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Stuart

The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. (Photo by Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)

Q&AHow much did it cost to build Versailles?

Britain's 10 best palaces

The Romanovs, 1913: Nicholas II with his wife and children. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Books interview with Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Romanovs.

Sex, scandals and betrayals: Charles II and his court

Q&AWho executed King Charles I?

A brief history of how we fell in love with caffeine and chocolate.

17 unmissable battles podcasts

Tixall Gatehouse, Staffordshire. (Photo by The Landmark Trust)

10 of Britain’s most amazing landmark buildings.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell. This is one of several replicas of a portrait by Sir Peter Lely. Cromwell is supposed to have said: “I desire you would use all your skill to paint your picture truly like me… but remark all these roughness, pimples, warts and everything as you see me. Otherwise, I will never pay a farthing for it.”

Why do we say 'warts and all'?

Ruthven Barracks

The LibraryHistory Explorer: The Jacobite uprisings.

The Somme and the Jacobites.

Queen Elizabeth II

How to be a successful monarch.

In pictures: kings and queens through history

Inishbofin, Ireland

My favourite place: Inishbofin, Ireland

A portrait of the writer and antiquarian John Aubrey

John Aubrey: chronicler of the 17th century.

The many lives of India.

Man smoking a pipe, early 17th century

Q&AWhen was tobacco first thought to be dangerous?.

Photo of pipe and tobacco

Q&ADid people smoke anything before tobacco was discovered?

Guy Fawkes “is like a modern-day jihadist,” says counter-terrorism expert

Picture of the Frost Fair on the Thames

Q&ADid the Thames used to freeze over?

A portrait of Charles II, by 17th-century painter John Michael Wright

History explorer: The Restoration.

Coughton Court, an English country house

History explorer: The gunpowder plot.

'Portrait of Oliver Cromwell', (c1653?).

Oliver Cromwell: Hero or Villain?.

The Berlin Wall and the return of Charles II.

The Gunpowder Plot and the First World War.

Samuel Pepys portrait

My history hero: Samuel Pepys (1633-1703).

Picture of Chrysippus of Soli

Q&AHas anyone ever died of laughter?

10 astronomers you’ve (probably) never heard of

'The butterfly hunt' (1874) by Berthe Morisot

The LibraryFirst ladies of art: three trailblazing female artists from history.

Portrait of Miranda Kaufmann. (Image by Jeni Nott)

History explorer: Africans in Tudor and Stuart Britain.