Richard II, led captive by Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), renounces the throne in Jean Creton's 'Histoire du Roy d'Angleterre Richard II' (1401-05). (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Richard II: “I find myself a traitor”.

The death of Aelfeah at the hands of the Danes, portrayed in a window of St Luke's church, Bath. (Photo by: MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images)

St Ælfheah: Canterbury’s other martyr.

Stamford, Lincolnshire

St Albans Clock Tower, Hertfordshire

Castle Campbell, Clackmannanshire

Britain’s medieval identity crisis.

Dundrennan Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway

Too good for the gallery

Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in the centre of Florence (Getty)

A big day in history: Florence's bonfire of the vanities.

Glenluce Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway

An 18th century village in Germany. Strict laws regulated the goods that each social class could buy. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Beware what you buy: the goods German citizens were forbidden to consume.

Whithorn Priory, Dumfries and Galloway

The Golden Coast.

The LibraryYe Olde Travel Guide: Mainz 1455.

The Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade, c1200. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Why Islam crushed the crusaders.

A statue of Joan of Arc in the home where she is thought to have been born, in Domrémy-La-Pucelle, eastern France. (PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images)

Where history happenedJoan of Arc.

Royston Cave, Hertfordshire

A portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from an early 15th-century manuscript of the poem ‘De Regimine Principum’ by Thomas Hoccleve. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The LibraryChaucer and the idea of Englishness.

A c15th-century vellum shows the Squire from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For Adam Nicolson, the essence of the gentry was “government-through-networking”. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Stories of the gentry.

The Tower of London. More than 30 inmates successfully broke out of the royal fortress between the 12th and 18th centuries. (Photo by Tetra Images/Getty Images)

How to escape from the Tower of London.

A portrait of King Edward III. By using his offspring as pawns in a series of alliances, the king hoped to wield power over a confederation of dependent states bound together by feudal and family ties. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)

King Edward III: the family man.

Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey

A scene from the Chronique de St Denis depicting the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France, 1137. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

An A to Z of the Plantagenets.