20th Century

c1935: Beatrice Shilling sits astride her Norton motorcycle. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

5 “bloody brilliant” 20th-century women

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Oswald Mosley, English Fascist leader, ariving and receiving the Fascist salute from his followers, London, 1936 (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

Hunting Britain’s Nazis . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Britain’s first self-service supermarket, Sainsbury’s in Croydon

A brief history of shopping

In 1945 there were two million more ‘potential’ households than actual homes, in part exacerbated by the wartime damage to housing stock (Coventry, for example, lost one third of its homes in the Blitz). Here, displaced people in east London wait on the street. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A history of homelessness

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JFK-2-f017d3d

What if JFK had lived? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Dan Snow on shell shock.

Dan Snow on shell shock . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Women of the Sarah Caswell Angell chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, engaging in war work activities to assist the Allied cause during the First World War, 1918. During their sessions they knitted, made hospital garments, sewed for French children, and made aviators' vests. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

First World War

A–Z of the First World War

An American recruitment poster. “US forces showed an impressive ability to learn at speed,” says Nick Lloyd. (© Getty)

The great misconceptions of the First World War

British troops in the trenches, Belgium, c1914–15. The horrors of the First World War lived long in the memories of its centenarian survivors. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)

The last survivors of the First World War

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News of the end of World War I hostilities is joyfully received by the men of the 64th Regiment Infantry, 7th Division. Min de Jaueny, Moselle, France on November 11, 1918. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The end of the First World War . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged almost 700 messages during the Second World War. (Illustration by Hugh Cowling for BBC History Magazine)

Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt: the big three’s war of words

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Combat helicopters fly over US troops during a search and destroy mission, South Vietnam. Despite their military might, argues Max Hastings, the Americans were doomed to fail during the Vietnam War. (Photo by Patrick Christain/Getty Images)

Max Hastings on Vietnam . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits

JFK prepares to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. (Picture by Corbis/Getty Images)

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis

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

A new life of Churchill . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.