Stuart

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

The arrest of Guy Fawkes. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Alternate history: what if… the gunpowder plot had succeeded?

A portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, c1588. (Photo by ACTIVE MUSEUM / Alamy Stock Photo)

Walter Ralegh: “The rankest traitor in all England?”

An illustration of a group of supposed witches

A very brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb

A painting of 1616 depicts the Moriscos boarding ships to sail from the port of Valencia

The 17th-century expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: what happened?

Trick photograph. (Photo by LM Melander and Brothers) entitled 'The Haunted Lane,' depicts a pair of men terrified by a female ghost, mid-to-late 19th century. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

5 historic hauntings for Halloween

A late 16th century portrait of Anne Boleyn (c.1500-1536)

Anne Boleyn, Beefeaters, Guy Fawkes and the princes: a brief history of the Tower of London

The ‘Pilgrims’ stride onto American soil in 1620 after crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower, as shown in a 20th-century painting. The colony that they established was – initially, at least – a genuinely enlightened place, writes James Evans. (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Myth of the Mayflower: the voyage that made America?

Vivid experiences: a self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi, the Italian Baroque artist whose brilliant renderings of biblical and classical scenes earned her commissions from some of the most powerful figures in 17th century Europe. (Photo by Araldo de Luca/Corbis via Getty Images)

Artemisia Gentileschi: how pain powered the great 17th-century artist