The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

Photo of gauntlets

Q&AWhy do we say throw down the gauntlet?

Peter Snow’s six most important documents in history

Sky covered by smoke from the first H-Bomb explosion at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific, 1 April 1954. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Winston Churchill: atomic warrior, nuclear peacemaker

The wartime SAS and Hitler’s drug addiction. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Reporting from war zones. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The end game: Britain’s role in Afghanistan 1947–50

The Harrying of the North. Gouache on paper, by Patrick Nicolle (1907–95). Private collection. (© Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images)

Occupation, resistance, subjugation: the bloody aftermath of 1066

Q&A: If the battle of Hastings had never taken place, would British history have been any different?

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

The battle of Stamford Bridge, 1066. (Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

1066 – how the Viking diversion cost Harold his throne

The London & North Western Railway locomotive Jeanie Deans picking up water at Bushey Troughs, 1899. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

Europe’s century of peace and progress

Historical television and the battle of Flodden. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Churchill's army: the wartime leader’s military track record examined

Cold War summits. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The end of the First World War and the Duke of Wellington. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Royal palaces of the Hundred Years’ War

The Suez crisis and the north of England. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Soviet missiles in Red Square during the May Day Parade of 1962, the year the world came closest to nuclear war. (Photo by Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images)

History explorer: the Cold War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Cold War and the history of philosophy. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British reserve troops waiting to move up to the forward area during the battle of the Somme, France, 1916. Photograph from the Daily Herald Archive. (Photo by Daily Herald Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)

The Somme: was it really a monstrous failure?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Events leading up to the battle of Hastings, and the conflict itself, are depicted in the Bayeux tapestry, a 68-metre-long embroidered frieze probably made within 20 years of the Conquest. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Bayeux unravelled: the scenes behind the threads

Monument to the Spanish Civil War (Dreamstime)

Spain’s very international civil war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British soldiers arrive to take part in the battle of France, 1940. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Books interview with Daniel Todman: "Everything that happened in 1940 isn't somehow down to Winston Churchill". This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Battle of the Somme special. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Operation Barbarossa. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Tudor monarchs and a medieval civil war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A detail of the decorative carving on the side of the Oseberg cart c850 AD. A woman with streaming hair apparently restrains a man’s sword arm as he strikes at a horseman accompanied by a dog. Below is a frieze of intertwined serpentine beasts. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The battle of Jutland and 1950s domestic dangers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten in Burma, March 1944. (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

When Britain tamed ‘superman’

Members of Assassins cult kill Conrad I of Jerusalem