Period

Ancient Roman theatre: everything you wanted to know.

A painting depicting Rurik and his brothers arriving in Staraya Ladoga, a scene based on the legend of the Varangian invitation, in which Norse leaders were asked to bring order to the Slavic lands. Rurik’s arrival marked the legendary founding of the first ruling dynasty of Rus’, a key moment in the early history of Eastern Europe.

Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s all to do with the Vikings

Ask a WW1 expert! Don't miss our live Q&A with Alex Churchill.

Haiti's first and only king

An illustration of Matilda of Flanders, queen consort of William the Conqueror. As queen after the Norman Conquest, Matilda played a key political role.

The conqueror’s queen: meet the real Matilda of Flanders

LEFT TO RIGHT: US president William McKinley is shot in 1901; John F Kennedy in Dallas, moments before his murder in 1963; the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981.

"Violence and American politics have gone hand in hand right from the beginning": a history of political violence

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry shows a group of men sitting at a high

Why you should avoid hair-pulling, and cannibalism, at royal banquets.

This print depicts men gathered in a Tudor alehouse, a lively hub of social life where people met to drink, gossip and discuss events. Alehouses were central to everyday life in 16th-century England.

For ordinary Tudors, death lurked around every corner with these surprising ways to die

An illustration shows five women in colourful headscarves sewing a large piece of cloth with soldiers and horses on it

Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry.

How the Cold War made the modern world.

Alva Vanderbilt: life of the week.

A woman with blonde hair and wearing a navy T shirt stands looking up towards the top left of the image. She has a large white earring and stands in front of some Roman ruins

Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures”.

How women were erased from economic history.

The Phoenicians: everything you wanted to know.

In this c.1891 stereoscopic image by Underwood & Underwood, a cowboy in woolly chaps demonstrates lasso techniques beside a covered wagon, as others look on. Scenes like this reflect the working life and performative culture of the late 19th-century American West.

These three unsuspecting inventions won the American Wild West – but did they destroy it too?

An edited image of a man with long curly hair and a lacy ruff. The right hand side of his face is colour inverted so it appears black with a red eye

The sinister secrets of Samuel Pepys.

Katya Adler and Rita Levi-Montalcini

My history heroKatya Adler chooses Rita Levi-Montalcini.

Black women and the fight for human rights.

This 19th-century illustration, based on ancient Greek vase imagery, depicts two mounted Amazons chasing after two fleeing youths. Scenes like this reflect classical fascination with the myth of warrior women.

Were the Amazons just a “male fantasy”? Here’s the truth behind the ancient world’s warrior women

A painting showing a black beast biting the leg of an orange man dressed in a loincloth

What have the Etruscans ever done for us?.

Soviet dissidents who challenged the Kremlin

English author Agatha Christie, pictured at a dinner in 1957. By this time, she was one of the world’s best-selling writers, renowned for her detective fiction featuring characters such as Hercule Poirot.

A real Thursday Murder Club? How a team of crime fiction writers tried to save the genre (and solve crimes)

El Cid: life of the week.

Burying the enemy: commemorating the world wars' fallen foes.

After Hiroshima: the atomic plague.

The Mughal empire: everything you wanted to know.

A montage of images showing a man standing in the ruins of Hiroshima; a man dressed smartly wearing circular glasses; and a Japanese family with two parents sitting down with five children around them

Senkichi Awaya: the lost mayor of Hiroshima.

an illustration of a pale blue gravestone with several small drawings on it, including a moon, a heart, a ring and some flowers. Around the gravestone there are flowers and it is set against a bright blue background

Why we should be better about talking about death, with Dr Helen Gittos.

The Amazons: wonder-women of the ancient world.

This bas-relief fragment from the Ptolemaic period portrays Cleopatra VII, the last active ruler of ancient Egypt. As both a Greek-speaking monarch and a pharaoh, Cleopatra embodied the cultural fusion of Hellenistic Egypt

General ancient history

On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end