Illustration of a Medieval Scribe

Literature

Actor William Gillette playing the detective Sherlock Holmes. (Photo by Gillette/London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images)

11 things you (probably) didn’t know about Sherlock Holmes

Krystyna Skarbeck, also called Christine Granville

History heroMichael Morpurgo chooses Krystyna Skarbek (1908–1952). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Richard III. (Photo by Getty Images)

Have we completely misinterpreted Shakespeare’s Richard III?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

Authors in the Boer War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Documents that changed the world. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

First World War

WW1 poets5 famous figures you should know about

10 facts about Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë

Portrait of the Bronte sisters

The Brontës: the unfortunate and unlikely tale of the world’s "greatest literary sisters"

A portrait of Thomas Cromwell.

The downfall of Thomas Cromwell

The Voynich Manuscript is written in a unique alphabet that has thus far defeated some of the world’s greatest codebreakers. (Photo by Alamy)

History’s greatest mysteriesThe Voynich Manuscript. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An 18th-century marble relief depicting Julius Caesar invading Britain by John Deare, a British neo-classical sculptor. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Geoffrey of Monmouth: the lost voice of ancient Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The real history behind Victorian thriller ‘The Limehouse Golem’

Stained glass window of King Alfred the Great

Exclusive podcastThe Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The history of the Bible. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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?

The cosmopolitan Chaucer. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Equestrian portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from the Ellesmere manuscript of his Canterbury Tales (14th century). "The world in which Chaucer moved was very outward-looking," says Marion Turner. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Cosmopolitan Chaucer: the 14th-century poet’s inventive, international life. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The scandalous Byrons. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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'. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

How William Shakespeare shaped America. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Shakespeare and America. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet

Jane Austen’s tips for “health and happiness”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

'The Poor Actress's Christmas Dinner', a painting by pre-Raphaelite artist Robert Braithwaite Martineau, says much about the way Victorians had begun to understand the problem of loneliness. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)

The invention of loneliness: why being 'unhappy alone' is a surprisingly modern idea. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Photographs of Anne Frank and her father, Otto, with the typewriter

Censoring Anne Frank: how her famous diary has been edited through history

A portrait of Thomas Cromwell

The Mirror & The Light book review: Hilary Mantel's epic finale "lives up to the hype". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.