The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

A group of fighter pilots of No. 32 Squadron relax beside their Hawker Hurricane Mk I fighters at RAF Hawkinge in July 1940

The Few: who exactly were the heroes of the Battle of Britain?

Adolf Hitler photographed with Nazi war generals

Second World War

What was Operation Sealion, Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain? And why was it cancelled?

Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, Painting by Emile Signol (1804–1892), (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters 11: Did women fight in the crusades? And why did people follow a goose to the Holy Land?

The bronze equestrian statue of Robert the Bruce looks out over the site of the Battle of Bannockburn, Stirling, where the Scottish fought for their independence from the English in 1314. (Photo by Getty Images)

The Scottish Wars of Independence: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Women and the crusades. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Elizabeth I arrives in Tilbury

The Spanish Armada: one of history’s biggest fibs?

World War Two: the challenge of commemoration. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A girl, with her brother on her back, trudges past a stalled American tank, South Korea, June 1951. (Photo by Alamy)

How we forgot the Korean War

John Nichol is a historian, author and RAF veteran who was captured and paraded on Iraqi television during the Gulf War, before returning to active service. He has since written several works of military history as well as a number of novels, and is a regular commentator on military affairs

Second World War

Your guide to the Lancaster bomber

Queen Emma and her sons

Exclusive podcastWilliam and Cnut: a tale of two conquerors. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Pyongyang wreckage, Korean War

The Korean War “created a blood debt that is crucial to understanding North Korean behaviour ever since”

This photo dated 1948 shows the devastated city of Hiroshima some three years after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city on 6 August 1945, at the end of World War 2. Around 140,000 people, or more than half of Hiroshima's population at the time, died in the first atomic bombing – with another 70,000 people perishing in the bomb dropped over Nagasaki 9 August 1945. (Photo credit should read AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

In pictures: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Simo Häyhä, said to be the deadliest sniper in history

Second World War

The world’s deadliest sniper: Simo Häyhä

A mushroom cloud produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Ivy, an American nuclear test that took place in 1952. (SSPL/Getty Images)

How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world

British battlefields: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

Slaves of Confederate Brigadier-General Thomas F Drayton at his cotton plantation in South Carolina during the American Civil War

Why is America haunted by its past?

The front facade of the prehistoric chambered tomb of Wayland's Smithy

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #6: Viking military mind games, Anglo-Saxon mind maps, and embroidery before the Bayeux Tapestry

c1190 A scene from the Third Crusade depicting the surrender of Acre to the armies of King Richard I of England and Philippe Auguste of France. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

What were the crusades? Your top questions answered

Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I.

The Civil War: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Two members of the BEF (British Expeditionary Forces)

Indian soldiers at Dunkirk. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The US cutter Spencer attacks U-boat U-175

The Battle of the Atlantic: why Britain almost lost to Hitler's U-boats. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A scene from the Smithfield Decretals depicting a rabbit beheading a man. Rabbits seem to have a strange place in medieval imagery – and are depicted as having strangely violent tendencies. "It’s the sort of thing to give you nightmares," says David Musgrove. (Photo by Album/British Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

BlogMedieval(ish) matters #5: chivalry, medieval killer rabbits and prisoners of war in the 15th century

King John II made prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers by the English during the Hundred Years War, 1356. Illustration

Medieval prisoners of war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Charles Cundall’s painting ‘The Withdrawal From Dunkirk, June 1940’

Second World War

9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Dunkirk

The crusades: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained

British ships on convoy duty in the North Atlantic

Danger in the deep: key questions about the Battle of the Atlantic answered

The Battle of the Atlantic: the "desperate" WW2 campaign featured in Tom Hanks film Greyhound

Members of 617 squadron, known as the Dambusters

Second World War

How successful was the Dambusters raid?