Stuart

A view of the Reculver Towers, Reculver, England. (Photo by Loop Images/UIG via Getty Images)

8 of Britain’s most mysterious ruins

Podcast Website large Tracy Borman

Historical fact and fiction

'The Young Princes in the Tower', 1831. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

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

Queen Victoria with Prince Albert and their children in 1846. After a painting by F Winterhalter. Victoria’s husband Albert “carved out for the crown a moral kind of authority as the nation’s first and model family,” says Sarah Gristwood. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Retaining the royals: why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived?

A chocolate house in Georgian times. Coffee and chocolate houses were popular, and served as clubs and meeting places for business (© TopFoto)

Hangover cure, medicinal wonder-drink and Valentine’s Day gift: the history of our obsession with chocolate

The battle of Marston Moor, the largest clash of the Civil War, depicted in a 19th-century painting. Preventing a slide into chaos required "diplomatic panache, not Charles's fabled stubbornness", writes Jonathan Healey. (Photo by A 16th-century portrait of Bess of Hardwick. Bess's talent, ambition and eye for a well-connected husband elevated her to dizzying levels of wealth and power in Tudor England. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)

What sparked the Civil War?

Want to read more?

The ruins of Dunluce Castle, which sit on the coastal cliffs of North Antrim in Northern Ireland. They are thought to have been the inspiration for CS Lewis’s castle Cair Paravel in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ (1950–56). (Photo by Andrea Ricordi/Contributor/Getty Images)

9 of Britain’s best castles

A woodcut print depicting the stocks, a form of Elizabethan punishment. Dated 16th century. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

“Damn your blood”: Swearing in early modern English

Chastity belt decorated with a flower design and a heart pierced with arrows. (SSPL/Getty Images)

13 weird historical facts

King William II is often overshadowed by his Norman father, William the Conqueror. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

7 forgotten monarchs

Illustration by Owen Davey

A brief history of human filth

An illustration of a group of supposed witches being beaten in front of King James VI and I, c1610. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King James’s witch hunts

In this painting from c1650, a witch wields a broomstick as demons and 'familiars' (helpers of witches) congregate before her. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

History quiz – witchcraft and superstition

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

9 eccentric monarchs through history