Period

A line-up of girls ready to play football, somewhere in England during the First World War, c1917. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

10 facts you (probably) didn't know about the First World War

Hadley Freeman on a 20th-century family history.

Al Pacino and Logan Lerman in Amazon Prime's 'Hunters'.

A historian’s review of Amazon’s “Holocaust revenge saga” Hunters

Anne Frank - Getty Images

Second World War

12 things you need to know about Anne Frank and her diary

Queen Elizabeth greets the crowd from the top of a huge elephant minutely decorated during a walk to the gates of the Jaipur Palace, c1961 in Jaipur, India. (Photo by Keystone-FranceGamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The Queen and the Commonwealth: a force for international change?.

Photographs of Anne Frank and her father, Otto, with the typewriter

Censoring Anne Frank: how her famous diary has been edited through history

Female aviators Dorothy Spicer and Pauline Gower in a bungalow in Reading, 9 September 1931. Gower later became an officer of the Air Transport Auxiliary's No 5 Ferry Pilots Pool. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

When women flew Spitfires.

Christine de Pizan. (Photo by Getty Images)

Doctors, playwrights and feminists: meet 6 trailblazing medieval women

Stonemason Andrew Ziminski. (Photo by David Hampton)

Written in stone.

A portrait of Thomas Cromwell

The Mirror & The Light book review: Hilary Mantel's epic finale "lives up to the hype".

Wartime evacuees wash their hands

“The very sight of her hands did almost turn my stomach”: a brief history of hand-washing.

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler watch a Nazi parade staged for the Italian dictators's visit to Germany. (Photo by Getty Images)

How do dictators seize power? The malevolent careers of eight 20th-century leaders explained

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler watch a Nazi parade staged for the Italian dictators's visit to Germany. (Photo by Getty Images)

Dictators explained.

A 19th-century depiction of Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Who was Maharaja Ranjit Singh?

Who is the greatest leader in world history?

A portrait of Edward IV, the first Yorkist king of England. From the National Portrait Gallery. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Edward IV: champion of the Wars of the Roses

The (not so) stinky Middle Ages: why medieval people were cleaner than we think

On his plantation in Georgia, American politician Benjamin Hawkins is teaching Creek Native Americans how to use a plow, 1805. (Photo by Granger, NYC / TopFoto)

Food and war.

Illustration by Owen Davey

General History

A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past?

Four women dressed in the perceived fashion of the roaring twenties in a 1954 musical called ‘The Boy Friend’. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the ‘Roaring Twenties’ myth obscures the making of modern Britain

London’s trailblazing women.

c1960s photo showing a man places an engagement ring on a woman's finger.

A brief history of proposing marriage.

Keith Granville, managing director of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), holding a model of the Boeing 747 jet, with the new aircraft hangars under construction in the background, at Heathrow Airport, 17 March 1969. (Photo by Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images)

In pictures: the history of London’s Heathrow Airport

Once he gained control of the entire Roman Empire, Constantine set about an ambitious programme of reform. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Constantine the Great: the emperor who created Europe

Lindisfarne Castle, Northumberland. (Photo by Dreamstime)

Secrets of Lindisfarne.

Depiction of the five senses (sight, sound, taste, smell and touch) by a late 18th/early 19th unknown artist. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

5 smells that made Georgian England.

"We cannot walk alone": 26 August 1963 – As they hold hands, Martin Luther King Jr and the other leaders of the March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom make history. (Photo by Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

The story of Martin Luther King's struggle for civil rights in America.

The Jacobite rebellions: how close were they to returning the Stuarts to power?

Nancy Astor on the campaign trail in 1919

Nancy Astor facts: who was the first female MP in British history to take her seat in parliament?

Medieval medicine.