Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

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.

Hunting down the Portland Spy Ring.

Georg Elser, a little-known carpenter-turned-assassin whose daring attempt to kill Hitler almost succeeded

Georg Elser: the man who nearly assassinated Hitler.

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.

A policewoman gives directions to tourists in London in the 1920s.

“Sherlock Holmes in skirts”: the world's first policewomen.

Your guide to...debtors' prisons

The Wild West: everything you wanted to know.

The arrest of Guy Fawkes. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Alternate history: what if… the gunpowder plot had succeeded?.

An ‘ordinary’ Nazi.

Anne Boleyn

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

A portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I

Walter Ralegh: “The rankest traitor in all England?”.

Relatives wave off convicts being sent from England

Your guide to...transportation to Australia

Evil May Day

Flames and violence: the Evil May Day Riots that shook Tudor London.

The battle of Dover, 24 August 1217, (image c1880). (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

Eustace the Monk: one of medieval Europe's unholiest holy men.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 8: A conclusion (of sorts).

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 7: Survival theories.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 6: The other suspects.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 5: Circumstantial evidence and strange behaviour.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 4: Examining the evidence.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 3: The prime suspect.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 2: The timeline.

Princes in the Tower HistoryExtra podcast series title card

Princes in the TowerEpisode 1: The case.

Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, also known as Rasputin

Rasputin: the 'mad monk' who became a friend to the Romanovs

Dag Hammarskjöld

The mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld: a Cold War killing?.

It was the need for witnesses in divorce courts – ones who wouldn’t mind their names being linked to scandals, no less – that partly gave rise to female detectives. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

Women detectives: meet the Victorian female super sleuths.

People gather around the Mona Lisa painting after its return in January 1914

Mona Lisa heist: how do you steal the world's most famous painting?.

A 19th-century painting of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln

What if…Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated?.

What is history's greatest mystery?

What has been voted history’s greatest mystery?

A portrait of Thomas Cromwell.

The downfall of Thomas Cromwell

The Kray brothers

The A-Z of British gangs and gangsters