Death

Why Charles I had to die

Illustration of a mummy with mask

How to make an Egyptian mummy in 6 steps

Queen Victoria

The final days and death of Queen Victoria

The decline and death of Henry VIII. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Thomas Becket: from murder to martyrdom. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Workers repair Fleet sewer in 1854. London’s creaking sewer network sparked anxieties over what lay beneath the sprawling capital. (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Living in fear: the dangers of Victorian London

Vahalla is depicted as a round-topped building in this funerary stone from 8th-century Sweden

Valhalla: fighting and feasting in the Viking warrior afterlife

This engraving by William Hogarth shows the final instalment of a sequence of artworks called 'The Four Stages of Cruelty' (1751). In it, the fictional Tom Nero is being dissected for anatomical studies at Cutlerian theatre near Newgate prison after being hanged for murder. Nero looks like the Dead-Alive, as though he can see and smell his own executed body on the dissection table. The chief physician sits in the centre on a high-backed chair, resembling a high court judge. He is surrounded by various medical men, including penal surgeons, who did gallows work. The skeletons of dissected criminals were usually refused a Christian burial and so were displayed as specimens, as can be seen top left and top right. (Photo by Guildhall Library/Getty Images)

Surviving the gallows: the Georgian hangings that didn't go to plan

Women in black: the surprising history of widows. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The White Ship disaster

The White Ship disaster"The most disastrous moment in British maritime history". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The White Ship: a medieval royal tragedy. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn’s final battle: Tracy Borman reveals Henry VIII's final 'kindness'

Rescue workers at the scene of the wrecked Pantglas Junior School at Aberfan, South Wales. (Getty Images)

Death under the black mountain: surviving the 1966 Aberfan disaster

Q&A: Why and how did the Aztecs practise human sacrifice?

King George VI and his eldest daughter, Elizabeth

The death of King George VI: what happened?

Alexander the Great

Where is Alexander the Great buried? And other questions about his death…

A portrait of Thomas Cromwell.

The downfall of Thomas Cromwell

Illustration from Dante's ‘Inferno', depicting thieves tormented in hell by serpents.

General ancient history

A brief history of the afterlife

People flee to boats on the River Thames to escape the Great Fire of London, September 1666.

Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London

Medieval punishments, Toulouse, 14th century. (Photo by Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

How bloody was medieval life?

Clothes infected by the Black Death are burned in medieval Europe, c1340. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Black Death facts: your guide to "the worst catastrophe in recorded history"

Engraving of the death of Cleopatra

When and how did Queen Cleopatra die and who killed her?

Engraving of emperor Commodus's death

Cheese, angry gods and shoddy surgeons: the unlikely deaths of Roman emperors

The effects of the disease known as the Black Death

Black Death quarantine: how did we try to contain the most deadly disease in history?

A copper engraving of Margaret Pole's execution

General History

Are these the worst botched executions in history?

Charles Manson stares out from fabric on sale in San Francisco

The afterlife of Charles Manson

The state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill

The death of Sir Winston Churchill and the top-secret plans for his funeral

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

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944

The liberation of Auschwitz, 75 years on: what happened and how do we remember the Holocaust?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini give a fascist salute

A dictator’s death: how Stalin, Hitler, Mao and other self-styled strongmen met their ends