Period

Equestrian portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from the Ellesmere manuscript of his Canterbury Tales (14th century). "The world in which Chaucer moved was very outward-looking," says Marion Turner. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Cosmopolitan Chaucer: the 14th-century poet’s inventive, international life

Two members of the BEF (British Expeditionary Forces)

Indian soldiers at Dunkirk

Charles II and his parties

Was Charles II too randy to rule?

An engraving depicting a scene of chaos at Bethlem Royal Hospital

Bethlem Royal Hospital: why did the infamous Bedlam asylum have such a fearsome reputation?

The ruins of Barnard Castle

Barnard Castle: a journey through time

The US cutter Spencer attacks U-boat U-175

The Battle of the Atlantic: why Britain almost lost to Hitler's U-boats

A scene from the Smithfield Decretals depicting a rabbit beheading a man. Rabbits seem to have a strange place in medieval imagery – and are depicted as having strangely violent tendencies. "It’s the sort of thing to give you nightmares," says David Musgrove. (Photo by Album/British Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #5: chivalry, medieval killer rabbits and prisoners of war in the 15th century

King Edward II

In profile: King Edward II

Medieval prisoners

What was it like to be a Prisoner of War during the Hundred Years’ War?

King John II made prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers by the English during the Hundred Years War, 1356. Illustration

Medieval prisoners of war

Medieval punishments, Toulouse, 14th century. (Photo by Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

How bloody was medieval life?

Ramshackle homes in a Newcastle slum, c1880

From riches to rags: David Olusoga reveals how Britain's grand houses descended into Victorian slums

The British home has changed substantially in the past 300 years (Illustration by Ed Crooks)

The evolution of the British home: from the Georgian era to the present day

Charles Cundall’s painting ‘The Withdrawal From Dunkirk, June 1940’

Second World War

9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Dunkirk

King John hunting on horseback

Was King John really that bad? Yes!

David Olusoga on A House Through Time

The crusades: everything you wanted to know

Saturday lecture: Medieval crime and violence

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained

British ships on convoy duty in the North Atlantic

Danger in the deep: key questions about the Battle of the Atlantic answered

The Battle of the Atlantic: the "desperate" WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound

Annie Gray photographed at her home in East Anglia (Photo by Ian Farrell)

Cooking for Churchill

Rutger Bregman. (Rutger Bregman (Photo by Maartje ter Horst)

Rutger Bregman’s optimistic history of the world

This is the famous Rhynie Man carved stone, thought to be Pictish in date. (Photo by © Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service: www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/archaeology)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #4: back to Braveheart, Viking river boats, Picts, and the Crusades

Illustration of King John ripping up Magna Carta

What if...Magna Carta hadn’t been written?

Books interview with Emma Griffin: "Looking at family life reveals a dark side to Victorian economic progress"

Protesters demonstrate against a US military base at Santo Stefano in 2005

Sardinia: the legacy of the notorious shepherd-bandits of the mountains

The big question: what have the Romans ever done for us?

Living on the edge in Victorian Britain

Industrial revolution

Explore the Industrial Revolution – “the world’s greatest makeover” – with Monkman & Seagull