Food and drink

New York City police watching agents pour liquor into a sewer

Wet vs Dry: how prohibition fractured America

Women queue for potatoes in a greengrocer's shop in London, c1945. (Photo by Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer/IWM via Getty Images)

Second World War

Saving food, saving lives: rationing in the Second World War

Prohibition protesters parade in a car emblazoned with signs and flags calling for the repeal of the 18th Amendment, which outlawed the production and consumption of alcohol in the United States. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“A great social experiment”: a brief guide to prohibition

Dr Michael Mosley holds up a tapeworm

Tapeworms, arsenic and magic soap: fact-checking history’s weirdest fad diets and weight-loss gimmicks

The Eridge Hunt, Boxing Day 1952. (Photo by REX/Associated Newspapers)

General prehistory

A brief history of Boxing Day

History Advent Calendar 2019

Advent calendar 2019: 24 facts about Christmas through history

Christmas merriment in an old English manor in the 1500s. (Photo by North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy)

How to host a medieval Christmas

A 15th-century miniature from 'La Vraye Histoire du Bon Roy Alixandre'. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

6 Christmas party tips from the past

A 'Thanksgiving Greetings' postcard. (Photo by K.J. Historical/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

A brief history of Thanksgiving

A waitress working behind the counter at the first ever Lyons tea shop to be opened in London, 1953

The teashop empire

The First Thanksgiving in 1621, after a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme; screen print, 1932. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

7 facts you might not know about the history of Thanksgiving

A fruit and vegetable market, painted by Joachim Beuckelaer.

A brief history of veganism in Britain

Gin Lane, a print issued in 1751 by painter and printmaker William Hogarth. It depicts the perceived evils of the consumption of gin. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The 18th-century craze for gin

Baked loves of bread

Q&A Why are there 13 items in a Baker’s Dozen?

Dinner at Downton Abbey

Could you survive an Edwardian dinner party?