Period

The Golden Coast

The LibraryYe Olde Travel Guide: Mainz 1455

Mary Beard, professor of classics at the University of Cambridge. (David Levenson/Getty Images)

My history hero: Sir Moses I Finley (1912–86)

The Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade, c1200. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Why Islam crushed the crusaders

It was in this villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee that one of history’s most infamous conferences was staged. (Getty)

The Wannsee Conference

A statue of Joan of Arc in the home where she is thought to have been born, in Domrémy-La-Pucelle, eastern France. (PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images)

Where history happenedJoan of Arc

BBC History Magazine

Better and better?

BBC History Magazine

The Glorious First of June

BBC History Magazine

Tomb raiders threaten Chinese heritage

BBC History Magazine

The Kings of Alba: c1000–c1130

BBC History Magazine

January issue out now

Royston Cave, Hertfordshire

An illustration of Nikephoros II. (Photo by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo)

A big day in history: the all-conquering Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II loses his head

A portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from an early 15th-century manuscript of the poem ‘De Regimine Principum’ by Thomas Hoccleve. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The LibraryChaucer and the idea of Englishness

BBC History Magazine

Cornish invention

How to escape the tower

An illustration from ‘A Short History of the English People’ by John Richard Green. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Drowning in Tudor England: why was water so dangerous?

BBC History Magazine

Those meddling bureaucrats...

BBC History Magazine

The BBC Story

A c15th-century vellum shows the Squire from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For Adam Nicolson, the essence of the gentry was “government-through-networking”. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Stories of the gentry

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the leader of a network of French resistance agents during the Second World War. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

My history hero: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade (1909–89)

Angela Burdett-Coutts, an English philanthropist who supported a wide variety of charitable causes assisting the church, the poor and the hungry. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Philanthropy: the root of all good

Guy Gibson (centre) with members of his squadron. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The triumph of the Dambusters

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Pompeii 79 Ad

The prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III. Famous for being the location of the ‘Great Escape’, it was home to Ron Last for ten months. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The long road home

An 1860s coloured engraving of Lake Victoria’s outflow at the Ripon Falls, which John Speke discovered in 1862 and correctly declared to be the source of the Nile. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Explorers of the Nile

Charles Dickens: his life and works

King George V and his wife, Queen Mary, pictured during a visit to Dublin in 1911. The royal couple were deeply conservative but common sense taught them they had to adapt to the modern world. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

How George and Mary saved the royal family

A postboy drives a mail coach in a contemporary illustration. Soon after their introduction in 1784, coaches were traversing the country at speeds of up to 10mph. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Red Letter Days: 10 milestones in the history of the Post Office

A woman at a floral tribute to Neville Chamberlain at a florist in Ludgate Circus, London, 1938. In the wake of the Munich agreement, the prime minister was understood to be a hero of women everywhere. (Photo by Harry Todd/Getty Images)

The LibraryGuilty women?