Period

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, 1934. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)

Nietzsche’s dangerous ideas. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The American Revolutionary War: birth of a superpower

A wounded soldier of Company K, 110th Regiment Infantry, receives first-aid treatment from a comrade in Varennes-en-Argonne, France, 26 September 1918. (Photo by Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

First World War soldiers: life after the Armistice

The First World War promoted advances in medicine, and in sectors such as aviation, that had not just military but also peacetime benefits, says David Stevenson. Here Captain Francis Derwent Wood treats the face of a patient, creating a mask which matches as closely as possible to the man's faces before he was injured, c1916. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ IWM via Getty Images)

The First World War: what was it good for?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Dan Snow on shell shock.

Dan Snow on shell shock. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British war correspondents and press officers, western front, c1917. From the Great War Vol .10 published in 1918 FR left to right: Percival Phillips; Colonel Hutton Wilson; Beach Thomas; Captain Stewart. Standing: Basil Clark; Perry Robinson; Percival Gibbon. (Photo by Alamy)

Censorship in the trenches: why didn’t journalists report the horrors of the First World War?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Women of the Sarah Caswell Angell chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, engaging in war work activities to assist the Allied cause during the First World War, 1918. During their sessions they knitted, made hospital garments, sewed for French children, and made aviators' vests. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

First World War

A–Z of the First World War

An American recruitment poster. “US forces showed an impressive ability to learn at speed,” says Nick Lloyd. (© Getty)

The great misconceptions of the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British troops in the trenches, Belgium, c1914–15. The horrors of the First World War lived long in the memories of its centenarian survivors. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

The last survivors of the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

News of the end of World War I hostilities is joyfully received by the men of the 64th Regiment Infantry, 7th Division. Min de Jaueny, Moselle, France on November 11, 1918. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The end of the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Spanish Armada defeated in the English Channel in July 1588, by Hendrick Cornelis Vroom, c1600. (Picture by DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/Getty Images)

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Spanish Armada

Rags and riches: Enslaved people wash diamonds in Brazil, guarded by armed overseers, in a German engraving of 1828. Diamonds were discovered in Minas Gerais state in the late 17th century. (Picture by Alamy)

Brazil: a society shaped by slavery. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

"Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": Mike Leigh on a massacre

A wooden cross marks the spot, just over 20 miles west of Newcastle, where Oswald apparently raised his own cross before ambushing Cadwallon. If the Anglo-Saxon warlord's attack had failed, writes Edoardo Albert, England might now be a lot smaller. (Photo by Getty Images)

Hell in Heavenfield: the Anglo-Saxon battle "as important as Hastings". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

Mike Leigh on Peterloo. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged almost 700 messages during the Second World War. (Illustration by Hugh Cowling for BBC History Magazine)

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Combat helicopters fly over US troops during a search and destroy mission, South Vietnam. Despite their military might, argues Max Hastings, the Americans were doomed to fail during the Vietnam War. (Photo by Patrick Christain/Getty Images)

Max Hastings on Vietnam. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor visited the US on several occasions, where he was held in such high regard that he was dubbed the 'African Mahler'. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

My history hero: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London. "We're brought up on a whole ant-heap of myths about Napoleon. The apocryphal stories that swirl around him are legion," he says. (Photography by Frank Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Our illustration shows King Arthur leading his troops into battle. The legendary warlord's victories over Saxon invaders first appear in a 'history' written in the ninth-century north Wales. (Illustration by Georgie Gozem for BBC History Magazine)

The King Arthur delusion: a case of medieval fake news?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sir Walter Ralegh (c1554–1618, shown here in a painting attributed to William Segar) is often remembered as a favourite of Elizabeth I and an adventurer, yet he was also one of the most influential political philosophers of his era. (Photo by Alamy)

Walter Ralegh: the traitor who inspired Cromwell. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Circus performer Otto Witte, who in 1912 successfully pretended to be the new king of Albania. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

14 weird things that have happened in November through history

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a "giant of a book", and part of a new exhibition at the British Library. (Photo by Sam Lane Photography/British Library)

Watch: Highlights from the British Library's new Anglo-Saxon exhibition

18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

The Peterloo Massacre. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A depiction of a witch on a broomstick. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

QuizHow much do you know about the history of Halloween?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

JFK prepares to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. (Picture by Corbis/Getty Images)

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Jewelled terminal of aestel, The Alfred Jewel. (Photo by Alamy)

Anglo-Saxon treasures. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The ‘Pit Brow Lasses’ of 19th-century coal mines. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Thomas Cromwell (Illustrated by Sarah Young)

Thomas Cromwell reconsidered. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.