The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

A colour illustration of First World War allies, the German Reich and Austria-Hungary, featuring soldiers shaking hands, their troops and national flags, c1915. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

Q&AWho was involved in the First World War? Who was on each side?

Captain James Lawrence of the Chesapeake is wounded

The capture of the Chesapeake: how the British Royal Navy rescued its reputation in the War of 1812.

An example of the Zimmermann Telegram

First World War

The Zimmermann telegram: the telegram that brought America into the First World War

A sculpture of Genghis Kahn

The brutal brilliance of Genghis Khan

The crew of ‘Mi Amigo’. The pilot, 23-year-old Lt John Kriegshauser, can be seen in the front row, far left. (Photo courtesy of Sheffield County Council via American Air Museum in Britain)

Mi Amigo: the deadly WW2 bomber crash in Sheffield play park that killed 10 airmen.

Battle of Verdun. French trench on the front lines, 1916. (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Verdun.

Code-breaking personnel at Bletchley Park, 1943. (Photo by Bletchley Park Trust/SSPL/Getty Images)

The evolution of British code-breaking.

BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker with Tony Foulds, 82, who for nearly 75 years has tended the memorial of 10 US airmen who were killed when their B-17 crashed in Endcliffe Park in Sheffield in February 1944. Tony witnessed the crash as an eight-year-old boy. (Photo courtesy of Dan Walker)

Second World War

“We got Tony a fly-past”: how BBC’s Dan Walker organised tribute to WW2 plane crash heroes in Sheffield

Russian troops hoist the red banner of the Soviet Army after Stalingrad

Stalingrad: the crushing of the Reich.

Miniature from a Persian manuscript depicting Genghis Khan's funeral

General ancient history

Q&AWhere was Genghis Khan buried?

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi.

Did the Cold War ever really end?

Winston Churchill. (Photo by Getty Images)

Did Churchill’s postwar speeches save the world?.

The Bomber Command Memorial in London, which was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. (Photo by Epics/Getty Images)

How should we remember the men of Bomber Command?.

c60 AD, Queen Boudica of the Iceni holding a spear. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

8 things you may not know about British history.

Herbert Hasler, one of the Cockelshell heroes, seen here at work on his sloop at the Don Fuller boatyard, Bosham, Sussex. 1st March 1966. (Image by Getty)

My history hero: Paddy Ashdown chooses ‘Blondie’ Hasler.

American Flying Fortress bombers and a Mustang fighter practise formation flying over England, training for rain that would help break Nazi resistance. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

The LibraryThe Allies’ big idea: the largest air battle of the Second World War.

A Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) is approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, 6th June 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

Tales from D-Day.

Photograph of the Wounded British Soldiers at the Battle of the Somme. Dated 1916. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

First World War

8 things you (probably) didn’t know about the battle of the Somme

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting a naked man with an erection reaching out towards a naked woman, who is covering both her face and her pudenda with her hands. (© Bayeux Museum)

The Bayeux Tapestry with knobs on: what do the tapestry's 93 penises tell us?

The American Revolutionary War: birth of a superpower

A wounded soldier of Company K, 110th Regiment Infantry, receives first-aid treatment from a comrade in Varennes-en-Argonne, France, 26 September 1918. (Photo by Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

First World War soldiers: life after the Armistice

The First World War promoted advances in medicine, and in sectors such as aviation, that had not just military but also peacetime benefits, says David Stevenson. Here Captain Francis Derwent Wood treats the face of a patient, creating a mask which matches as closely as possible to the man's faces before he was injured, c1916. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ IWM via Getty Images)

The First World War: what was it good for?.

Dan Snow on shell shock.

Dan Snow on shell shock.

British war correspondents and press officers, western front, c1917. From the Great War Vol .10 published in 1918 FR left to right: Percival Phillips; Colonel Hutton Wilson; Beach Thomas; Captain Stewart. Standing: Basil Clark; Perry Robinson; Percival Gibbon. (Photo by Alamy)

Censorship in the trenches: why didn’t journalists report the horrors of the First World War?.

Women of the Sarah Caswell Angell chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, engaging in war work activities to assist the Allied cause during the First World War, 1918. During their sessions they knitted, made hospital garments, sewed for French children, and made aviators' vests. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

First World War

A–Z of the First World War

An American recruitment poster. “US forces showed an impressive ability to learn at speed,” says Nick Lloyd. (© Getty)

The great misconceptions of the First World War.

British troops in the trenches, Belgium, c1914–15. The horrors of the First World War lived long in the memories of its centenarian survivors. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

The last survivors of the First World War.

News of the end of World War I hostilities is joyfully received by the men of the 64th Regiment Infantry, 7th Division. Min de Jaueny, Moselle, France on November 11, 1918. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The end of the First World War.

The Spanish Armada defeated in the English Channel in July 1588, by Hendrick Cornelis Vroom, c1600. (Picture by DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/Getty Images)

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Spanish Armada

A wooden cross marks the spot, just over 20 miles west of Newcastle, where Oswald apparently raised his own cross before ambushing Cadwallon. If the Anglo-Saxon warlord's attack had failed, writes Edoardo Albert, England might now be a lot smaller. (Photo by Getty Images)

Hell in Heavenfield: the Anglo-Saxon battle "as important as Hastings".