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

Moscow 1980: going to the games. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

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

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

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

King George VI and stories from Africa. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

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

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

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

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

A London Missionary Society (LMS) mission in Papua New Guinea, c1920s. (Photo by Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo)

Married to a missionary. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Hylands House, Essex

In 1830 a keeper at the Tower of London menagerie accidentally removed the barrier between a lion and two tigers. The animals were eventually prised apart, by which point the lion had been fatally wounded. (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Life with the lions: the Tower of London menagerie. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Illustration by Jonty Clark

Ye olde travel guide: New Orleans 1858. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Dover War Tunnels

The surprisingly long history of humanity's political development

The A to Z of royal weddings with Tracy Borman. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Britain’s slaves in Latin America. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.