Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

How to throw a medieval feast. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A wounded soldier of Company K, 110th Regiment Infantry, receives first-aid treatment from a comrade in Varennes-en-Argonne, France, 26 September 1918. (Photo by Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

First World War soldiers: life after the Armistice

The First World War promoted advances in medicine, and in sectors such as aviation, that had not just military but also peacetime benefits, says David Stevenson. Here Captain Francis Derwent Wood treats the face of a patient, creating a mask which matches as closely as possible to the man's faces before he was injured, c1916. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ IWM via Getty Images)

The First World War: what was it good for?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Dan Snow on shell shock.

Dan Snow on shell shock. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British troops in the trenches, Belgium, c1914–15. The horrors of the First World War lived long in the memories of its centenarian survivors. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

The last survivors of the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

News of the end of World War I hostilities is joyfully received by the men of the 64th Regiment Infantry, 7th Division. Min de Jaueny, Moselle, France on November 11, 1918. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The end of the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Rags and riches: Enslaved people wash diamonds in Brazil, guarded by armed overseers, in a German engraving of 1828. Diamonds were discovered in Minas Gerais state in the late 17th century. (Picture by Alamy)

Brazil: a society shaped by slavery. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

"Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": Mike Leigh on a massacre

Circus performer Otto Witte, who in 1912 successfully pretended to be the new king of Albania. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

14 weird things that have happened in November through history

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

The Peterloo Massacre. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Director Peter Jackson in 2015 in Beijing, China (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Peter Jackson on the First World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of Henry VIII with Prince Edward, his son by his third wife, Jane Seymour. If the future Henry IX had survived, there may have been no cause for Henry to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn in 1533, says Amy Licence. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

6 royal births that changed the world (or could have). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Diana, Princess Of Wales, Prince William And Prince Harry visit Thorpe Park amusement park. (Photo by Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images)

How to raise a royal... with Tracy Borman. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British troops go over the top of the trenches during the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The Somme was one of the bloodiest clashes of the First World War, causing more than one million casualties over five months. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

The First World War: Was it worth it?

Actors dressed as Tommies mark the centenary of the start of the battle of the Somme at Manchester Piccadilly station, July 2016. (Photo by Alamy)

First World War

Opinion: “The First World War centenary has been a lost opportunity”

Catholics massacre Protestants in Ulster in a contemporary illustration

10 great misconceptions of the Civil War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A statue of Robert the Bruce at Stirling Castle in Scotland. The castle "is in many ways like a bottleneck – so much of Scottish and British history passes through it and goes off to its eventual destination,” says Neil Oliver. (Photo by Iain Masterton via Getty Images)

BBC presenter Neil Oliver on his top 5 must-visit places in Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A counting of goats and rams in cuneiform script, ancient Ngirsu, Iraq, 2360 BC. (DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

Cuneiform: 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about the world’s oldest writing system

An illustration showing the last moments of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the explorer, soldier and half-brother of Sir Walter Ralegh. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The Tudor guide to colonising the world. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Ian Hislop (Photo by J.Fernandes/D.Hubbard © Trustees of the British Museum)

Dissent through the centuries. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, Richmond (Photo by Library of Congress)

Who should we commemorate?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

William Beveridge was determined to fight the five "giant evils" of "want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness." (Photo by Hans Wild/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

My history hero: William Beverage (1879–1963). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Historians Sam Willis (left) and James Daybell. "We challenged ourselves to write the histories of things we weren't necessarily even sure had a history," says Willis. (Photo by David Hampton for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Sam Willis and James Daybell: "Everything has a history. And we mean absolutely everything". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The LibraryIan Kershaw on the trials of writing modern history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell on 29 September 2008. A record 778 points were wiped off the Dow Jones that day, as the 2008 financial crisis pushed the world's banking system to the edge of collapse. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The credit crunch: "It's a story of hubris followed by a fall". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The march for Catalan Independence held in Barcelona, 11 September 2014 (Photo by Jordi Elias Grassot/Alamy)

Scots and Catalans. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An engraving from 'The Illustrated Police News', c1889, imagines Jack the Ripper

Your guide to Jack the Ripper

A big day in history: Mary Ann Nichols becomes the first victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’ (31 August 1888). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A woodcut of a woman thought to be baking bread, printed in 1497. In the Middle Ages baking was a luxury few were able to enjoy, but those who could afford a wood-burning stove would start with bread. In the 15th century Britain saw explosion of expensive spices, such as saffron, and sweetened dough became popular. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

A brief history of baking