Period

A statue of Robert the Bruce Statue at Stirling Castle, Scotland. (Dreamstime)

The battle of Bannockburn: Robert Bruce's fight for freedom

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world

Working mothers

Crowds flock to the beach at Hastings in August 1938. (Photo by Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)

Summer holiday revolution: when were Britons first allowed to take paid holiday?

Prospectors pan for gold in Siberia during the 19th century.

Where did the major gold rushes of the 19th century happen? And why were people so keen to join the gold rush?

Prospecting towns like Dawson boomed during the gold rush.

The dark side of the 19th-century gold rush

A portrait of Henry VIII

The surprising place where Henry VIII is buried

c1962: Military personnel in a car pass through the US Army's Checkpoint Charlie on the Berlin Wall. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

A brief history of Checkpoint Charlie

British battlefields: everything you wanted to know

Two lovers rest after a hunt, Codex Manesse

Saturday lecture: Medieval love and marriage

The Lancaster

Despite popular misconception, Gladiatorial fighting was not the most popular entertainment in Ancient Rome. (Photo by Alamy)

A brief guide to ancient Rome and the Romans, plus 9 fascinating facts

Bronze effigy of King Henry III on his tomb, Westminster Abbey, London (Photo by Alamy)

Henry III: inside the mind of a medieval king

American jazz singer Helen Forrest performing with trumpeter Harry James (1916-1983), c1945. (Photo by Metronome/Getty Images)

History heroDame Vera Lynn chooses Helen Forrest (1917–99)

The ruined monastery walls of Lindisfarne priory on Holy Island, on 27th June 2019, on Lindisfarne Island, Northumberland, England. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish monk Saint Aidan, and the priory was founded before the end of 634 and Aidan remained there until his death in 651. The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, also known simply as Holy Island, is an island off the northeast coast of England. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic and Anglo-saxon Christianity. After the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England, a priory was re-established. (Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images Images)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #8: Did medieval people care about the time? And did they get bored?

Queen Victoria of Great Britain with her husband, Prince Albert, and their nine children. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

Queen Victoria’s children

Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton: life, discoveries, rivalries and the truth about the apple

English admiral Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596), circa 1585. (Photo by Getty Images)

Francis Drake: slave trader

Francis Drake portrait

Francis Drake’s forgotten role in the English slave trade

American spotlight: how today’s protests echo historical outrage

Violence erupted in New Orleans, and white southerners killed and injured more than 100 freed slaves during a riot against reconstruction plans. (Image by Alamy)

Rebuilding America after the Civil War: what was the Reconstruction era and why did it fail?

Britain and the slave trade

Slaves of Confederate Brigadier-General Thomas F Drayton at his cotton plantation in South Carolina during the American Civil War

Why is America haunted by its past?

A police officer uses his baton on a protester in Glasgow, 1919

1919: Britain's red summer

American civil rights leader Martin Luther King

The civil rights movement: everything you wanted to know

Henry VIII and Francis I meet at the Field of Cloth of Gold, 7 June 1520. (Photo by Getty Images)

The Field of the Cloth of Gold

Two girls are tried for witchcraft in a courtroom scene

What were the Salem Witch Trials?

Abraham Lincoln (Photo by Library of Congress)

The secret plot to kill Lincoln

Tournament between the Duke of Brittany and the Duke of Bourbon. (Photo by Christophel Fine Art/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #7: what it meant to be 'blue' in the Middle Ages (and more killer rabbits)

People flee to boats on the River Thames to escape the Great Fire of London, September 1666.

Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London