Period

A painting depicts a 14th-century sea battle

Medieval inspiration: what the fantasy genre owes to the 14th century.

To the point: soldiers prepare themselves for hand-to-hand combat by learning bayonet skills. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

The road to D-Day: the masterplan.

A Tudor rose on a wooden ceiling beam.

Monarchy and faith in Tudor England.

Members of a British parachute regiment consult their maps during a training exercise just weeks before D-Day. Training was intensive – and dangerous. (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post /Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The road to D-Day: getting ready for action.

Panorama of Machu Picchu

The last days of the Incas.

Allied troops on the landing crafts did not know if they would survive D-Day, but they knew the beaches had to be taken. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

D-Day: the WW2 battle through the eyes of the men who were there.

Image of the Lindisfarne Stone from Holy Island, Northumbria. It shows seven warriors, possibly vikings. The Vikings’ first recorded raid on Lindisfarne took place in AD 793. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Your guide to the Viking raid of Lindisfarne in AD 793

MK Ultra: the secrets of the CIA's mind-control programme.

Live Aid stage at Wembley, London, in 1985

When Live Aid rocked the world.

Charlton Hetson races a chariot in Ben-Hur

Wacky races: 10 weird and wonderful contests through history.

Lucrezia Borgia with her father Pope Alexander VI

Lucrezia Borgia: is her bad reputation deserved?

The first state visit by American President George W Bush in 2003 was highly controversial, attracting protesters opposed to the involvement of the United States and Britain in the Iraq War. Here the president is pictured with the Queen in 2008. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)

From pageantry to controversy: a brief history of state visits.

Between 1613 and 1754, a legal loophole meant that on-the-spot marriages could be carried out in an area surrounding the Fleet Debtors’ Prison known as the ‘Liberties of the Fleet’. (Photo by Getty Images)

General History

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the history of London

The killing zone: This photograph by Robert F Sargent, known as ‘Taxis to Hell – and Back – into the Jaws of Death’, shows American troops wading towards Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

D-Day: 24 hours that changed the world.

Rachel Reeves on women who changed politics.

Troops of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade (Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry Highlanders) going ashore, Normandy, France, 6 June 1944. (Credit: Gilbert Alexander Milne/Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-122765)

Second World War

“Free people everywhere should remember them”: the Canadians’ role in D-Day

D-Day: a resounding success for the Allies.

Sergeant Stubby, an American dog who served as the mascot of America's 102nd Infantry Regiment during the First World War. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)

First World War

Sergeant Stubby of the First World War: the heroic story of America’s most decorated war dog

A 19th-century painted glass rolling pin and wooden pastry jigger. (Photo ©Emma Kay)

Biscuit tins and pastry jiggers: the history of 6 baking tools.

Holding court: Bernard Montgomery briefs reporters on progress in France, 1944. (Photo by Cynthia Johnson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

In defence of Monty: James Holland on the Allied commander's D-Day decisions.

Beyond Normandy: the global war.

Jacob Rees-Mogg. (Photo by Getty Images)

Jacob Rees-Mogg on the Victorians.

Men enjoying a drink and a chat in a coffee house, 1674. Coffee houses became known as ‘schools of the wise’, where people would gossip, argue and discuss the breaking news of the day. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee

Peasants in the Middle Ages at a cattle market. Cows appear to have been difficult to manage in the medieval period, and caused several deaths. (Photo by INTERFOTO /Alamy)

5 strange causes of death in the medieval period.

1960s model. (Photo by Alamy)

Women in the 1960s.

A Spanish publisher works on cloning the illustrated codex hand-written manuscript Voynich. (Photo by CESAR MANSO/AFP/Getty Images)

How the Voynich manuscript hit the headlines

What was it like meeting Queen Victoria? 6 royal encounters as told by famous Victorians.

A group of household servants photographed in Northumberland, c1860–80. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

What was life like as a 19th-century servant?

Gentleman Jack, Suranne Jones as Anne Lister (Photo by BBC/Lookout Point/Jay Brooks)

Gentleman Jack.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most famous aviators, apparently disappeared without a trace during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

From Jack the Ripper to Amelia Earhart: 17 unsolved historical mysteries.