Social history

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When did the practice of funeral rings begin/end and how widespread was it?

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The White Man’s World

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Great misconception

Painting depicting medieval nuns. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

17th-century nuns on the run

Winter defeats scurvy

Mikado Maids

A big day in history: Gilbert and Sullivan unveil ‘The Mikado’

Hard labour: a woman tarring and flinting in Oxford Street, central London, 1919. (Getty Images)

The Library “Our Excess Girls": women after the First World War

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Q&A: Music as a ‘psych-weapon’

Vicious murder

Chris Patten, the last governor of colonial Hong Kong, is pictured here receiving the Union Jack flag shortly before Hong Kong was returned to China, ending over a century of British rule. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

The British empire: 10 big questions

A photograph of Queen Victoria and her descendants, taken in April 1894 in Coburg, Germany. The photograph shows Queen Victoria's position at the centre of a network of alliances created by strategic marriages, which gave her the name 'the grandmother of Europe'. (Alamy)

A photograph of Queen Victoria and her family: what can it tell us?

Line engraving depicting the burning of Rawlins White, c1555. From a late 18th-century edition of John Foxe's 'The Book of Martyrs'. (Alamy)

The Making of Martyrs

English medical student Roger Bannister

A history of British sport

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Masters of the Post: The Authorized History of the Royal Mail

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Why were people who died by suicide historically buried at crossroads?