Period

The fabled ‘Vegetable Lamb of Tartary’ was a plant said to grow sheep as its fruit.

Q&AWhat was the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?

George III: the tyrant who lost America?

Portrait of First World War nurse Edith Cavell with one of her dogs

First World War

Edith Cavell: how the executed British First World War nurse became a symbol of peace

A portrait from the 18th century of King George III wearing his coronation robes

George III: why his reputation as the mad king who lost America needs to be re-evaluated

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace: a visionary of computing

A woodcut showing the interior of a kitchen in Elizabethan England. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England

A reconstruction of a Viking church

Vikings in America: the Europeans who arrived 500 years before Columbus

A 12-year-old boy with a large bruise on his face ‘pulls threads’ in a New York sweatshop

The 19th-century slums of New York

At home with the Mongols

A portrait of Charles II sitting on a throne

Your guide to King Charles II, the ‘merry monarch’

Pompeii: everything you wanted to know

Unexpected Edwardians

An allegorical depiction of the plague in ancient Rome, an angel batters down a door while people lie sick on the ground

The reign of Roman disease: why did disease hit a flourishing empire?

Plagues of our past

Portrait of John Dee

John Dee: Elizabethan 007, scientist, magician and spy

German doctor Otto Warburg at work in his laboratory

Otto Warburg: the Jewish doctor and the Nazi war on cancer

Illustration of a man without a head, but with his face on his chest. This is one of many creatures Sir John Mandeville claimed to have met on his travels

A knight's (tall) tale: why medieval traveller Sir John Mandeville was more popular than Marco Polo

Ronald HuttonOliver Cromwell: Saint or Serpent?

The Bal des Ardents (the 'Ball of the Burning Men'), from 'The Chronicler of European Chivalry' by GG Coulton (London, 1930). The 1393 tragedy claimed the lives of four people. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Q&AWhat was the ‘Ball of the Burning Men’?

A mosaic that shows two Roman women exercising, one holds a flower and another holds a leaf

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Roman women

Courage under fire: the story of a WW2 tank regiment

Tony Robinson as Private Baldrick and Rowan Atkinson as Captain Blackadder

Q&AWas there a real Blackadder?

Women carrying flags and scythes or beating drums - one has a child on her shoulders - march on the Palace of Versailles to protest to the king

General Early Modern

Women in the French Revolution: fighting for equality

How Hindustan became India

Jodie Comer plays Marguerite de Carrouges in the upcoming film 'The Last Duel',

The medieval women who spoke out against sexual violence

Women protest in London following the death of Sarah Everard, 2021

Walking a dangerous road: women's safety on the streets

The turbulent Stuart century

An illustration of the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865

Jamaica's Morant Bay Rebellion: brutality and outrage in the British empire

Illustration of the man in the iron mask standing by the window of his cell and guarded by two musketeers

Unmasking the 'man in the iron mask': do we know the identity of the famous prisoner?

The Boer War: everything you wanted to know