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A portrait of Isabella of Castile

Isabella of Castile: a brief guide to the medieval queen

The British Museum in London

Virtual museum and monument tours: how to explore the wonders of history from your home

Princess Elizabeth 1939

The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen

What began as small raids on British coastal towns soon developed into all-out war, as a Great Viking Army arrived with a very different aim: to conquer (Photo credit: ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Vikings in Britain: how did raiders and marauders become lords and kings?

Portrait of an unknown woman, c1490–95. She sports a necklace in a painting from c1485. Coral jewellery was widely believed to ward off evil spirits. (Photo by Getty Images)

Medieval magic at work: 7 spells and charms our ancestors used

Cousins at war: King Stephen is shown holding a falcon in a miniature from 1253. His battle with his cousin Matilda for the English crown plunged the realm into a long civil war. (Photo by Alamy)

The Anarchy: how bloody was Stephen and Matilda’s medieval battle for the English crown?

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British author Bernard Cornwell, author of 'The Last Kingdom'

Bernard Cornwell on writing historical fiction and his blockbuster series The Last Kingdom: your questions answered . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The renowned poet Lord Byron has gone down in history for being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But his ancestors were hardly paragons of virtue. (Image by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Adultery, elopement and incest: the scandalous sex lives of the 18th-century Byrons

The Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to live before they were sent to concentration camps as part of Adolf Hitler’s ‘final solution’. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

The Jews who fought back: the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

In writing his classical novel, Orwell drew on the very real horrors of the 20th century. (Illustration by Ben Jones for BBC World Histories Magazine)

Rewriting the past: the history that inspired Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

The entry of Prince Charles Edward, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', into Edinburgh in Scotland in 1745. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Forty-five rebellion: why did it fail?

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944

Editor’s pick 9 top articles from the BBC World Histories archive to read right now

Tomb of Cyrus the Great, Shiraz, Iran

From conqueror to youth icon: who was Cyrus the Great?

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Emma Dabiri in conversation about her book 'Don't Touch My Hair'

“Afro-textured hair had no stigma before the dehumanisation of black people that emerged from slavery”: Emma Dabiri discusses the changing perceptions of Afro-textured hair . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Hollow victory: Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, attends Paris VE Day celebrations. But many faced privation and uncertainty as the war drew to a close. (Photo by Getty Images)

VE Day at 75 The bitter taste of victory: why May 1945 was not a time of celebration for everyone