Social history

John Julius Norwich pictured at the Oxford Literary Festival in 2014. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)

Books interview with John Julius Norwich: “Most British people know practically nothing about French history”

From The Library

A portrait of Catherine of Siena, who in the 1360s experienced a vision from God during which – according to her biographer, Raymond of Capua – she drank the water from the wound in Christ’s side. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

The medieval mystics with a hotline to God

From The Library

Husband and wife Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang), pictured at their wedding in 1928. The pair “dominated Chinese politics for two decades [and] were among the most prominent non-westerners on the planet throughout the 1930s and 1940s”, says Rana Mitter. (Photo by Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Six lives that shaped China

From The Library

An engraving from Ulrich Molitor’s ‘On witches and female soothsayers’, depicting witches bringing down the rain. Germany, 15th century. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

General ancient history

A spell-binding history of witches

From The Library

Radio Times cover, 1931. (Photo by Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)

Radio nation

From The Library

Wendy Webster. (Photo by Claire Wood/BBC)

Second World War

Books interview with Wendy Webster: “In its finest hour, Britain’s population was multiethnic and multinational”

From The Library

A St Patrick's Day Parade in America, Union Square, 1870s, from a colour lithograph.

The history of St Patrick’s Day

A crowd gathers to watch the witnesses arrive for the trial of John George Haigh, the 'acid bath murderer', in Lewes, East Sussex, July 1949. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

10 facts about crime on the home front in the Second World War

Appia Antica (The Appian Way), Rome, Lazio, Italy, Europe. (Getty)

Invention or adaptation: what did the Romans really do for us?

Pancake day celebrations

The history of Shrove Tuesday

Ruth Ellis and her friend Desmond Cussen

Ruth Ellis and the hanging that rocked a nation

Notre Dame and Paris, France

My favourite place: Paris, France

From The Library

Barry Cunliffe and David Abulafia

Living with the oceans

Alexander-Fleming-530x800-bce4cb4

Six trivial decisions that changed British history