Military history

Tostig Godwinson, brother of King Harold II of England, and King Harald Hardrada of Norway receive the submission of the city of York

Hastings, Stamford Bridge and Gate Fulford: three battles that lost England

The Spartan king Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The conflict has become the archetype for the courageous last stand, pitting around 200,000 Persians against 7,000 Spartans.

Your guide to the battle of Thermopylae

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Neil Faulkner reveals how the Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920 helped give rise to the first modern jihad

Jihad and the British empire . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A trieme is rowed towards a naval battle in a scene depicting the battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC

The ancient Greeks at war: hoplites, the phalanx and the greatest battles

Vanguard-class submarine HMS Vigilant, the top above water

Britain’s nuclear deterrent: a brief history

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A Hawker Hurricane of Fighter Command on its way to intercept German bombers as they crossed the south coast of England during the Battle of Britain, 1940. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

6 Battle of Britain myths . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An Israeli pilot after the raid on Entebbe

Operation Thunderbolt: Was the 1976 ‘raid on Entebbe’ a brilliant rescue?

Two Hitler Youth who have surrendered to Allied Forces, Germany, 1945. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

First World War

Innocence under fire: how children were used in warfare of the past

Allied convoy PQ 17 is attacked by a German torpedo aircraft on its way across the Arctic Ocean, c1942. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

“The worst journey in the world”: the Arctic convoys of the Second World War

US secretary of state William Seward (seated left) signs the agreement to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867

America’s hidden empire: the USA’s forgotten imperial expansion

Soldiers disembark a landing craft with a battle on the beach beyond

How to win a 20th-century battle

Partnered content Gaijin War Thunder

German troops on horseback cross a bridge during the Poland campaign

The brutal blitzkrieg: the 1939 invasion of Poland

John F Kennedy with US Army officials during the Cuban missile crisis

“We are eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked”: how the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated

Portrait of English admiral Lord Horatio Nelson

Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson: a rebel with a cause

Nikita Khrushchev visits President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964

Snuffed out democracies and poisoned toothpaste: how the Cold War wreaked havoc in post-colonial Africa