Crime and punishment

Trevor Barnes details the 1960s operation to uncover the infamous Portland Spy Ring – one of the most dangerous KGB espionage networks ever to operate in the UK. (Image by Getty Images)

Hunting down the Portland Spy Ring

Georg Elser, a little-known carpenter-turned-assassin whose daring attempt to kill Hitler almost succeeded

Second World War

Georg Elser: the man who nearly assassinated Hitler

This engraving by William Hogarth shows the final instalment of a sequence of artworks called 'The Four Stages of Cruelty' (1751). In it, the fictional Tom Nero is being dissected for anatomical studies at Cutlerian theatre near Newgate prison after being hanged for murder. Nero looks like the Dead-Alive, as though he can see and smell his own executed body on the dissection table. The chief physician sits in the centre on a high-backed chair, resembling a high court judge. He is surrounded by various medical men, including penal surgeons, who did gallows work. The skeletons of dissected criminals were usually refused a Christian burial and so were displayed as specimens, as can be seen top left and top right. (Photo by Guildhall Library/Getty Images)

Surviving the gallows: the Georgian hangings that didn’t go to plan

A policewoman gives directions to tourists in London in the 1920s.

“Sherlock Holmes in skirts”: the world’s first policewomen

© Public Domain

Your guide to... debtors' prisons

Karen Jones on the Wild West

The Wild West: everything you wanted to know

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?

Daniel Lee on the HistoryExtra podcast.

Second World War

An ‘ordinary’ Nazi

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn’s final battle: Tracy Borman reveals Henry VIII’s final ‘kindness’

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?”

Evil May Day

The Evil May Day Riots of 1517: what happened?

The battle of Dover, 24 August 1217, (image c1880). (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

Eustace the Monk: one of medieval Europe’s unholiest holy men

Princes in the Tower Podcast Series

Princes in the Tower Episode 8: A conclusion (of sorts)

Princes in the Tower Podcast Series

Princes in the Tower Episode 7: Survival theories