The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

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

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

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

Dan Snow on shell shock.

Dan Snow on shell shock. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

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

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

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

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

Combat helicopters fly over US troops during a search and destroy mission, South Vietnam. Despite their military might, argues Max Hastings, the Americans were doomed to fail during the Vietnam War. (Photo by Patrick Christain/Getty Images)

Max Hastings on Vietnam. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London. "We're brought up on a whole ant-heap of myths about Napoleon. The apocryphal stories that swirl around him are legion," he says. (Photography by Frank Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

JFK prepares to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. (Picture by Corbis/Getty Images)

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sir Winston Churchill leaves his London home for Chartwell, Kent. (Photo by PA-Images)

A new life of Churchill. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An illustration depicting the Heiji Insurrection of c1159 - one of the first samurai battles. (Photo by Alamy)

A brief history of samurai warfare

Director Peter Jackson in 2015 in Beijing, China (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Peter Jackson on the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A detail from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the death of Harold Godwinson at the battle of Hastings, 1066. Victory at Hastings did not make Duke William of Normandy king of England – at least, not immediately. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Q&AWhat happened after the Battle of Hastings?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A vintage colour lithograph depicting King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. The battle of Bosworth (or Bosworth Field) was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York. (Photo by Getty Images)

The battle for Bosworth field: Historians react to decision to build on battlefield where Richard III died. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The opening ceremony of London’s Tower Bridge on 30 June 1894. The bridge became a symbol of London’s importance as a global maritime hub (Photo by Francis Frith/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Britain's imperial landmarks: The empire on our doorsteps

British troops go over the top of the trenches during the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The Somme was one of the bloodiest clashes of the First World War, causing more than one million casualties over five months. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

The First World War: Was it worth it?

Catholics massacre Protestants in Ulster in a contemporary illustration

10 great misconceptions of the Civil War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

US soldiers man a machine gun post in the Argonne Forest, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, 1918. (Photo by US Army Signal Corps/American Stock/Getty Images)

'Foch's Grand Offensive': the biggest battle you've never heard of. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A Battle of Britain type 'scramble', circa 1940. An improved Spitfire is pushed onto the runway by a group of pilots from the squadron. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The good war?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Great wars were started by young men with “jangling hormones”, argues Simon Jenkins

A half-hour history of Europe. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.