Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a "brute of a book", and part of a new exhibition at the British Library. (c) Sam Lane Photography/British Library)

"An absolute gem": Anglo-Saxons at the British Library

Sir Winston Churchill leaves his London home for Chartwell, Kent. (Photo by PA-Images)

A new life of Churchill

The Ghent Altarpiece. (Image by Getty Images)

Who were the real monuments men of the Second World War?

Wreck of Fishing boat, Iceland. (Photo by Dreamstime)

Adventures in Iceland

8 unconventional royal wedding dresses in history

Philippe Sands tells the story behind his new BBC podcast and Radio 4 series, Intrigue: The Ratline. (Photo by Jillian Edelstein/Camera Press)

The Nazi on the run

In c1500, the young Thomas Cromwell travelled from his humble Putney home to the great cities of Italy, as shown in our illustration. The connections he established on the Italian peninsula would prove key to his meteoric rise to power back in England. (Illustration by Sarah Young for BBC History Magazine)

Thomas Cromwell: the best Italian in all England

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”

St Basil's Cathdral, Moscow. (Photo by Dreamstime)

The spy who changed the Cold War

US soldiers man a machine gun post in the Argonne Forest, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, 1918. (Photo by US Army Signal Corps/American Stock/Getty Images)

'Foch's Grand Offensive': the biggest battle you've never heard of

A Battle of Britain type 'scramble', circa 1940. An improved Spitfire is pushed onto the runway by a group of pilots from the squadron. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The good war?

Professor Kathleen Burk and Simon Jenkins discuss Jenkins's new book, 'A Short History of Europe'. (Photo by David Hampton for BBC World Histories magazine)

Simon Jenkins and Kathleen Burk on the history of Europe

Great wars were started by young men with “jangling hormones”, argues Simon Jenkins

A fourth to fifth-century AD Roman mosaic shows a woman spinning. The household was considered a woman's natural environment; the political arena certainly was not. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

6 women who changed the course of Roman history

Top ( l-r) Agrippina the Elder, Julia, and Livia. Bottom (l-r) Messalina and Agrippina the Younger

The women who built the Roman Empire

Vienna's magnificent city hall, built between 1872 and 1883, can be found in the heart of the city. (Picture by Moment/Getty Images)

My favourite place: Vienna, Austria

The LibraryIan Kershaw on the trials of writing modern history

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"

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

Scots and Catalans

Notre Dame de la Major church, Arles

ExploreArles, France: 'Little Rome' of Provence

Charles de Gaulle reconsidered

August Friedrich Kellner, pictured in 1923. (Photo from Kellner family archive)

Opposing the Nazis: the secret diary of a German against the Third Reich

Reassessing William the Conqueror

Historical fact and fiction

A First World War silk screened poster c1918 showing a frightening German soldier holding a bloodied bayonet. Caption reads: "Beat back the Hun with Liberty Bonds". (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

Why did the Allies call Germans 'Huns' during World War I?

Kill or cure? 10 medieval medical practices and their effectiveness

Britons under Nazi rule podcast

Britons under Nazi rule

Guillaume de Jumieges, Cesta Normanorum, f° 116, letter with dropped initial, William the Conqueror receives the chronicler's manuscript, 11th century, France, Rouen, Bibliotheque Municipale.

William the Conqueror: hero or villain?

A c1750 watercolour shows workers "mixing the powder" at Woolwich Arsenal. "The institutions that made up the 18th-century British 'state' existed entirely to provide the resources for war," argues Priya Satia. (Photo by Bridgeman Art Library)

How war sparked the industrial revolution