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Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler watch a Nazi parade staged for the Italian dictators's visit to Germany. (Photo by Getty Images)

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

A 19th-century depiction of Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Who was Maharaja Ranjit Singh?

Who is the greatest leader in world history?

Who is the greatest leader in world history?

A portrait of Edward IV, the first Yorkist king of England. From the National Portrait Gallery. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Edward IV: champion of the Wars of the Roses

Did medieval people take baths? This 15th-century illustration would suggest so – and shows a man climbing out of a tub. Medieval doctors prescribed bathing as a cure for conditions ranging from bladder stones to melancholy. (Photo by Bridgeman)

The (not so) stinky Middle Ages: why medieval people were cleaner than we think

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On his plantation in Georgia, American politician Benjamin Hawkins is teaching Creek Native Americans how to use a plow, 1805. (Photo by Granger, NYC / TopFoto)

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

Illustration by Owen Davey

General History

A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past?

(Illustration by Glen McBeth for BBC History Magazine)

Q&A What sort of relationship did Mary Tudor have with Thomas Cromwell?

Four women dressed in the perceived fashion of the roaring twenties in a 1954 musical called ‘The Boy Friend’. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the ‘Roaring Twenties’ myth obscures the making of modern Britain

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Writer Virginia Woolf photographed in 1932. (Photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images)

London’s trailblazing women . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

c1960s photo showing a man places an engagement ring on a woman's finger.

A brief history of proposing marriage

Keith Granville, managing director of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), holding a model of the Boeing 747 jet, with the new aircraft hangars under construction in the background, at Heathrow Airport, 17 March 1969. (Photo by Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images)

In pictures: the history of London’s Heathrow Airport

Once he gained control of the entire Roman Empire, Constantine set about an ambitious programme of reform. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Constantine the Great: the emperor who created Europe

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Lindisfarne Castle, Northumberland. (Photo by Dreamstime)

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

Depiction of the five senses (sight, sound, taste, smell and touch) by a late 18th/early 19th unknown artist. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

5 smells that made Georgian England