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Military history

Photo of pears

Second World War

Q&A Why do we say 'it's all gone pear-shaped'?

Minamoto fought Minamoto at Uji in 1184, giving the Taira enough time to regroup for a final stand. (Image by Alamy)

Clash of the Samurai: the history of Japan’s Genpei War

It was in the Cabinet Room that Churchill would meet with his ministers and make the critical decisions that would shape the war. (Image by Getty Images)

Second World War

A visit to the Churchill War Rooms, London

Inside the fort was a famous spring, St Helen’s Well, today Robin Hood’s Well. (© Bill Henderson)

Brunanburh: Where did the battle that saved England take place?

An African samurai: the tall, strong African man who acquired the name Yasuke in Japan was at first an object of curiosity but soon became a prized samurai warrior serving a powerful warlord in the violent intrigues that wracked the country during that volatile era. ((Illustration by Lynn Hatzius for BBC World Histories)

Yasuke: an African samurai in Japan

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the death of King Harold II during the battle of Hastings in 1066. (Photo by Getty Images)

Where did the battle of Hastings actually take place? 8 facts about the 1066 battle

Margaret Thatcher surrounded by British soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment, during a surprise visit to the Falkland Islands, January 1983. Britain has "ceased to be a nation in retreat," declared the prime minister in the wake of the victory over Argentine forces.

How the Falklands War fired up Britain

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi.

Second World War

The WW2 obsession: why the world can’t move on from 1945

The Spartan king Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The conflict has become the archetype for the courageous last stand, pitting around 200,000 Persians against 7,000 Spartans.

Your guide to the battle of Thermopylae

Max Hastings by Fran Monks

Second World War

Max Hastings on the Dambusters

Soldiers at the battle of Arnhem

Second World War

9 things you (probably) didn’t know about the battle of Arnhem

The wrecked remains of an Allied glider that participated in Market Garden

Second World War

Why Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ battle for Arnhem, was a disaster in the planning

Jan Žižka, the general whose peasant army defied the Holy Roman Empire in the 1420s.

Christ’s communists: the radical religious sect that challenged the Holy Roman Empire

20 October 2018.
BBC History Weekend in York.
Henry Hemming.

Second World War

“There’s nothing essentially new about fake news”: 5 minutes with Henry Hemming

The battle of Agincourt, 1415

True-to-scale battle numbers and 15th-century life: look inside the revamped Agincourt museum