Social history

Dancers demonstrate the Charleston, c1926. The dance is often associated with ‘flappers’ – newly enfranchised women with bobbed hair, short skirts and supposedly looser morals – and characterised by frenetic up and down movements and swivelling, akimbo limbs. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Strictly history: 5 facts about the history of dancing

In 1945 there were two million more ‘potential’ households than actual homes, in part exacerbated by the wartime damage to housing stock (Coventry, for example, lost one third of its homes in the Blitz). Here, displaced people in east London wait on the street. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A history of homelessness

An 1824 cartoon depicting the drinking escapades of Oxford students. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The history of student life: 7 things you didn’t know

A broker looks at his screens at Frankfurt's stock exchange on 15 September 2008. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2008 financial crisis explained

(Illustration by Davide Bonazzi for BBC History Magazine)

The big question: Has the European Union been a success?

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor playing Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII in the 1963 film, Cleopatra. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

The 7 best couples in history

An illustration showing the last moments of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the explorer, soldier and half-brother of Sir Walter Ralegh. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The Tudor guide to colonising the world

Ian Hislop (Photo by J.Fernandes/D.Hubbard © Trustees of the British Museum)

Dissent through the centuries

A cartoon depicting the Duke of Wellington

Georgian Britain: sex in high places

From The Library

Equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, Richmond (Photo by Library of Congress)

Who should we commemorate?

William Beveridge was determined to fight the five "giant evils" of "want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness." (Photo by Hans Wild/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

My history hero: William Beverage (1879–1963)

From The Library

Historians Sam Willis (left) and James Daybell. "We challenged ourselves to write the histories of things we weren't necessarily even sure had a history," says Willis. (Photo by David Hampton for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Sam Willis and James Daybell: “Everything has a history. And we mean absolutely everything”

From The Library

Protesters on the streets of Prague during the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968. Of all the history books Ian Kershaw has authored down the decades, his two wide-ranging volumes on modern Europe have proved the most difficult to write. (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Ian Kershaw on the trials of writing modern history

From The Library

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell on 29 September 2008. A record 778 points were wiped off the Dow Jones that day, as the 2008 financial crisis pushed the world's banking system to the edge of collapse. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The credit crunch: “It’s a story of hubris followed by a fall”

From The Library