Social history

Columba depicted on a wall hanging in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. This Irish patron saint's influence on the Christian church was, and still is, felt much further afield. (Photo by Dreamstime)

Medieval miracle worker: how St Columba transformed Christianity in Britain

John Duval Gluck, Jr, 'the Santa Claus man', pictured left, visiting the General Post Office to promote the Santa Claus Association’s benefit show

The con man who saved Christmas

The characters Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim, from Charles Dickens's work 'A Christmas Carol'

Did Charles Dickens invent Christmas as we know it today?

Dejan Djokic revisits the brief 1991 war that saw Slovenia secure independence and helped set in motion the collapse of Yugoslavia . (Image by Getty Images)

Yugoslavia: the beginning of the end

A Victorian Christmas card

HistoryExtra’s Christmas history quiz

Black and white image of island prison, taken from the sky

The battle of Alcatraz, 1946: the most violent escape attempt in the prison’s history

Mark Mazower explains how the Greeks secured an unlikely victory against the Ottoman empire in their 1820s fight for freedom. (Image by Getty Images)

Triumph against the odds: the 1821 Greek Revolution

HEX_Voices_AnnaWhitelock

General History

Anna Whitelock's Talking Points Friends or enemies?

Tom Smith's Surprise Cosaques, Christmas Crackers 1878. (Image by Getty)

The history of Christmas crackers

Schoolchildren in Liverpool have their Christmas party in an air raid shelter built into a railway arch

Second World War

What was Christmas like in Britain during WW2?

A group of worshippers praying in a chapel in Ireland, during the Irish famine, c1848. (Photo by Illustrated London News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Q&A Why do some people call the Irish famine ‘the Great Hunger’?

A woman slops here chamberpot from a window onto pedestrians in the street below in this woodcut

Were medieval cities really filthy?

A statue in Kiev showing a Ukrainian player defeating a Third Reich eagle symbol at the Start stadium's entrance

Second World War

Q&A Did Nazis guards really play a ‘death match’ against a Ukrainian football team?

Katherine Harvey discusses whether attitudes to sex in the Middle Ages were really so different from our own. (Image by Getty Images)

Sex lives of medieval people

David M Kennedy answers listener questions about the economic crash that devastated 1930s America. (Image by Getty Images)

The Great Depression: everything you wanted to know