Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

Woodcut of a woman who may be stoking a furnace or baking bread, printed in the 15th century. (SSPL/Getty Images)

What was life like for a medieval housewife?.

Bill Edwardes, who at the age of 16 joined the army to fight during WW2.

Second World War

The boys who lied about their age to fight in WW2

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve.

An example of the Zimmermann Telegram

First World War

The Zimmermann telegram: the telegram that brought America into the First World War

The expulsion of Jews from France in 1182. Found in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The Jews of medieval England.

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)

Bart van Es on The Cut Out Girl.

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.

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)

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

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

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

An illustration of motors and cycles in Kensington High Street, opposite Holland House, London, from the Illustrated London News, 1903. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Lonely hearts and holiday flings: a brief history of dating.

The Italian-French poet and campaigner for women's rights, Christine de Pizan (1364–c1430). (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Not so silent: the unquiet women of history

In 1877, a major rebellion in Kyushu concentrated the opposition of conservative elements to the westernization of Japan. (Photo by Asian Art/Getty Images)

The story of modern Japan.

BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker with Tony Foulds, 82, who for nearly 75 years has tended the memorial of 10 US airmen who were killed when their B-17 crashed in Endcliffe Park in Sheffield in February 1944. Tony witnessed the crash as an eight-year-old boy. (Photo courtesy of Dan Walker)

Second World War

“We got Tony a fly-past”: how BBC’s Dan Walker organised tribute to WW2 plane crash heroes in Sheffield

A British military post in a street in Dublin during the Easter Uprising, 1916. (Photo by ullstein picture via Getty Images)

The history of Ireland: 11 milestone moments

The Beatles with Ed Sullivan

How The Beatles broke America.

Photo of Enoch Powell being escorted by police

The Rivers of Blood speech: what was it and how did it divide Britain?

Jews waiting on a Warsaw street for the deportation to a concentration camp.(Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Should more be done to remember the Holocaust in Britain?.

The reconstructed Castle Square offers a glimpse of how Warsaw would have looked in the past. (Photo by Alamy)

My favourite place: Warsaw, Poland

A memorial tomb to King Æthelstan, the first Saxon king of all England, in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. (Photo by Geography Photos/UIG via Getty Images)

A brief history of England.

The unemployed scramble for soup tickets in an engraving from 'The Illustrated London News'. Elizur Wright observed the plight of the poor with a horrified fascination. (Photo by Massachusetts Historical Society/ Bridgeman)

A Victorian Bill Bryson: Elizur Wright's letters from Great Britain.

Mass meeting of Chartists on Kennington Common, London, 10 April 1848

9 places connected to the Chartism movement.

Heck cows, the result of Nazi breeding experiments. Seven Heck cows had to be put down in January 2015 after they tried, on multiple occasions, to attack Devon farmer Derek Gow. (Photo by Jim Wileman/Alamy Stock Photo)

Nazi super-cows and defamed Gods: 7 strange and forgotten moments in history.

The president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt and his staff gathered together in New York to find a solution to the economic crisis. 1935. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Icons: the game changers of the 20th century.

Wat Pra Singh is among the most visited temples in Chiang Mai, Thailand. (Photo by Getty Images)

General ancient history

My favourite place: Chiang Mai, Thailand

Paul Morland. (Photo by Frank Monks)

Books interview with Paul Morland: “Even the Spanish flu pandemic wasn’t enough to stop population growth”.