Stuart

Pancake day celebrations

The history of Shrove Tuesday: why do we eat pancakes?

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A history of Valentine’s Day celebrations – from fertility festivals to the first cards

Margarette Lincoln reveals how a century that saw plague, fire, revolution and civil war transformed England’s capital. (Image by Getty Images)

17th-century London: a city shaped by catastrophe

Marked man: Charles I shown in a detail in Anthony van Dyck's famous portrait. In his final days, the king's attempts to play his enemies against one another backfired spectacularly. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

Why Charles I had to die

Mary, Queen of Scots

9 of the worst monarchs in history

(L to R) Isaac Newton, Henry VIII and Bal Gangadhar Tilak

How did people cope with ‘lockdowns’ of the past? And were they really all so productive?

A portrait of Samuel Pepys, English writer and diarist. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Samuel Pepys

Jacqueline Riding considers whether the Jacobite prince was a valiant freedom fighter, or a haughty coward. (Image by Getty Images)

Bonnie Prince Charlie: hero or coward?

An East India Company official riding on an elephant

The East India Company: how a trading corporation became an imperial ruler

Did Cromwell ban mince pies? And why does Santa wear red? George Goodwin responds to listener questions and internet search queries on festive history. (Image by Getty Images)

The history of Christmas: everything you wanted to know

Ted Vallance on the Glorious Revolution. (Image by Getty Images)

The Glorious Revolution: everything you wanted to know

'Merry Christmas' Victorian illustration of Santa Claus holding toys and blowing on a trumpet, chromolithograph, 1915. (Illustration by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

Father Christmas and Santa Claus: a brief history of two Christmas champions

Vintners in an ale house, 1642. From a broadsheet titled ‘Health to All’, artist unknown. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Did Oliver Cromwell ban Christmas? The Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s

Roman toilet

Tales of the toilet: a historical A–Z

Guy Fawkes and the men behind the gunpowder plot. Guy Fawkes, best known of the conspirators, is third from the right. (Print Collector/Getty Images)

Why did the 1605 gunpowder plot fail? 9 big questions about the conspiracy to blow up parliament