People watching the Royal Wedding

United Kingdom

A 19th-century cricket match at the Kennington Oval. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

10 things you didn’t know about London’s sporting history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066. (Photo by DEA/M. SEEMULLER via Getty Images)

The Bayeux Tapestry now and in the future. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Welsh Labour politician Aneurin Bevan making a speech on the freedom of the press at a meeting of the National Council of Civil Liberties at Central Hall, Westminster, London, in 1942. (Photo by Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images)

My history heroTanni Grey-Thompson chooses Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Ireland podcast

Ireland’s past and present. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of British Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), c1845. The Victorian prime minister, who is best known for repealing the Corn Laws in 1846, has been likened by the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg to the sitting prime minister, Theresa May. May risks “splitting the Conservative party like Sir Robert Peel" if she fails to deliver a clean break from the European Union, Rees-Mogg has warned. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Sir Robert Peel and Theresa May: a suitable comparison?

In the ninth century Pope Nicholas I decreed that St Peter’s symbol, the cockerel, should be displayed on all churches and many incorporated the design into weather vanes. Pictured here is the St Thomas church spire, Melbury Abbas in Dorset, United Kingdom. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)

Q&AWhat does Jesus have to do with cockerel weather vanes?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of Sir Robert Peel by by English painter Henry William Pickersgill. (Photo by: Leemage/UIG via Getty Images)

Sir Robert Peel and the ‘moral authority’ of the House of Commons

First built in 1576, the Globe theatre burnt to the ground in 1613. During a performance of the play now known as 'Henry VIII', a set of stage cannons were fired and a piece of flaming material from one of the cannons landed on the theatre’s thatched roof, causing the fire. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

5 facts about Shakespeare’s Globe theatre

Sherwood Forest podcast

Sherwood Forest through the ages. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Michael Fish makes his first televised weather forecast in 1974. (Photo by Press Association)

4 facts about the history of the weather forecast

Henry VIII. Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540. The painting has the inscription 'Anno Aetatis suae XLIX' (His year of age, 49)’. Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

Henry VIII: 5 places you (probably) didn’t know shaped his life. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

King William II is often overshadowed by his Norman father, William the Conqueror. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

7 forgotten monarchs. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

National debt podcast

The national debt dilemma. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Troops in Korea, c1951. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Forging alliances: Britain and the US in the Korean War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

(Getty Images)

Why has Britain decided to leave the EU?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Portrait of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. (Photo by Ken Welsh/Design Pics/Corbis via Getty Images)

Princely pleasures at Kenilworth: Robert Dudley's three-week marriage proposal to Elizabeth I. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Restoring women’s voices. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An 1870s illustration of a typical London artisan terraced houses with washhouses, privies and yards leading on to an alley, all dominated by railway viaducts. (Photo by Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Victorian London’s East End: what can a foul murder tell us about life in the city?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

General Sir Douglas Haig (left) and Sir Henry Rawlinson are largely to blame for the failure of the battle of the Somme, says historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. (Photos by Hulton Archive/Getty Images and Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

The British generals whose infighting lost the battle of the Somme. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Keith Thomas on how ideas of civilisation shaped society 500 years ago.

The history of manners. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Why ‘Bad King John’ was actually good

Edward I in parliament with the Archbishop of Canterbury; King Alexander III of Scotland; the Welsh Prince Llywelyn ab Gruffydd and the Archbishop of York. From the Wriothesley MS, 1523, published in ‘The Island Race’, a 20th-century book written by Sir Winston Churchill covering the history of the British Isles from the pre-Roman times to the Victorian era. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Edward I: man of principle or grasping opportunist?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Young women labour on a farm during the First World War. The radio series Home Front explores life in Britain during the conflict. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Sanitising the past: should historical drama reflect modern sensibilities?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde in 'The Happy Prince'. "The image of Wilde in Paris at the end of the 19th century is full of fantasy and sadness, tragedy and humour," says Everett. (Lionsgate)

The Happy Prince: Rupert Everett on Oscar Wilde's life in exile. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

In this painting from c1650, a witch wields a broomstick as demons and 'familiars' (helpers of witches) congregate before her. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

History quiz – witchcraft and superstition. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mona Baptiste, a Trinidad-born blues singer

“London is the place for me”: David Olusoga on the Windrush generation. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A councillor and architects discuss plans for the Moss Heights development in Glasgow, 1953. Proponents of high-rise flats believed that they would provide

The LibraryHave high-rises ever been the answer to our housing woes?

English philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

My history hero: Angela Burdett-Coutts. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Sunlight dapples a clearing in Sherwood Forest, which was an essential resource for peasants centuries before it became a tourist attraction (Photo by Alamy)

Where history happenedAncient forests. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Keith Thomas. (Photo by Fran Monks)

Books interview with Keith Thomas: “The world was divided into the ‘civil’ and the ‘barbarous’”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.