Period

2020: The historians’ verdict

US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, meeting during the Casablanca conference in 1943. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Second World War

Churchill and D-Day: did the prime minister oppose the Normandy landings?

Laurence ReesHitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

Chess players in the 14th century

Ancient board games: which ones did people play for fun in the past?

A brief history of turkeys, plus why we eat a turkey dinner at Christmas

The Trojan Horse – seen in the 2004 film Troy

How much of the legend of Troy is real?

Women in Greek myths

Actress Lily James and actor Michael Huisman looking at each other in a still from the film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Life under Nazi rule: the occupation of the Channel Islands

The future King George VI playing at the Wimbledon tennis championships, 1926

How George VI's sheer ordinariness made him the darling of the nation

Ian Fleming, British author and creator of the James Bond character

James Bond in real life: where did Ian Fleming's inspirations come from?

A 14th-century illustration showing medieval butchery. (Photo by Prisma/UIG via Getty Images)

The medieval marketplace: a time traveller’s guide to shopping in the Middle Ages

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin vs God: did the 'Origin of Species' cause a clash between church and science?

Marble bust of Caligula

Caligula: murderous and depraved, or a victim of history?

German writer Hans Fallada (1893–1947), pictured in 1934 with his son Uli in a carriage in Carwitz, Mecklenburg. (Photo by Getty Images)

Germans who resisted the Nazis

Boys playing conkers in 1926. Horse chestnuts played an unlikely role in the war effort just a few years earlier. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Did conkers help win the First World War?

Shakespeare: everything you wanted to know

Claudia Jones at the Brixton offices of 'The West Indian Gazette'

Black British historyBritain's black trailblazers

A secret WW2 wargame

A policewoman gives directions to tourists in London in the 1920s.

“Sherlock Holmes in skirts”: the world's first policewomen

Second World War

'Real life battleships': the secret game that countered German U-boat attacks during WW2

Sloe gin recipe. (BBC History Magazine)

Historical recipeSloe Gin

The First Thanksgiving in 1621, after a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme; screen print, 1932. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

7 facts you might not know about the history of Thanksgiving

Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale and the next Sharpe

Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, with her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, after their marriage in 1947. (Corbis via Getty Images)

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage

Young Belgian refugees wave a British flag during celebrations for Belgian National Day in London during the First World War

Belgian refugees in WW1 Britain: were they welcome guests?

An allegory of France in 1870

Franco-Prussian War: the conflict that plunged Europe into a nightmare

Oswald, the many-headed medieval saint

Your guide to...debtors' prisons

Roman toilet

Tales of the toilet: a historical A–Z

Neil Oliver

Life lessons from history: Neil Oliver on searching the ancient past for timeless wisdom