The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

A fanciful engraving imagines Peter the Hermit presenting Pope Urban II (centre) with a letter from Simeon II

Launching the First Crusade

Alphonse de Neuville's 1880 painting 'The Defence of Rorke's Drift'. The battle was to become a "supreme symbol of imperial heroism". (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

The battle of Rorke's Drift: a stand still clad in the "myths of empire"

An engraving depicting London's Piccadilly Circus heaving with crowds on their way to The Great Exhibition of 1851. A banner reading 'God save the Queen and Prince Albert' has been strung across the street. Within the Crystal Palace some 100,000 objects were displayed – taking up ten miles of space – the work of 15,000 contributors. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain: the decline and fall of the British empire

English cavalry attacking the Sikh at the Battle of Aliwal

Victoria the warrior queen

Hitler and Stalin: tyrants at war

Illustration of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War

Victorians and war: which conflicts were fought during the Victorian era?

Richard III

What if…Richard III had won at Bosworth?

The collapse of the Third Reich

The battle for Sicily, 1943

German Jews in WW1

Bonnie Prince Charlie: hero or coward?

An East India Company official riding on an elephant

The East India Company: how a trading corporation became an imperial ruler

The Wars of the Roses: everything you wanted to know

British from the 11th Brigade 4th division and German soldiers at Ploegsteert in Belgium on Christmas Day 1914. (Photo by The Art Archive/Alamy)

First World War

Did the First World War Christmas truce football match really happen?

Invention or adaptation: what did the Romans really do for us?

Historian Margaret Macmillan

"To destroy a library is to erase part of the cultural memory of humankind": Margaret MacMillan on war

The Huguenots vs France: who were the Huguenots and what did they believe?

Second World War

Caught off guard: why didn't America see Pearl Harbor coming?

Robert Harris on V2, historical fiction and WW2

US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, meeting during the Casablanca conference in 1943. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Second World War

Churchill and D-Day: did the prime minister oppose the Normandy landings?

Laurence ReesHitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War

The Trojan Horse – seen in the 2004 film Troy

How much of the legend of Troy is real?

German writer Hans Fallada (1893–1947), pictured in 1934 with his son Uli in a carriage in Carwitz, Mecklenburg. (Photo by Getty Images)

Germans who resisted the Nazis

Boys playing conkers in 1926. Horse chestnuts played an unlikely role in the war effort just a few years earlier. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Did conkers help win the First World War?

Second World War

'Real life battleships': the secret game that countered German U-boat attacks during WW2

An allegory of France in 1870

Franco-Prussian War: the conflict that plunged Europe into a nightmare

War and society: a tangled relationship

From the British Isles to Italy and Spain: how the Normans reshaped Europe

Queen Elizabeth II at Falkland Islands remembrance service 2007

Was the Queen opposed to the Falklands War?

When Bergen-Belsen was liberated, huts designed to house about 30 people were found to be crammed with as many as 500. (Photo by Getty Images)

Second World War

Your guide to the Holocaust