Illustrated Medieval scene from the Romance of Lancelot

Medieval

Portrait of black cat – unlucky for some? (Photo by Getty Images)

Q&AWhy are black cats unlucky?

A 14th-century Flemish illustration depicting the burying of plague victims in coffins in Tournai in 1349. (Photo by Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Black Death: “Oh father, why have you abandoned me?”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

My favourite place: Bruges, Belgium

The future Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace following their wedding, 20 November 1947. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Royal wedding traditions through history: etiquette, menus and the dress code

Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV

When royals marry ‘commoners’: a brief history

11 shocking moments in history

Old Wardour Castle

Britain’s 7 most amazing ruins

A contemporary pictorial depiction of the Great Plague.

The Black Death: the historians’ view. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Medieval bodies. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Thomas Becket

The LibraryEngland’s forgotten civil war

Norman cavalry charge the enemy in this detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. Debate rages over the pros and cons of the tapestry leaving France for the first time in more than 900 years. (Photo by Photo 12/Getty Images)

Will the Bayeux Tapestry actually come to Britain?

The distinctive polygon towers of Caernarfon Castle. (Photo by Gail Johnson/Getty Images)

History explorerThe conquest of Wales. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The secret intimacies of Edward IV: multiple marriages and a same-sex affair?

Medieval mystics. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The ‘Princes in the Tower’

The 5 greatest mysteries behind the Wars of the Roses

Biddenden Maids Cake. (Public Domain)

Sisters of mercy: the Biddenden Maids

Shakespeare’s best (or worst) villains

8 of Britain’s best battlefields

c1930: a man wrestles his tamed bear. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Bizarre England: 11 of the strangest attractions and traditions in history

A compilation of compass drawn circles, and variants found in many of the churches

Medieval graffiti: the lost voices of England’s churches in the Middle Ages

Edwin the Scribe. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Unusual things found in medieval manuscripts

John Julius Norwich pictured at the Oxford Literary Festival in 2014. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)

Books interview with John Julius Norwich: “Most British people know practically nothing about French history”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of Catherine of Siena, who in the 1360s experienced a vision from God during which – according to her biographer, Raymond of Capua – she drank the water from the wound in Christ’s side. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

The medieval mystics with a hotline to God

Husband and wife Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang), pictured at their wedding in 1928. The pair “dominated Chinese politics for two decades [and] were among the most prominent non-westerners on the planet throughout the 1930s and 1940s”, says Rana Mitter. (Photo by Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Six lives that shaped China

An engraving from Ulrich Molitor’s ‘On witches and female soothsayers’, depicting witches bringing down the rain. Germany, 15th century. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

A spell-binding history of witches

The execution of Charles I. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Murder, conspiracy and execution: six centuries of scandalous royal deaths

Thomas Asbridge

Books interview with Thomas Asbridge: “Richard was a member of medieval Europe’s most dysfunctional family”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The story of the Bayeux Tapestry. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A scene depicted on the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry.

Bayeux Tapestry to be loaned to the UK: historians react. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

How English is the Bayeux Tapestry?