Culture

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

British mystery writer Agatha Christie, c1926. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie

Chess players in the 14th century

General ancient history

Ancient board games: which ones did people play for fun in the past?

An illustration of a group of supposed witches

A very brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb

Priest offering the heart taken from a living human victim to the Aztec sun god and god of war, Huitzilopochtli. Print of facsimile from Aztec Codex, published 1904. Human Sacrifice (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Q&A: Why and how did the Aztecs practise human sacrifice?

Simon Schama photographed in Hauteville House, Guernsey (Photo by Oxford Films, Photographer Eddie Knox)

Simon Schama on the Romantics

Illustration for BBC History Magazine.

How potatoes conquered the world

Afua Hirsch in Kenya. (Photo by Clear Story/BBC)

Afua Hirsch: “The prejudice still surrounding Africa is absolutely rooted in a racist past”

An illustration of King Richard speaking to James Tyrrell in William Shakespeare's 'The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

Have we completely misinterpreted Shakespeare’s Richard III?

The then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump taking part in the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 19 October 2016. Trump repeatedly claimed that the election was “rigged” against him. (Photo by Joe Raedle/AFP/Getty Images)

A brief history of election “rigging” in the United States

14th century miniature showing a child's baptism. (Photo by Getty Images)

Exclusive podcast What’s in a medieval name?

Naming of St John the Baptist, c12th century. From a wall painting in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Medieval baby names: what were people called in the Middle Ages?

Afrikaners with a Nordenfeld-Maxim field gun at Mafeking during the Second Boer War, 1900. (Photo by Getty Images)

Authors in the Boer War

Fasil Ghebbi, a 17th-century fortress city in Gondar, Ethiopia. (Photo by Getty Images)

Peter Frankopan on global history in 2020

Portrait by Sherril Schell of British poet Rupert Brooke. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

First World War

5 influential WW1 poets you should know about