Social history

An 18th century village in Germany. Strict laws regulated the goods that each social class could buy. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Beware what you buy: the goods German citizens were forbidden to consume

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Not sewing…

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King George VI and stories from Africa . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

17th-century Ranter

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Identifying the English: A History of Personal Identification 1500–2010

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Better and better?

A portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer from an early 15th-century manuscript of the poem ‘De Regimine Principum’ by Thomas Hoccleve. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Library Chaucer and the idea of Englishness

Cornish invention

An illustration from ‘A Short History of the English People’ by John Richard Green. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Drowning in Tudor England: why was water so dangerous?

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Those meddling bureaucrats…

A c15th-century vellum shows the Squire from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For Adam Nicolson, the essence of the gentry was “government-through-networking”. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Stories of the gentry

A postboy drives a mail coach in a contemporary illustration. Soon after their introduction in 1784, coaches were traversing the country at speeds of up to 10mph. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Red Letter Days: 10 milestones in the history of the Post Office

A woman at a floral tribute to Neville Chamberlain at a florist in Ludgate Circus, London, 1938. In the wake of the Munich agreement, the prime minister was understood to be a hero of women everywhere. (Photo by Harry Todd/Getty Images)

The Library Guilty women?

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Theological debate

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How far could a person expect to travel in a single day on horseback or in a stagecoach?