10 Downing Street, the residence of the prime minister of the United Kingdom. (Photo by Getty Images)

Politics

Illustration by Joey Guidone

The big question: has terrorism ever achieved its aims?.

William Cecil, also known as Lord Burghley, with Queen Elizabeth I. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Your guide to William Cecil, chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I

Ernest Bevin

Ernest Bevin: working-class warrior.

US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference. (Photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Donald Trump: a president without precedent?.

Roman republic

Your guide to the Roman Republic

The then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump taking part in the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 19 October 2016. Trump repeatedly claimed that the election was “rigged” against him. (Photo by Joe Raedle/AFP/Getty Images)

A brief history of election “rigging” in the United States.

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.

The Parnethon, Athens

How to build a democracy (Athenian-style).

Fasil Ghebbi, a 17th-century fortress city in Gondar, Ethiopia. (Photo by Getty Images)

Peter Frankopan on global history in 2020.

Brothers in arms Louis IX on his way to the Seventh Crusade, 1248. The French king kept his three brothers onside – preventing any potential family infighting – by providing them with huge lordships. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

Medieval dynasties: how to stay on the throne.

A contemporary painting shows Parisians seizing weapons from the Hôtel des Invalides on 14 July 1789, ahead of the storming of the Bastille later that day. Before revolution swept through Paris, peasants across the country were abolishing a whole social order from below.

The French Revolution: a tale of two revolutions.

Black Lives Matter activists in Seattle, June 2020. “Accounts of the past have failed to properly address persecution,” says Peter Frankopan. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Interview: Peter Frankopan on the state of global history.

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

Your guide to...the Suez Crisis

The Suez canal

How significant was the Suez Crisis?.

The battle of First Bar, 1841

Your guide to...the Opium Wars

The original ‘Big Three’ at Livadia Palace in Yalta: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. None of them came away from the summit with everything they had hoped for. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

Second World War

Your guide to...The Yalta and Potsdam conferences, 1945

A portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, 1806. (Photo by IanDagnall Computing/Alamy Stock Photo)

The dark side of Alexander Hamilton

Phyllis Schlafly

The woman who opposed equality with men: Phyllis Schlafly and the real history behind Mrs. America.

Huge sun setting over power lines and palm trees in California. (Photo by Getty Images)

California’s century of change.

The birth pains of the NHS: how Britain's National Health Service was created.

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.

Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France meet (in marquee, top) at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, June 1520. “For all their expressions of friendship,” writes Glenn Richardson, “the two kings spent most of the summit attempting to outshine one another”. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Fields of the Cloth of Gold: the greatest show on earth.

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.

English admiral Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596), circa 1585. (Photo by Getty Images)

Francis Drake: slave trader.

Britain and the slave trade.

Abraham Lincoln (Photo by Library of Congress)

The secret plot to kill Lincoln.

John Profumo in October 1962

Sex, lies and spies: the real history of the Profumo Affair

Photo of Queen Elizabeth II and members of the Privy Council

Your guide to...the Privy Council

Picture of Luddites destroying machinery

Industrial revolution

Your guide to…The Luddite movement

Harold Wilson in 1971, after his first period as prime minister. He would take power again in 1974. (Photo by Getty Images)

History heroJason Watkins chooses Harold Wilson (1916–95).