Period

First World War

First World War podcast episodes

Mongols vs Mamluks

Elizabeth Garret Anderson seated at a desk reading

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain

Cover illustration from Le Petit Journal, 1908, showing Ferdinand I of Bulgaria declaring independence (centre) and Franz Joseph I of Austria Hungary seizing Bosnia and Herzegovina from a forlorn-looking Ottoman sultan, Abdülhamid II (Photo by Archives Charmet / Alamy Images)

Divided they fell: how war, revolution and sectarianism led to the end of the Ottoman empire

General History

The history of alcohol: everything you wanted to know

Dancers demonstrate the Charleston, c1926. The dance is often associated with ‘flappers’ – newly enfranchised women with bobbed hair, short skirts and supposedly looser morals – and characterised by frenetic up and down movements and swivelling, akimbo limbs. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Forbidden dances and deadly marathons: 5 facts about the history of dancing

American actress Ethel Grandin (1894 - 1988) holds a wine glass for a man in a tuxedo in a still from an unidentified silent film, circa 1920. (Photo by Vintage Images/Getty Images)

Historical recipeAlcoholic punch

How ballroom dancing gripped Britain

Devonshire squab pie on a tray (Picture by 'We Make Magazines')

Historical recipeDevonshire squab pie

Christmas merriment in an old English manor in the 1500s

How to host a medieval Christmas

A montage of images, including: Ukrainians in Rome protest against the Russian invasion; 2: Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai- shek (right) in 1949, when he retreated to Taiwan; 3: The future Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III, 1950; 4: Former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and prime minister Liz Truss, October 2022

2022: The historians’ view

10 foods named after famous people from history

A portrait of Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad II, whose bloodlust and cruelty was said to have inspired the most famous vampire of literature

The real Dracula? The bloodthirsty life of Vlad the Impaler

The characters Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim, from Charles Dickens's work 'A Christmas Carol'

Did Charles Dickens invent Christmas as we know it today?

QuizMatch the dish to the era

The hell of the Pacific War

Claret jelly (Picture by Sam Nott)

Historical recipeClaret jelly

Chinese tea eggs (Picture by Sam Nott)

Historical recipeChinese tea eggs

Edda Mussolini, c1929

Second World War

Edda Ciano & Hilde Beetz: how the women stood up to Hitler

Inside Germany’s postwar prisons

Pilgrimage, past and present

Q&AWhy did NORAD begin tracking Santa Claus in the Cold War?

An illustration of the Great Fire of London, c1675. St Paul's Cathedral is seen in flames (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

What if...The Great Fire of London never happened?

Tracy Borman and Rhiannon Davies

VideoTracy Borman on Elizabeth I

Scene of knights in battle, detail from Bayeux tapestry or tapestry of Queen Matilda, France, 11th century

The NormansWho were they & why did they invade England?

British spies in WW2: everything you wanted to know

Secret Santa Getty Dreamstime

General History

What gift would you buy figures from the past? Find out in historical Secret Santa 2022

Black Victorians: radicals, muses, inmates & aristocrats

The real Wenceslas is that he was not actually a king, but Duke of Bohemia.

Q&AWho was Good King Wenceslas, and was he actually good?

Civil rights campaigner Ida B Wells, acclaimed composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; and footballer Walter Tull.

Black Victorians: the hidden Britons who helped shape the 19th century