Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

Picture of Luddites destroying machinery

Industrial revolution

Your guide to…The Luddite movement

Sally Dixon-SmithMedieval love and marriage

The Vikings: everything you wanted to know

Britain at War

What was a drunkard's cloak used for? This illustration shows a man wearing the archaic punishment tool designed to punish habitual drinkers. (Photo by Getty Images)

Q&AWhat was a drunkard’s cloak used for?

Miners work hard in cramped conditions at the pit face in Ellington Colliery, Northumberland, 1951 (Photo by Getty Images)

The Northumbrians: from Bede to Geordie Shore

Marble statue of a young Roman girl

Everything you wanted to know about Roman Britain – but were afraid to ask

View of the Norse Buildings, L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, Newfoundland. (Photo by Alamy)

Medieval globetrotters

A 10th-century silver coin minted in a Danish settlement

The global millennium: how the year AD 1000 was more globalised than we might think

8 May 1945: Crowds celebrate VE Day in London, at the end of World War 2. (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

"Hooray! The war is ended": 5 people's recollections of VE Day

Expelled Germans leaving Poland's western territories

"The war without an end": what happened in Europe after VE Day?

Victorian family. (Photo by Sean Sexton-Getty images)

The Victorians: everything you wanted to know

The rise of spiritualism after WW1

Irish people starving during the Potato Famine

The Corn Laws crisis

The opening of the Great Exhibition by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851. (The Print Collector/Getty Images)

"A wonder of the world": Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition at the famous Crystal Palace

The dark side: A man summons demons in a 14th-century English encyclopaedia. "Some educated men were determined to contact the spirit world – and took great risks to do so," writes Catherine Rider. (Photo by Bridgeman)

From healing spells to conjuring demons: the medieval obsession with magic

Harvest time in Surrey in the mid-19th century. Powerful Tory landowners had agitated for the introduction of the Corn Laws to protect the income from their farms. (Photo by Christie's Images via Bridgman)

The Corn Law crisis: the bitter political war that threatened thousands with starvation

Tectonic foliation in metamorphic rocks at Porthleven, Cornwall. (Photo by Getty Images)

How the world made us

The effects of the disease known as the Black Death

History quiz: how much do you know about the Black Death?

Crowds in Piccadilly Circus in London celebrate VE Day

Countdown to VE Day: the week World War 2 ended in Europe

Silver penny of Cnut

Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about

Sam Willis and James Daybell. (Photo by David Hampton, replica Viking helmet by Dreamstime)

The unexpected Vikings

Illustration by Luke Waller for BBC History Magazine.

Æthelwold: Alfred the Great's rebel nephew

Edward the Confessor

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Anglo-Saxons

A Viking sword with silver and gold hilt, from Dyback, Skane. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

How England rode the Viking storm

Traditional Kente cloth from Ghana (Photo by Dreamstime)

A new view of Africa’s past

What began as small raids on British coastal towns soon developed into all-out war, as a Great Viking Army arrived with a very different aim: to conquer (Photo credit: ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Vikings in Britain: how did raiders and marauders become lords and kings?

Portrait of an unknown woman, c1490–95. She sports a necklace in a painting from c1485. Coral jewellery was widely believed to ward off evil spirits. (Photo by Getty Images)

Medieval magic at work: 7 spells and charms our ancestors used

Coco Chanel photographed in Paris, c1936

Chanel and the Riviera

Q&AWhere do the names for days of the week come from?