Literature

Stained glass window of King Alfred the Great

Exclusive podcast The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

A portrait of Samuel Pepys, English writer and diarist. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Samuel Pepys

Historians have chosen their favourite historical novels.

9 of the best historical novels – as chosen by expert historians

Original Gutenberg Bible, Beinecke Library, Yale Univeristy. (Photo by Alamy)

General ancient history

The history of the Bible

A researcher examines the medieval Voynich Manuscript with a magnifying glass

The Voynich Manuscript: who wrote the mystery medieval codex and what is it trying to tell us?

English author, poet and philosopher Geoffrey Chaucer, c 1343, Bodleian Library (Photo by Getty Images)

The cosmopolitan Chaucer

Equestrian portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from the Ellesmere manuscript of his Canterbury Tales (14th century).

Cosmopolitan Chaucer: Marion Turner on the 14th-century poet’s inventive, international life

Robert Burton, a 17th-century scholar

Can the work of a 17th-century scholar help us understand mental illness?

British author Bernard Cornwell, author of 'The Last Kingdom'

Bernard Cornwell on writing historical fiction and his blockbuster series The Last Kingdom: your questions answered

The renowned poet Lord Byron has gone down in history for being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But his ancestors were hardly paragons of virtue. (Image by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Adultery, elopement and incest: the scandalous sex lives of the 18th-century Byrons

The scandalous Byrons

In writing his classical novel, Orwell drew on the very real horrors of the 20th century. (Illustration by Ben Jones for BBC World Histories Magazine)

Rewriting the past: the history that inspired Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Sean Connery and Ursula Andress in a scene from the 1962 film 'James Bond: Dr. No' (Photo by United Artist/Getty Images)

The spies who inspired Bond

Julian of Norwich holds her famous book in a sculpture at the doors of Norwich Cathedral. (Photo by Creative Commons Wiki)

Julian of Norwich: Janina Ramirez hails ‘the female Chaucer’

A pile of books

How to write a historical novel and get it published: 9 tips from bestselling authors Alison Weir, Hilary Mantel and more