The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

Napoleon watches on as the fighting at Waterloo unfolds in this 1843 painting

What if…Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo.

A group of American soldiers captured by the Japanese during the Battle of Java, 1942 (Photo by Getty Images)

Prisoners of the Japanese.

Krystyna Skarbeck, also called Christine Granville

History heroMichael Morpurgo chooses Krystyna Skarbek (1908–1952).

London burns behind Tower Bridge on 7 September 1940

Second World War

Days of destiny: 5 key dates in the Battle of Britain

London during the Blitz - the systematic night-time bombing of the British by the Luftwaffe in 1940 - 1941. (Photo by Getty Images)

Rationing, school closures and 'Blitz spirit': how did people cope in WW2?.

AFS firemen tackle a blitz fire amidst the rubble surrounding St Paul's Cathedral, London. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Second World War

Your guide to the Blitz, plus 9 places affected by the bombings

Britain goes to war.

Rjukan Hydro Plant

Spying in WW2: how wartime espionage was just as dramatic as fiction.

A portrait of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler

Second World War

Why did WW2 happen?

WW2 surrender signed, 2 September 1945

Second World War

How and when did WW2 end?

The Hundred Years’ War: everything you wanted to know.

Exclusive podcastDan Jones on the human stories of the crusades.

Engraving depicting a scene from the battle of Crécy, during the Hundred Years' War. Dated 14th Century. (Photo by: Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The battle of Crécy: triumph of the longbow

The tomb of Pharaoh Djoser, built at Saqqara

Timeline: the evolution of ancient empires.

Battle of Bosworth, 22 August 1485

10 things you need to know about the battle of Bosworth

Print of Hannibal ferrying his elephants over the Rhone on rafts during the Second Punic War

Your guide to...the Punic Wars

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan: the Mongol warlord who almost conquered the world

Male and female militia fighters on the march at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, July 1936. (Photo by Getty Images)

The Spanish Civil War: everything you wanted to know.

Marble relief depicting the Praetorian Guard, legionnaires and elite soldiers. In the Louvre, Paris, France. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

The Praetorian Guard: the emperors’ fatal servants

Historian Peter Caddick-Adams

Exclusive podcastPeter Caddick Adams on whether D-Day could have failed.

The 11th East Africa Infantry Division fought with the British Fourteenth Army in Burma (Myanmar) during the Burma Campaign, 1944. (Photo by Alamy)

Victory in the east.

Photographs documenting the facial reconstruction of a soldier whose cheek was extensively wounded during the Battle of the Somme

What happened to the 8 million people who were disabled during WW1?.

Night view of people jammed into Times Square, New York, celebrating the end of the war in Europe. (Photo by Herbert Gehr/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Was 1945 the world's zero?.

Hiroshima.

Second World War

The end of WW2: 5 articles you can read right now

Mural of the battle of Actium from 1600

Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra

Attila the Hun

General ancient history

Who was Attila the Hun, the barbarian ruler who terrorised the Romans?

The American Civil War: everything you wanted to know.

A bust of Roman dictator Julius Caesar

Julius CaesarYour guide to the Roman dictator

First World War

WW1 poets5 famous figures you should know about

Egyptian ships sunk at the entrance of the Suez Canal at Port Said

Your guide to...the Suez Crisis