Russia

Immigrant children are examined by a city health officer upon arrival at the battery from Ellis Island during a Typhus scare, c1911. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)

A short history of quarantine

A line-up of girls ready to play football, somewhere in England during the First World War, c1917. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

First World War

10 facts you (probably) didn’t know about the First World War

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Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler watch a Nazi parade staged for the Italian dictators's visit to Germany. (Photo by Getty Images)

Dictators explained . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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A Burglar Looks In, Picture Post 1950. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burglary: a modern history . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Youths salute Adolf Hitler

Second World War

Hitler Youth: how the Third Reich used children’s organisations to wage war

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B-17 bombers make their way to England to aid the British in WW2, April 1942. (Photo by Getty Images)

From Allies to enemies . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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A statue of Leif Eriksson, Erik the Red's son, who sailed to North America, c1000 AD. (Image by RF/Getty Images)

Russia, North America and the Middle East: where did the Vikings visit to trade and raid? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sir Anthony Blunt, British art historian and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures

Who was Sir Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge Five? Plus 4 others who spied for the Soviets

Black and white image of Russian soldiers using a canon

Trial by fire: how a fortress siege changed the course of World War One

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A Russian battery at the siege of the Austrian-Hungarian fortress of Przemysl, 1 Oct 1914. (Photo by Hulton Archive-Getty Images)

The Fortress: An epic battle of World War I . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Queen of hearts: When Catherine's husband Tsar Peter III alienated his people, they instead turned to his wife, and she was proclaimed the rightful ruler.

General Early Modern

Catherine the Great: your guide to the famed Empress of Russia

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

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Catherine the Great: fact and fiction . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The siege of Sevastopol

Q&A Why did Britain fight the Crimean War?