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Inside the fort was a famous spring, St Helen’s Well, today Robin Hood’s Well. (© Bill Henderson)

Brunanburh: Where did the battle that saved England take place?

The Monteagle letter, which shares a warning about the Gunpowder Plot. (National Archives)

In their own words: 6 of history’s most fascinating letters

Portrait of Marie Antoinette in deep mourning, while in prison

The final days of Marie Antoinette

Two women outside a book shop in Leicester Square, London, with paperback copies of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' by D H Lawrence, after a jury at the Old Bailey decided that it was not obscene. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

The trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: how the ‘obscene’ book caused a moral storm

Margaret Thatcher surrounded by British soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment, during a surprise visit to the Falkland Islands, January 1983. Britain has

How the Falklands War fired up Britain

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi.

The WW2 obsession: why the world can’t move on from 1945

Yuri Gagarin before the first space flight, 12 April 1961. (Credit: RIA Novosti)

In pictures: Soviet cosmonauts and the birth of the space age

1651, Charles Prince of Wales (1630 - 1685) (later King Charles II of England) meets Sir Henry Lee near Oxford during the Civil War, while escaping after the Battle of Worcester.

How Charles II put Britain back together after the Civil War

A cartoon from 1862 shows a pair 'garroters' attacking a victim. (Photo by The Cartoon Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Gangs and knife-crime fears: how has Britain responded through history?

Black and white portrait image of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Who was Cardinal John Henry Newman?

Giant of literature: A page from the 'Beowulf' manuscript. The story is fictional but some of the characters within it were real people, and others were believed to be the ancestors of Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings. (Photo by Alamy)

Beowulf: The Anglo-Saxons’ action hero

Half-timbered medieval cottages, Water Street, Lavenham, Suffolk, England, (Photo by Getty Images)

History explorer A wealth of history: Laversham, Sulfolk

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William Dalrymple is an award-winning writer and historian based in India. (Photo by Bikramjt Bose)

“This was a corporation that could topple kings”: William Dalrymple on the East India Company . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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British journalist Tom Wintringham (1898–1949), the candidate for the Christian Socialist Commonwealth Party. (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

History hero Peter Tatchell chooses Tom Wintringham (1898–1949) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

This 1867 magazine illustration shows a group of children preparing for Halloween. (Photo by American Stock/Getty Images)

The origins of Halloween: tricks, treats and cobbled streets