Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

An illustration of Edmund Spenser’s poetic work ‘The Shepheardes Calender’. (Photo by Culture Club/Contributor/Getty Images)

The dark side of Elizabethan England

Muslims and Jews in the 16th century.

A brave new world: the 1980s home computer boom

An illustration of Victoria Woodhull addressing a congressional committee on the benefits of women's suffrage, 1871. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The LibraryThe one-woman revolution.

Roman women on a fresco from Pompeii

Q&ACould women in Ancient Rome hold any power?.

16th century engraving depicting a man with leprosy

Q&AHow did doctors treat leprosy?

The Beatles perform onstage at the Cavern Club, Liverpool in February 1961. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

History explorer: the swinging sixties.

How has public memory of the Holocaust changed over the years?.

A brief history of camouflage

5 hidden killers of the Victorian home.

Black American civil rights leader Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968) addresses crowds during the March On Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, where he gave his 'I Have A Dream' speech. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Is Martin Luther King's ‘I have a dream’ the greatest speech in history?.

Postwar Germany and medieval CSI.

Chess, gambling and cards: Tudor games and indoor pastimes.

The history of middle-class wine drinking

19th-century boxer Larry Foley

Q&AWhy do we say ‘happy as Larry’?

Victorian bakers and the Leningrad symphony.

KRISTOFER HIVJU GAME OF THRONES

Game of Thrones: medieval inspiration.

Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists

The LibraryBritain’s tearoom fascists.

5 festive facts from BBC Two’s QI

Clay soldier statues of the Chinese Qin dynasty. (Photo by Getty Images)

The six ages of China.

Christmas celebrations: the old versus the new.

Sex, scandals and betrayals: Charles II and his court

Britain’s railways and the Titanic.

The gruesome remains of prehistoric murder victims uncovered in Europe's bogs.

Photo of a couple holding up a fan

Q&AWhat signals were used in fan language?

Photo of a Canadian postage stamp

Q&AWhen was the first Christmas stamp issued?

In pictures: Frank Sinatra at 100

Where, in Ancient Egypt, did people live?

Making of Blodeuwedd, the false flower-woman of Welsh myth. (Photo by Ivy Close Images/Alamy)

Celtic myths: the tales that might have inspired Star Wars and Harry Potter.

A brief history of how we fell in love with caffeine and chocolate.