Period

Berbice: a slave rebellion that nearly succeeded.

An illustration from The Travels of Marco Polo, showing a teenage Marco on the deck of a ship sailing away from Venice

Why are Marco Polo's travels so famous?

Trial by combat: the real history behind The Last Duel.

A West Indian immigrant in 1960s Britain: A real lonely Londoner.

A 14th-century illustration shows two bishops watching men fight to the death in a trial by combat.

Medieval trial by combat: the real history behind The Last Duel

A montage of Romans (Photos courtesy of Getty and Alamy)

How ethnically diverse was Roman Britain?.

Hume Castle

Q&AWho was the original king of the castle and who was the dirty rascal?

The title page and frontispiece of Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, a first-hand account of his experience in slavery and how he seized his freedom. (Image by Getty Images)

David Olusoga on the extraordinary story of Olaudah Equiano.

A medieval miniature depicts a monk and a woman in a bed.

Sex in the Middle Ages: have attitudes really changed?

Liberty and racism: an interconnected history.

Q&ACould Roman slaves buy their own freedom?

The fabled ‘Vegetable Lamb of Tartary’ was a plant said to grow sheep as its fruit.

Q&AWhat was the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?

George III: the tyrant who lost America?.

Portrait of First World War nurse Edith Cavell with one of her dogs

First World War

Edith Cavell: how the executed British First World War nurse became a symbol of peace

A portrait from the 18th century of King George III wearing his coronation robes

George III: why his reputation as the mad king who lost America needs to be re-evaluated.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace: a visionary of computing

A woodcut showing the interior of a kitchen in Elizabethan England. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England.

A reconstruction of a Viking church

Vikings in America: the Europeans who arrived 500 years before Columbus.

A 12-year-old boy with a large bruise on his face ‘pulls threads’ in a New York sweatshop

The 19th-century slums of New York

At home with the Mongols.

A portrait of Charles II sitting on a throne

Your guide to King Charles II, the ‘merry monarch’

Pompeii: everything you wanted to know.

Unexpected Edwardians.

An allegorical depiction of the plague in ancient Rome, an angel batters down a door while people lie sick on the ground

The reign of Roman disease: why did disease hit a flourishing empire?.

Plagues of our past.

Portrait of John Dee

John Dee: Elizabethan 007, scientist, magician and spy

German doctor Otto Warburg at work in his laboratory

Otto Warburg: the Jewish doctor and the Nazi war on cancer.

Illustration of a man without a head, but with his face on his chest. This is one of many creatures Sir John Mandeville claimed to have met on his travels

A knight's (tall) tale: why medieval traveller Sir John Mandeville was more popular than Marco Polo.

Ronald HuttonOliver Cromwell: Saint or Serpent?.

The Bal des Ardents (the 'Ball of the Burning Men'), from 'The Chronicler of European Chivalry' by GG Coulton (London, 1930). The 1393 tragedy claimed the lives of four people. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Q&AWhat was the ‘Ball of the Burning Men’?