Period

The shipwreck that sunk a royal dynasty

Annie Gray portrait by Ian Farrell

Annie Gray“For Queen Victoria, food was a way of exploring the world”

Student nurse Dorothy Norris

A brief guide to the history of the NHS

The NHS: a brief history

Photo of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria: how and why did she become Empress of India?

Alphonse de Neuville's 1880 painting 'The Defence of Rorke's Drift'. The battle was to become a "supreme symbol of imperial heroism". (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

The battle of Rorke's Drift: a stand still clad in the "myths of empire"

Rebuilding Europe after WW2

Princess Feodora (left), half-sister of Queen Victoria (right)

Princess Feodora: the little-known sister of Queen Victoria

How oceans shaped human civilisation

An Australian Sea Shanty band, c1988

A brief history of sea shanties

‘Inkhorn’ was the term for an inkwell made out of a small horn and became a nickname for the new words being created by playwrights and poets, such as William Shakespeare. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

The evolution of the English language

Searching for freedom after the Holocaust

RuPaul – who produces and presents the reality TV show bearing his name – performs during a Gay Rights March in Washington, DC, April 1993. Over 500,000 LGBTQ+ activists and allies participated in a gathering organised to end discrimination. (Photo by Porter Gifford/Liaison)

From Fanny and Stella to Ru Paul's Drag Race: a short history of drag

Supporters of Donald Trump protest in Pennsylvania as the state’s electoral college casts its votes, December 2020

The constitutional crisis behind 2021's presidential transition

Illustration of a mummy with mask

How to make an Egyptian mummy in 6 steps

Portrait of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria quiz: how much do you know about the monarch?

The race for vaccines: lessons from history

Edward Jenner performs a vaccination, in an 1802 cartoon that lampoons the notion that being vaccinated will turn you into a cow

The race for a cure: how we found vaccines for 4 of history's most dangerous diseases

Mourning Martin Luther King JrThe life and legacy of the civil rights leader

An engraving depicting London's Piccadilly Circus heaving with crowds on their way to The Great Exhibition of 1851. A banner reading 'God save the Queen and Prince Albert' has been strung across the street. Within the Crystal Palace some 100,000 objects were displayed – taking up ten miles of space – the work of 15,000 contributors. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain: the decline and fall of the British empire

English cavalry attacking the Sikh at the Battle of Aliwal

Victoria the warrior queen

Britain’s Swinging Sixties: everything you wanted to know

MI9’s secret escape missions

Hitler and Stalin: tyrants at war

A portrait of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with five of their nine children, by Frederick Winterhalter

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: was their union a marriage of misery?

Illustration of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War

Victorians and war: which conflicts were fought during the Victorian era?

Queen Victoria

The final days and death of Queen Victoria

How historians helped build the British empire

A composite image of Joseph Stalin (left) and Adolf Hitler

Second World War

Hitler and Stalin’s utopian dreams

When British pop invaded America