The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

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.

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”.

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

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis.

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

A new life of Churchill.

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.

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?.

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.

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.

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.

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?.

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

A half-hour history of Europe.

A battle of Flodden memorial statue of one of the Hawick Callants on horseback, raising the captured banner aloft in triumph. Hawick, Roxburghshire, Scotland. (Getty Images)

History explorer: the battle of Flodden.

Painting depicting Cromwell at the head of his troops following the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, by Ernest Crofts. (Photo by De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images)

Oliver Cromwell: the secret of his military genius.

Robert the Bruce, famous for beating the English army of Edward II despite having far fewer troops, is commemorated at the 1314 battleground in Bannockburn. (Dreamstime)

Robert the Bruce: champion of Scotland or murderous usurper?.

A scene depicted on the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The Normans: a timeline

As many as 15 people may have been killed, and a further 500 badly injured, during the 1819 riot in Manchester that came to be known as the 'Peterloo' Massacre. (Rischgitz/Getty Images)

16 August 1819: Militia massacres protesters at ‘Peterloo’

A First World War silk screened poster c1918 showing a frightening German soldier holding a bloodied bayonet. Caption reads: "Beat back the Hun with Liberty Bonds". (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

Why did the Allies call Germans 'Huns' during World War I?

Britons under Nazi rule podcast

Britons under Nazi rule.

A c1750 watercolour shows workers "mixing the powder" at Woolwich Arsenal. "The institutions that made up the 18th-century British 'state' existed entirely to provide the resources for war," argues Priya Satia. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)

How war sparked the industrial revolution.

British former field marshal Douglas Haig, inspects poppies before Armistice Day, October 1922. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Remembering the First World War: blood, poppies and poetry.

Allied soldiers with captured prisoners of war after the battle of Amiens during the First World War, 1918. (Photo by Authenticated News/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Remembering the battle of Amiens.

Illustration by Glen McBeth

Did castle defenders pour boiling oil on their assailants during a medieval siege?

A photograph of a crowd in Berlin celebrating Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany's proclamation of war against Great Britain, August 1914. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The Library1914: Countdown to catastrophe.

Members of the Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) LDV (Local Defence Volunteers) dressed in their civilian clothes march along a platform passing a steam locomotive on 1 July 1940 in London. (Photo by Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Dad’s Army guide to defending Britain.

Podcast with Jonathan Ruffle

The Tommies' final acts.

The blue-robed Henry VII pictured performing a variety of tasks at the Tower of London following his accession to the throne, in a contemporary illustration. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Bosworth: the dawn of the Tudors.