Period

An American privateer is shown repelling a British attack during the War of 1812. Despite some notable successes, the British regarded the entire conflict as a sideshow and quickly forgot it. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

When Washington burned

Laurence Olivier plays Richard III in the 1955 film adaptation of Shakespeare's play. In it, the controversial monarch is damned as everything from a "bottled spider" and "lump of foul deformity" to a "poisonous bunch-backed toad". (Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Why did Shakespeare revile Richard III?

The Plantation of Ulster: The British Colonisation of the North of Ireland in the 17th Century

BBC History Magazine

Wife for sale

BBC History Magazine

Ötzi the Iceman gives 5,300-year-old blood sample

Abergavenny Castle, Monmouthshire

A cast of a Roman warship carrying armed soldiers. (Photo By DEA / G. NIMATALLAH/De Agostini/Getty Images)

The Roman invasion: whose side were the Britons on?

The Queen's silver jubilee took place in 1977. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)

Why the Seventies still matter

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as pirate in an Argentine newspaper from 30 April 1982.(Photo by Alain Nogues/Sygma via Getty Images)

Sir Max Hastings: Witness to the Falklands War

Richard II, led captive by Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), renounces the throne in Jean Creton's 'Histoire du Roy d'Angleterre Richard II' (1401-05). (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Richard II: “I find myself a traitor”

(Illustration by Jonty Clark for BBC History Magazine)

Ye olde travel guide: Hedeby AD 950

Sue Townsend admires Charles Dickens (pictured c1960) for his battles against social injustice. (Photo by London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images)

My history hero: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

The RMS Titanic. (Image by Perspectives/Getty Images)

Where history happened: The Titanic disaster

The death of Aelfeah at the hands of the Danes, portrayed in a window of St Luke's church, Bath. (Photo by: MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images)

St Ælfheah: Canterbury’s other martyr

BBC History Magazine

Scholars name Shakespeare’s ‘co-author’

The Norman Conquest

What are the origins of the ‘mutes’ that attended Victorian funerals?

Stamford, Lincolnshire

BBC History Magazine

Who's winning?

BBC History Magazine

Remembered in wax

BBC History Magazine

Holocaust

St Albans Clock Tower, Hertfordshire

BBC History Magazine

The patient

BBC History Magazine

The BBC Story

Castle Campbell, Clackmannanshire

BBC History Magazine

The phone call

Queen’s Corporal

BBC History Magazine

Going public: history beyond the academy

Porthcumo Telegraph Museum, Cornwall

BBC History Magazine

The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England