The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

c1400, English troops use siege towers to capture a French town during the Hundred Years' War between England and France. Original Artwork: An illumination from Froissart's Chronicles. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

7 facts about the Hundred Years’ War

The battle of Marston Moor, the largest clash of the Civil War, depicted in a 19th-century painting. Preventing a slide into chaos required "diplomatic panache, not Charles's fabled stubbornness", writes Jonathan Healey. (Photo by A 16th-century portrait of Bess of Hardwick. Bess's talent, ambition and eye for a well-connected husband elevated her to dizzying levels of wealth and power in Tudor England. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)

The LibraryWhat sparked the Civil War?.

German prisoners traipse past Allied anti-aircraft positions near Méricourt-l'Abbé, August 1918. The battle of Amiens fired the starting-gun on a succession of Allied triumphs on the western front that would end in ultimate victory on 11 November. (Photo by Alamy)

Amiens: the battle that broke the Germans.

A flight of Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft of No 73 Squadron RAF, over France, 19 April 1940. (Photo by S. A. Devon/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

How the RAF won the war.

Bronze statue of a she-wolf suckling twin brothers Romulus and Remus, the main characters of Rome's foundation myth. (Photo By DEA/G NIMATALLAH/De Agostini/Getty Images)

10 key Roman dates you need to know

Troops in Korea, c1951. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Forging alliances: Britain and the US in the Korean War.

The American War of Independence: Three Films

General Sir Douglas Haig (left) and Sir Henry Rawlinson are largely to blame for the failure of the battle of the Somme, says historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. (Photos by Hulton Archive/Getty Images and Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

The British generals whose infighting lost the battle of the Somme.

US president Donald Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands at a summit in Singapore on 12 June 2018. (Photo by Handout/Getty Images)

The Trump-Kim summit of June 2018: what did it really achieve?.

Edward I in parliament with the Archbishop of Canterbury; King Alexander III of Scotland; the Welsh Prince Llywelyn ab Gruffydd and the Archbishop of York. From the Wriothesley MS, 1523, published in ‘The Island Race’, a 20th-century book written by Sir Winston Churchill covering the history of the British Isles from the pre-Roman times to the Victorian era. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Edward I: man of principle or grasping opportunist?.

Beevor on Arnhem.

A painting depicting the battle of the White Mountain

Europe’s apocalypse: the Thirty Years' War.

Australian troops head for Gallipoli in 1915

The myths of the battle of Gallipoli.

Norsk Hydro's Vermork plant

The Special Operations Executive: Churchill's secret army.

Thomas Becket

The LibraryEngland’s forgotten civil war.

Norman cavalry charge the enemy in this detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. Debate rages over the pros and cons of the tapestry leaving France for the first time in more than 900 years. (Photo by Photo 12/Getty Images)

Will the Bayeux Tapestry actually come to Britain?

The Vietnam War on film.

The ‘Princes in the Tower’

The 5 greatest mysteries behind the Wars of the Roses.

Creating the SAS.

8 of Britain’s best battlefields.

Adolf Hitler in uniform. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

The Third Reich’s nuclear programme: Churchill’s greatest wartime fear.

The postwar world.

Henry VIII “regarded his wars as the worthy successors of the great martial victories of England’s past”, says Steven Gunn. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

The LibraryTotal war in Tudor England.

The Spring Offensive, 1918. (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Germany’s final gamble.

The Marshall Plan and the Cold War.

British 40th Division tanks transporting captured German guns from the battle of Cambrai. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

First World War

5 tanks that changed the course of the First World War

Journey’s End: behind the scenes of the new First World War film.

Britain’s secret wartime prison.

Scythians: the art of war.

Prisoners of war.