General Modern

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Scottish poet Robert Burns. His poetry captured a familiar if rapidly disappearing rural way of life, says Christopher Whatley. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Robert Burns: the people’s poet . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Trawler crew, c1900. (Photo by Past Pix/SSPL/Getty Images)

Toilers of the deep: the lives of Edwardian deep sea fishermen

The Beatles - John Lennon. (ITV pictures)

John Lennon: Three films

A bus makes its way down Fleet Street towards Ludgate Hill Circus and St Paul's Cathedral, London, c1888. (Photo by London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A history of the high street

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What did the Baby Boomers Ever do for Us?

Modern day Kibworth, Leicestershire. (Alamy)

England in miniature

American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) who wrote under the pseudonym of Mark Twain, standing outside on a porch. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Mark Twain: America’s historical conscience?

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The Atlantic and Its Enemies

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The reverend in the lion’s den

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My history hero: Philip Pembroke Stephens (1903–37) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

‘Smugglers', c1785, from ‘Adventures by sea from art of old time’ by Basil Lubbock. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

Smugglers and the birth of Britain’s consumer society

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Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), pictured here c1895, is one of the most important figures in modern Russian literature. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

My history hero: Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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The English writer and radio broadcaster JB Priestley at home on the Isle of Wight, 1933. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

My history hero: JB Priestley (1894–1984) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Alfred Jewel: gold, rock, crystal and enamel

Objects of affection

Evening light sweeps over the ruins of the Jesuit mission church at Trinidad de Paraná, Paraguay, where the bell tower of the site's first of two churches stands. Scores of Jesuit missions in the area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet were built in the 17th century and were abandoned when the Jesuits were expelled in the 18th century. (Photo by Kevin Moloney via Getty Images)

Jesuit missionaries: “a masterpiece of humanity”