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Stuart

Vintage postcard showing Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and a pet corgi. (Photo by the History Press)

8 of the best dogs in history

King Ludwig II of Bavaria. (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

9 eccentric monarchs through history

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

Between 1613 and 1754, a legal loophole meant that on-the-spot marriages could be carried out in an area surrounding the Fleet Debtors’ Prison known as the ‘Liberties of the Fleet’. (Photo by Getty Images)

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the history of London

Men enjoying a drink and a chat in a coffee house, 1674. Coffee houses became known as ‘schools of the wise’, where people would gossip, argue and discuss the breaking news of the day. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee

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

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague, in which four Catholic officials were thrown from a top-floor window of Prague (Hradčany) Castle by Bohemian Protestant activists, starting the Thirty Years' War. (Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained

A 16th-century woodcut by Albrecht Dürer entitled 'The true and false apostles of Christ'. As the Reformation recast Europe's spiritual landscape, many believers fretted that their religion no longer felt true to them. (Photo by Alamy)

The fury that fuelled the rise of atheism

The future King George VI (1895-1952) as a baby, 1895. The name 'George' appears in the list of the top 10 boys' names both today and a century ago. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

What’s in a name? A brief history of baby name trends from the Anglo-Saxons to today

A portrait of Queen Victoria, who during her reign curbed the use of the title HRH (His or Her Royal Highness) by restricting it to children of a sovereign (of either gender) and grandchildren of a sovereign (in the male line). (Photo by Glasshouse Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

The rise and fall of ‘Royal Highness’: a brief history of royal titles and what it means for Prince Harry’s baby

Scottish nobles gathering in the 17th century

Scotland on the brink: the nation’s final years of independence

Elizabeth II and Prince Philip with their third son, Prince Edward, on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Royal mothers and childbirth: a brief history

Blenheim Palace in a c1880 print from ‘A Series of Picturesque Views of Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland’, edited by Reverend FO Morris, Volume I, William Mackenzie, London. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

10 things you might not know about Blenheim Palace – ‘the real Downton Abbey’

A joint Franco-Native Indian raid left 56 residents of Deerfield, a small township in north-western Massachusetts, dead. (Alamy)

America: Brave new world or accident?

This 16th-century woodcut depicts King James VI at the North Berwick witch trials, the case that first sparked his obsession with hunting. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

James VI and I: the king who hunted witches