Period

Tudor England | 3. Culture and Innovation.

Smiling teenage man holds a toothbrush with toothpaste up to his mouth, with a towel draped round his shoulders

General History

Oxhooves, mouse brains and urine: the disgusting things we used to use as toothpaste

A Victorian cult: inside the strange world of the Agapemone.

Fess Parker, an American actor, as Davy Crockett

The man in the coonskin cap: your guide to Davy Crockett

A group of men in front of cannon with a ruined building behind them and rubble on the street

The war Britain won in 38 minutes

'Monster soup commonly called Thames water, being a correct representation of that precious stuff doled out to us!!!', 1828; showing an ugly woman holding a spy glass which touches the circumference of a large circle representing a magnified drop of water filled with grotesque aquatic creatures. A satire on the Metropolitan Water Supply.

From murder bottles to arsenic wallpaper: 5 hidden killers in Victorian Britain.

Victorian healthcare | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture.

Week four quiz: medicine and health in Victorian Britain.

History behind the headlines: Trump's win – parallels with the past.

The opthalmoscope revolutionised ophthalmology, allowing physicians to examine the inside of the human eye. (Image by Getty Images)

Victorian medicine: why the 19th century was a time of seismic medical change

The surgeon Robert Liston prepares to cut open a patient in the first half of the 19th century. Known as the “fastest knife in the west end”, Liston could remove a leg in less than 30 seconds. For most patients, however, the agony was more prolonged. (Wellcome Library, London)

An appointment at the house of death: the horror of the early Victorian hospital.

The surgeon Robert Liston prepares to cut open a patient in the first half of the 19th century. Known as the “fastest knife in the west end”, Liston could remove a leg in less than 30 seconds. For most patients, however, the agony was more prolonged. (Wellcome Library, London)

"An enlightened turn": how medicine (and the vaccination) developed in Victorian Britain.

Medieval couple

General History

QuizHow much do you know about the history of sex?

Henry V's brutal youth.

Sport's strangest tales.

Ancient Egyptian warfare: everything you wanted to know.

Egyptologist Howard Carter near golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt in 1922.

Is the mummy's curse real? False tales about ancient Egyptian mummies (plus some true ones).

The bloody road to Rome: liberating Italy from the Nazis in WWII.

Richard II and Henry IV of England. The cousins duked it out for control of England.

The tyrant and the usurper: Richard II v Henry IV.

A mural in Bristol of activist Roy Hackett, one of the primary organisers of the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott (Photo by Steve Taylor ARPS/Alamy Stock Photo)

Hakim Adi | “Racism in Britain has a long history – but so does anti-racism”.

Members of the National Front speak to the press in 1978. Chairman John Tyndall (second from left) was a neo-Nazi who later founded the British National Party (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)

From Mosley to the summer riots of 2024: the opportunistic evolution of Britain’s far right.

William Dalrymple (Photo by David Hartley/Shutterstock)

“Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history.

Adolf Hitler and his lover, Eva Braun, relaxing in Berchtesgaden in 1942. The Nazi leader’s private life was more ‘normal’ than some accounts have suggested (Photo by akg-images)

“We need to understand the Nazis as human beings”: Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler’s followers.

An 18th-century engraving of Edward, Earl of Warwick. Much of his short life was spent in the Tower of London before his execution for alleged treason (Photo by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo)

The other prince in the Tower: the tragedy of Edward of Warwick.

An 1872 illustration from the weekly newspaper Days’ Doings shows a shoplifter being apprehended (Photo by Look and Learn/Rosenberg Collection/Bridgeman Images)

Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld.

Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent".

Michael Wood"The making of our new world began in China just over 40 years ago".

One of the hostages of the Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980 escapes across the balcony (Photo by David Levenson/Keystone/Getty Images)

The Iranian Embassy siege of 1980: the six-day crisis that was the making of the SAS.

Part threeWhat was school and education like in Victorian Britain?.

The invisible tracks that have shaped the world.