February 2012

Articles from the February 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine

Sat in his Spitfire adorned with Figaro the Cat is decorated Second World War fighter pilot Ian Gleed, who had to hide his homosexuality (Photo by Royal Air Force Official Photographer/ Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)

Second World War

Hiding in plain sight The prejudice and tolerance of homosexuality in WW2 armed forces

Chris Patten, the last governor of colonial Hong Kong, is pictured here receiving the Union Jack flag shortly before Hong Kong was returned to China, ending over a century of British rule. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

The British empire: 10 big questions

A photograph of Queen Victoria and her descendants, taken in April 1894 in Coburg, Germany. The photograph shows Queen Victoria's position at the centre of a network of alliances created by strategic marriages, which gave her the name 'the grandmother of Europe'. (Alamy)

A photograph of Queen Victoria and her family: what can it tell us?

In the 16,000 years after the end of the last Ice Age, societies in Eurasia and the Americas followed radically different trajectories. Here, an Aztec priest offers the heart taken from a living person to the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. (Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

The old world and the new

Aftermath of the Staplehurst rail crash, a derailment at Staplehurst, Kent in 1865, that killed ten passengers and injured forty. Author Charles Dickens was among the passengers who escaped unscathed. “He spent hours aiding the hurt and dying and extricating the dead,” says Jonathan Grossman. (SSPL/Getty Images)

Dickens on the move

Line engraving depicting the burning of Rawlins White, c1555. From a late 18th-century edition of John Foxe's 'The Book of Martyrs'. (Alamy)

The Making of Martyrs

German scientists Dr Carl Eisenmann, Dr Mersch, Dr Trabat and Dr Stocklin. (Express/Getty Images)

The intelligence war for German scientists

Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in the centre of Florence (Getty)

A big day in history: Florence’s bonfire of the vanities

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Illustration by Jonty Clark.

Ye Olde Travel Guide: Corfu 1864 . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917). (Alamy)

My history hero: Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

English medical student Roger Bannister

A history of British sport