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General Modern

Q&A: Where does the word ‘crack’, describing military units, originate?

Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, gives his 'victory' sign while making a polling day tour of his constituency during an election. (Getty Images)

Are these the most overrated people in history?.

George Frederick Handel married opera's passion with the respectability of biblical texts, says Tim Blanning. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

10 milestones in the history of western music.

A 1864 campaign banner. (David J & Janice Frent/Corbis via Getty Images)

US presidents: Race, religion and re-election?

Rosa Parks Riding the Bus

My history hero: Rosa Parks (1913-2005).

Andrew Jackson Cottage and US Ranger Centre, County Antrim

Ye olde travel guide: Moscow 1937.

Nuclear bomb test. (OFF/AFP/Getty Images)

How Britain got the bomb.

An illustration titled ‘The petition for abolishing the slave trade’, from Amelia Opie’s ’The Black Man's Lament; or How to Make Sugar’, London, 1826. “Come, listen to my plaintive ditty,/Ye tender hearts, and children dear!/And, should it move your souls to pity,/Oh! try to end the griefs you hear.” (Photo by Photo 12/UIG via Getty Images)

9 key places connected to the abolition of the British slave trade.

Moscow 1980: going to the games.

North East Aircraft Museum, Sunderland

The charge of the Scots Greys at the battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815, was immortalised in this famous painting of 1881 by Lady Elizabeth Butler (1846-1933). (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Fighting Scots.

Members of the royal family on board the royal barge 'Spirit of Chartwell'. (Rota/Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)

The LibraryThe Thames triumphant: royal parties on London's grandest street

Two medieval men thresh a sheaf of wheat in this 14th century illustration. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Michael Wood on the history of you and me.

An American privateer is shown repelling a British attack during the War of 1812. Despite some notable successes, the British regarded the entire conflict as a sideshow and quickly forgot it. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

When Washington burned.

The Plantation of Ulster: The British Colonisation of the North of Ireland in the 17th Century

Porthcumo Telegraph Museum, Cornwall

The Minack Theatre, Cornwall

An 18th century village in Germany. Strict laws regulated the goods that each social class could buy. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Beware what you buy: the goods German citizens were forbidden to consume.

King George VI and stories from Africa.

A c15th-century vellum shows the Squire from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For Adam Nicolson, the essence of the gentry was “government-through-networking”. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Stories of the gentry.

Angela Burdett-Coutts, an English philanthropist who supported a wide variety of charitable causes assisting the church, the poor and the hungry. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Philanthropy: the root of all good

An 1860s coloured engraving of Lake Victoria’s outflow at the Ripon Falls, which John Speke discovered in 1862 and correctly declared to be the source of the Nile. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Explorers of the Nile.

A postboy drives a mail coach in a contemporary illustration. Soon after their introduction in 1784, coaches were traversing the country at speeds of up to 10mph. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Red Letter Days: 10 milestones in the history of the Post Office.

Francisco Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru John Everett Millais. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

A big day in history: Francisco Pizarro's tiny Spanish army takes a mighty Incan leader hostage.

A second petition of 800,000 signatures, protesting against the abolition of the basic petrol ration, being presented to the House of Commons, 10 December 1947. (Photo by Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

E-petitions: in the name of the people?

The Cenotaph, London

North West Museum of Road Transport, St Helens

Anti-capitalist graffiti referencing the Nike slogan ‘Just Do It’. Mayday riots, London, 2001. (Photo by PYMCA/UIG via Getty Images)

Opinion: should historians comment on current affairs?

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: Venice 1500.