The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

First World War

Slang and swear words 'helped soldiers survive the First World War'

1914: Why Britain had to go to war.

My history hero: Robert Baden Powell (1857–1941).

Cold War culture and the path to the First World War.

Were the pulverised bones of soldiers and horses who died at the battle of Waterloo sold as soil fertiliser?.

Diary of the judge who hated Hitler to be published for first time

First World War

First World War drama The Wipers Times an instant hit with viewers

Researchers go into battle to test Bronze Age weapons

First World War

Your 60-second guide to Ypres

First World War

Telling jokes in the trenches: First World War newspaper The Wipers Times celebrated in new BBC drama

Flodden 1513: the biggest ever Anglo-Scottish battle.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, displayed remarkable leadership of the British army at the battle of Waterloo. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Waterloo: the historians' verdict.

BBC History Magazine

Excavation search for soldiers killed on Flodden battlefield

Second World War

Churchill’s wartime speeches are overrated, claims academic

The LibraryJohnnie Walker: U-boat hunter in the Second World War.

Q&A: When and where was the trebuchet invented?

A Second World War memorial monument depicting Soviet soldiers

Q&AWhy did Britain and France not declare war on the Soviet Union when the Red Army marched on Poland in September 1939?.

Residents of Chongqing on the streets of their bombed-ravaged city in the autumn of 1940. China's temporary wartime capital was subjected to 218 Japanese air raids between May 1938 and August 1941, costing nearly 12,000 lives. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

China’s forgotten Second World War.

The Royal Artillery Memorial in London is a tribute to the immense power of artillery and its dominant role in the Great War. Pictured here is a bronze statue of a Royal Artillery driver, leaning back against the parapet in an attitude of exhaustion or contemplation. (Photo by View Pictures/UIG via Getty Images)

Where history happened: remembering the Great War.

George G Meade, best known for defeating Confederate General Robert E Lee at the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. (Photo by Matthew Brady/Buyenlarge/Getty Images)

Gettysburg: Lincoln’s greatest victory.

A depiction of Hannibal at the battle of Trasimene, which is "today remembered as one of the most stunning victories in military history". (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

A big day in history: Hannibal smashes his foes "at the very gates of Rome".

German soldiers with a horse-drawn cart during the retreat from Ukraine in 1943. The idea of Teutonic efficiency was a triumph of Nazi spin, says James Holland. (Keystone/Getty Images)

The great misconceptions of the Second World War.

The LibraryBritain’s brutal battles for hearts and minds.

A crew of Dambusters pictured together in c1943. The famed Dambusters raid, Operation Chastise, was an RAF attempt to breach German dams and so "deprive Ruhr industry, and the Mittelland Canal of water, over the longest period of time possible". (Royal Air Force Official Photographer/ IWM via Getty Images)

The legacy of the Dambusters.

Q&A: Why did news of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar take so long to reach England?.

The Spanish Armada: Tudor spin portrayed the events of August 1588 as a glorious English victory but, argues Robert Hutchinson, bad weather and bad tactics had more to do with the Spanish fleet's failure than Elizabethan derring-do. (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

The Spanish Armada: England's lucky escape.

British soldiers in Normandy. Though Goodwood cost the British some 200 tanks, infantry losses were relatively light, says Mark Urban. (Capt. E G Malindine/IWM via Getty Images)

Operation Goodwood: one of the biggest British disasters of the Second World War?.

Tragedy of the Templars: The Rise and Fall of the Crusader States

How many years of its existence has Britain been at war?.

The Battle on the Ice, fought between the men of Novgorod and the Teutonic Knights, was a landmark in European history, says Dominic Sandbrook. (Alamy)

A big day in history: Nevsky's Russians crush the Teutonic Knights.