Social history

The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway, 1888. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

In pictures: fairytales through history

Bart van Es, winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2019 prize. (Photo by Alamy)

Second World War

Bart van Es on The Cut Out Girl

A portrait of Anne Boleyn. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Anne Boleyn: a 16th-century feminist?

The 30th Annual Academy Awards, Los Angeles, 1958. (Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

13 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars

From matriarchs and artisans to traders and travellers, Judith Jesch explores the often rich and adventurous lives of women in the Viking age. (Illustrations by Laura Grace Haines)

Viking women: at home and at war

British soldiers while away the hours in a photograph captioned "The long, long Burmese day", c1892. Many imperial troops went decades without firing a shot in anger. (Photo by National Media Museum/Royal Photographic Society/SSPL/Getty Images)

Britain’s bored imperialists

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Rogues' gallery: Images of criminals incarcerated in prisons including Wormwood Scrubs and Newcastle City Gaol, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their crimes included stealing clothes, money, boots, and leather. Recent research into Victorian mugshot books – and increasing digital access to court and prison records – offers a different picture of Victorian criminality to the one painted by writers such as Charles Dickens, argues Heather Shore. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

The Library Dark secrets of the Victorian Underworld: did hardened criminals stalk Britain's cities?

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The Shaftesbury Welcome Ragged School in Battersea , 1899. Classes of 40 were not rare, and they could stretch to 80 during staff shortages. (Photo by Mary Evans)

Class warfare: a day in the life of a Victorian schoolchild

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The regions of Britain in 1635, before the 1707 Acts of Union that united England and Scotland. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

“The anglocentric view we have of British history is unsustainable,” says Misha Glenny

Roman mosaic of a dog, bearing the legend 'Cave Canem' underneath, from Pompeii, from Naples National Museum's collection, 1st century. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

6 things you (probably) didn’t know about animals in ancient Rome

Vintage postcard showing Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and a pet corgi. (Photo by the History Press)

8 of the best dogs in history

Queen Victoria and her dog Looty. (© Look and Learn/Bridgeman Art Library)

10 famous people in history and their bizarre pets

Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle. (Image Credit: BBC/Douglas Road Productions/Carlton Dixon)

“A platform to ask ‘was it really like that?’”: Sir Lenny Henry on new Windrush drama

Cesare Lombroso, described as the 'father of criminology'. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The ‘born criminal’? Lombroso and the origins of modern criminology