Social history

Joseph Chamberlain (far right) pictured with his sons Neville (far left) and Austen, daughter Hilda (front left) and third wife, Mary Endicott (Photo by Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Industrial revolution

Chamberlain and Cadbury of Birmingham The first families in Britain’s second city

Men kiss in a medieval illumination.

Are some LGBTQ histories being overlooked?

William Caxton shows off his new press in Westminster to Edward IV in a 19th-century painting (Photo by Artepics / Alamy Stock Photo)

How William Caxton printed the first-ever book in English

A 1380s depiction of the Knights of the Round Table. Their heroics were routinely celebrated at medieval feasts (Photo by Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images)

6 ingredients for a memorable medieval feast

A uniformed US soldier plants American flags at gravesites on Memorial Day

Memorial Day A brief history

London in the 16th century map, illustration by Theresa Grieben

Trade, religion and diversity: how Tudor London became a global city

Bishops tumble, with “popish” paraphernalia falling from their pockets, in a woodcut from a 1641 Puritan pamphlet titled 'A Decade of Grievances' (Photo by Bridgeman Images)

How people power fuelled England’s century of chaos

A woodcut from Frances Rose-Troup’s book about the Prayer Book Rebellion, in which some 4,000 people from Devon and Cornwall died (Photo by Collection PJ / Alamy Stock Photo)

The Prayer Book Rebellion: Mark Stoyle on how the 1549 rising almost changed Tudor history

A clown, c1970s. The next decade, there would be a panic over

General History

Clowns, agoraphobia and kayaks: a history of fear and loathing

'The Reward of Cruelty', 1751, by William Hogarth (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

“An enlightened turn”: how medicine (and the vaccination) developed in 18th-century Britain

Wife of Bath

The Wife of Bath: how Chaucer’s character gives a voice to medieval women

A 1577 portrait of Arbella Stuart, great- great-granddaughter of Henry VII, as a toddler clutching a doll

What were the games and pastimes enjoyed by Tudor children?

Genghis Khan’s tent, as shown in a 14th-century Persian miniature. The Mongols’ conquests transformed the way the people of Eurasia did trade, shared knowledge, paid taxes and fought wars (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

What was life like under the Mongol empire?

Construction of the Berlin Wall begins at Ebertstrasse. The barrier would divide the city for 28 years (Photo by von der Becke/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Life in East Germany: the cultural evolution behind the Iron Curtain

A family walks through San Francisco’s Chinatown district in 1904. Chinese culture endured in the US in spite of the Chinese Exclusion Act (Photo by Arnold Genthe/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

The Chinese Exclusion Act: your guide to the 19th-century US anti-immigration laws