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Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor visited the US on several occasions, where he was held in such high regard that he was dubbed the 'African Mahler'. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

My history hero: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Adam Zamoyski, photographed in London.

Books interview with Adam Zamoyski: “Napoleon was motivated by profound insecurity” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Our illustration shows King Arthur leading his troops into battle. The legendary warlord's victories over Saxon invaders first appear in a 'history' written in the ninth-century north Wales. (Illustration by Georgie Gozem for BBC History Magazine)

The King Arthur delusion: a case of medieval fake news?

Sir Walter Ralegh (c1554–1618, shown here in a painting attributed to William Segar) is often remembered as a favourite of Elizabeth I and an adventurer, yet he was also one of the most influential political philosophers of his era. (Photo by Alamy)

Walter Ralegh: the traitor who inspired Cromwell

Circus performer Otto Witte, who in 1912 successfully pretended to be the new king of Albania. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

14 weird things that have happened in November through history

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a

Watch: Highlights from the British Library’s new Anglo-Saxon exhibition

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18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

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

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A depiction of a witch on a broomstick. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Quiz How much do you know about the history of Halloween? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

JFK prepares to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. (Picture by Corbis/Getty Images)

Nuclear nightmare: the Cuban missile crisis

Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, c1507-1536. (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Guilty or not guilty: why did Anne Boleyn have to die?

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Jewelled terminal of aestel, The Alfred Jewel. (Photo by Alamy)

Anglo-Saxon treasures . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Pit Brow Lasses from an unknown colliery in Wigan, Lancashire, c1887. (Photograph by Herbert Wragg. Courtesy of the Trustees of the National Coal Mining Museum for England)

The ‘Pit Brow Lasses’ of 19th-century coal mines

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Thomas Cromwell (Illustrated by Sarah Young)

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

The remarkable Codex Amiatinus, a

“An absolute gem”: Anglo-Saxons at the British Library