Money

American business magnate JD Rockefeller sits at a desk

Q&A Who was the first billionaire?

Gordon Brown talks to the History Extra podcast about Andrew Carnegie. (Photo by Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images)

Gordon Brown on Andrew Carnegie

A broker looks at his screens at Frankfurt's stock exchange on 15 September 2008. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2008 financial crisis explained

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)

Bess of Hardwick: schemer, social climber, scourge of Elizabeth I

Rutger Bregman. (Photo by Maartje ter Horst)

Rutger Bregman: historian in the news

The expulsion of Jews from France in 1182. Found in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The Jews of medieval England

Illustration by Femke de Jong

Does it always pay to trust the cash in your pockets?

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell on 29 September 2008. A record 778 points were wiped off the Dow Jones that day, as the 2008 financial crisis pushed the world's banking system to the edge of collapse. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The credit crunch: “It’s a story of hubris followed by a fall”

By the time George II came to the throne in 1727, Britain was a nation addicted to gaming. A Georgian gaming table is shown in this sketch by Thomas Rowlandson. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

“A nation addicted to gaming”: the Georgians’ crackdown on addictive betting

Nurses serve lunch to patients at a Birmingham hospital, 1939. (Photo by Humphrey Spender/Picture Post/Getty Images)

Paying for healthcare: life in Britain before the ‘free’ NHS

King Henry I "always seemed to have money at his disposal," says Judith Green, and was very good at spending it. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Library How King Henry I made and blew a fortune

(Photo by Katie Edwards/Alamy Stock Photo)

Do we really live in a less charitable society than 50 years ago?

While young ladies may have been daydreaming of handsome film stars such as Cary Grant, pictured here kissing the cheek of Ingrid Bergman in a publicity still for the 1946 film ‘Notorious’, agony aunts were keen to bring them back down to earth. (Photo by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

How to be a man: tips from 1930s agony aunts

Miniature of a monk and his mistress in the stocks as a form of penitents. Taken from a book painted for Augustinian canons. Dated 12th Century (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Monks behaving badly

John Duval Gluck, Jr, 'the Santa Claus man', pictured left with King Baggot (in Santa costume) visiting the General Post Office to promote the Santa Claus Association’s benefit show. Image from the Santa Claus Annual. (Photo by Gluck Scrapbooks)

The con man who saved Christmas