Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

General ancient history

When was toilet paper invented and what did people use before?

German women carrying children believed to be part of the Lebensborn programme

Second World War

The woman who gave birth for Hitler

Hadley Freeman on a 20th-century family history.

Anne Frank - Getty Images

Second World War

12 things you need to know about Anne Frank and her diary

Christine de Pizan. (Photo by Getty Images)

Doctors, playwrights and feminists: meet 6 trailblazing medieval women

Wartime evacuees wash their hands

“The very sight of her hands did almost turn my stomach”: a brief history of hand-washing.

Who is the greatest leader in world history?

The (not so) stinky Middle Ages: why medieval people were cleaner than we think

On his plantation in Georgia, American politician Benjamin Hawkins is teaching Creek Native Americans how to use a plow, 1805. (Photo by Granger, NYC / TopFoto)

Food and war.

Illustration by Owen Davey

General History

A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past?

Four women dressed in the perceived fashion of the roaring twenties in a 1954 musical called ‘The Boy Friend’. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the ‘Roaring Twenties’ myth obscures the making of modern Britain

London’s trailblazing women.

c1960s photo showing a man places an engagement ring on a woman's finger.

A brief history of proposing marriage.

Keith Granville, managing director of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), holding a model of the Boeing 747 jet, with the new aircraft hangars under construction in the background, at Heathrow Airport, 17 March 1969. (Photo by Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images)

In pictures: the history of London’s Heathrow Airport

Depiction of the five senses (sight, sound, taste, smell and touch) by a late 18th/early 19th unknown artist. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

5 smells that made Georgian England.

Medieval medicine.

Hidden Figures: the incredible real history behind the film.

A medieval monk praying in front of a table of apothacary's herbs

Beating the Black Death: did medieval medicine help people to survive?.

Millennium Centre, Cardiff. (Photo by Dreamstime)

Simon Jenkins: "Wales needs to get over England and be Wales again".

The rise of the cat burglar.

A Burglar Looks In, Picture Post 1950. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burglary: a modern history.

Confronting Holocaust Denial with David Baddiel (Image by Wall to Wall Media/Laurence Turnbull)

Confronting Holocaust denial: “History is more of a battleground now than ever” says David Baddiel.

US academic Deborah Lipstadt exults the High Court in London after winning a libel case brought against her by British historian David Irving, 11 April 2000. (Photo by Martyn Hayhow/AFP/Getty Images)

Second World War

Holocaust denial on trial: the story of Irving v Lipstadt

American athlete Jesse Owens and German long-jumper Carl Ludwig 'Luz' Long.

5 acts of kindness that changed history

The Stonewall Riots: the flashpoint that launched the gay rights movement in the US.

Michael Wood on the Peterloo photograph.

A postcard showing for women hunting for a man with guns and dogs.

Why do women propose in a leap year?

Confronting evils.

Confronting evils.

Bottle of 'love potion'

General ancient history

Spanish fly, holy bread and mashed worms: history's weirdest aphrodisiacs and love potions

Charles Manson stares out from fabric on sale in San Francisco

The afterlife of Charles Manson.