People watching the Royal Wedding

United Kingdom

A late 19th-century image shows a group of ‘pit lasses’, employed to work at the surface of coal mines. An earlier law had explicitly banned women from working below ground. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Industrial revolution

From family to factory: women's lives during the Industrial Revolution

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall: The Mirror & the Light

“He’s making choices that we would perceive as ruthless” | Wolf Hall’s researcher on Thomas Cromwell. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

'Monster soup commonly called Thames water, being a correct representation of that precious stuff doled out to us!!!', 1828; showing an ugly woman holding a spy glass which touches the circumference of a large circle representing a magnified drop of water filled with grotesque aquatic creatures. A satire on the Metropolitan Water Supply.

From murder bottles to arsenic wallpaper: 5 hidden killers in Victorian Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Victorian healthcare | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Week four quiz: medicine and health in Victorian Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The opthalmoscope revolutionised ophthalmology, allowing physicians to examine the inside of the human eye. (Image by Getty Images)

Victorian medicine: why the 19th century was a time of seismic medical change

The surgeon Robert Liston prepares to cut open a patient in the first half of the 19th century. Known as the “fastest knife in the west end”, Liston could remove a leg in less than 30 seconds. For most patients, however, the agony was more prolonged. (Wellcome Library, London)

An appointment at the house of death: the horror of the early Victorian hospital. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The surgeon Robert Liston prepares to cut open a patient in the first half of the 19th century. Known as the “fastest knife in the west end”, Liston could remove a leg in less than 30 seconds. For most patients, however, the agony was more prolonged. (Wellcome Library, London)

"An enlightened turn": how medicine (and the vaccination) developed in Victorian Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A mural in Bristol of activist Roy Hackett, one of the primary organisers of the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott (Photo by Steve Taylor ARPS/Alamy Stock Photo)

Hakim Adi | “Racism in Britain has a long history – but so does anti-racism”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Members of the National Front speak to the press in 1978. Chairman John Tyndall (second from left) was a neo-Nazi who later founded the British National Party (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)

From Mosley to the summer riots of 2024: the opportunistic evolution of Britain’s far right. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An 18th-century engraving of Edward, Earl of Warwick. Much of his short life was spent in the Tower of London before his execution for alleged treason (Photo by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo)

The other prince in the Tower: the tragedy of Edward of Warwick. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An 1872 illustration from the weekly newspaper Days’ Doings shows a shoplifter being apprehended (Photo by Look and Learn/Rosenberg Collection/Bridgeman Images)

Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

One of the hostages of the Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980 escapes across the balcony (Photo by David Levenson/Keystone/Getty Images)

The Iranian Embassy siege of 1980: the six-day crisis that was the making of the SAS. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Victorian education and school | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Schools of hard knocks: Georgian and Victorian public schools. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The school for girls imprisoned at Tothill Fields in the late 1850s. A dedicated schoolmistress was employed to teach that institution’s large female population; in other prisons, the matron took lessons. (Engraving from Chronicle, via Alamy)

Reading, writing and retribution: inside Victorian prison schools. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Shaftesbury Welcome Ragged School in Battersea , 1899. Classes of 40 were not rare, and they could stretch to 80 during staff shortages. (Photo by Mary Evans)

Class warfare: a day in the life of a Victorian schoolchild. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

What was Mary Tudor and Thomas Cromwell's relationship – did they plan to marry?

A portrait of Anne Boleyn

Why did Henry VIII send Anne Boleyn to the block?

Visitors promenade alongside a lake with Surrey Zoological Gardens in the background, 1844 (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Victorian zoosAnimal attraction in the 19th century. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Manchester dog show, c1909

The surprising history of Victorian dog shows. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Victorian leisure | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Victorian cricket. (Photo by Getty Images)

Cricket, cocaine and cocoa houses: 5 ways Victorians spent their free time. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Week one quiz: Victorian life. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Victorian life | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Gustave Doré's famous engraving, produced to illustrate the 1872 book 'London: A Pilgrimage', depicts (and exaggerates) the squalor of tightly packed terraced houses. Yes, as Rosalind Crone observes, the washing lines in Doré's picture demonstrate that "slum-dwellers were not all very dirty - or, at least, they didn't choose to be". (Photo by Getty Images)

Was Victorian life really so grim? 5 reasons why the Victorians were 'happy'. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Workhouses were meant to be unpleasant. Inmates worked hard (like these women hanging out laundry c1880). (Photo by Sean Sexton/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Victorian daily life: what was it like for 'ordinary' Victorians?

From fire hazard petticoats to garments that caused fainting and even death by poison, some trends in 19th-century women’s fashion were risky business for those who wore them. (Photo by Toronto Star Archives/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

A bodice-ripping revolution: how Victorian women cast off deadly fashion trends. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.