Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

A medieval miniature depicts a monk and a woman in a bed.

Sex in the Middle Ages: have attitudes really changed?

A woodcut showing the interior of a kitchen in Elizabethan England. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England.

A 12-year-old boy with a large bruise on his face ‘pulls threads’ in a New York sweatshop

The 19th-century slums of New York

Unexpected Edwardians.

An allegorical depiction of the plague in ancient Rome, an angel batters down a door while people lie sick on the ground

The reign of Roman disease: why did disease hit a flourishing empire?.

A mosaic that shows two Roman women exercising, one holds a flower and another holds a leaf

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Roman women

Tony Robinson as Private Baldrick and Rowan Atkinson as Captain Blackadder

Q&AWas there a real Blackadder?.

Jodie Comer plays Marguerite de Carrouges in the upcoming film 'The Last Duel',

The medieval women who spoke out against sexual violence

An illustration of the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865

Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion: brutality and outrage in the British empire

The burgundy cover of a British passport

Q&AWhen were passports as we know them today first introduced?

QuizHow Much Do You Know About Ancient Greece?.

This red-figure pottery depicts a story involving Helen of Troy. Greek tragedies posed their audiences an awkward question: what would you do if you were in a similar situation? Meanwhile, comedy gave satirists a channel through which to cut Athens' political heavies down to size. (DEA/G.NIMATALLAH/De Agostini/Getty Images)

Ancient Greek theatre and the Athenian identity.

Adolf Hitler stands with his back to a statue of Discobolos, the Discus Thrower

The classics and racial hatred: how the far right hijacked the ancient world.

A modern illustration shows prisoners of war being sold into slavery

Slavery in ancient Greece: what was life like for enslaved people?

An ancient Greek vase depicting sexual intercourse

A brief history of sex and sexuality in Ancient Greece

An ancient Greek vase depicts animal sacrifice of a cow by two women

Your guide to Ancient Greece: everything you wanted to know

Vanguard-class submarine HMS Vigilant, the top above water

Britain’s nuclear deterrent: a brief history.

Photo of a man on a penny-farthing

Q&AHow dangerous was the penny-farthing?

Two Hitler Youth who have surrendered to Allied Forces, Germany, 1945. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

Innocence under fire: how children were used in warfare of the past

US secretary of state William Seward (seated left) signs the agreement to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867

America’s hidden empire: the USA's forgotten imperial expansion.

Illustration showing the traders who made a fortune during the wake of the Black Death

Merchants of doom: the traders who profited from the Black Death.

From Meiji to modernity: how Japan reinvented itself through the 20th century.

Workers lower the bodywork of a Standard Vanguard car onto its chassis in a factory

Britain’s motor city: how Coventry's car industry roared to greatness – then went into reverse.

German troops on horseback cross a bridge during the Poland campaign

The brutal blitzkrieg: the 1939 invasion of Poland.

Illustration depicting the migration of people across the world

How has migration changed the world?.

Pompeii: a remarkable window into ancient Roman life.

Joep de Beer of Holland throws a javelin at the Stoke Mandeville Games

Q&AWhen and where were the first Paralympics held?

William Wallace on trial in 1305

William Wallace: who was the Scottish rebel who defied Edward I?

Before Chernobyl: the secrets that paved the way for disaster.

'The Journey of the Magi' by Benozzo Gozzoli, commissioned by Piero the Gouty for the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. It features his son Lorenzo, who would become known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, as one of the three kings

“They were on a level with today’s billionaires” – your guide to the Medici: bankers to the Pope, rulers of Florence, patrons of the Renaissance