Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

The engine houses of Botallack mine in Cornwall

A visit to Botallack Mine, Cornwall. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Protester Blocking Tanks Approaching Tiananmen Square

Why China has forgotten ‘Tank Man’? Remembering the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations

Bottles of snake oil

Q&ADid salesmen really sell snake oil?

A newspaper seller at the start of WW2

Countdown to WW2: the 72 hours that took the world to war

South Vietnam 1967: Battle weary U.S. soldiers pause for a moment's rest after some of the bloodiest fighting of the Vietnam War (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

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

An illustration showing interior of the House of Commons

9 things you didn’t know about the history of parliament

A real Peaky Blinder mug-shot

In pictures: what did the real Peaky Blinders look like?

Prince Charles, Lady Diana Spencer and Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace

The fall and rise of the Windsors

The humble G&T truly sustained the troops of the British Empire. (Photo by ahirao_photo/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Q&AWhen did people start drinking gin and tonic?

A woman on a medieval ducking stool

Q&AQ&A: Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

The corner shop revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An 18th-century public execution and crowd

Q&AWhen did people stop attending public executions in Britain?

Peterloo: the English uprising

A beach scene at an Easter Bank Holiday at Southend, c1927. In 1871, the Bank Holiday Act established the first paid days off for commonworkers in England, while some senior managers could be granted extra leave. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Q&AWhen were Brits first given leave from work to go on holiday?

Gordon Brown talks to the History Extra podcast about Andrew Carnegie. (Photo by Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images)

Gordon Brown on Andrew Carnegie. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Now a protected species in many countries, the hedgehog was once also a health food. A German cookbook dating from the mid-15th century recommends the meat of a hedgehog as useful for leprosy and urinary retention. (Photo by Yuri SmityukTASS via Getty Images)

Hedgehogs, cannabis bread and horse placenta: 13 weird and wonderful health foods in history

18 August 1819: British soldiers charging the crowd at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, during a meeting called in support of political reform. (Photo by Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A “more shocking” massacre? How we might have overestimated the Peterloo crowds

19th-century mugshots

The real Peaky Blinders

Taxing the rich to feed the poor in the 17th century: the world's first welfare state

Native American leader Sitting Bull

History heroSteven Knight chooses Sitting Bull (1831–90). This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

US soldiers in Vietnam

From the Napoleonic Wars to Vietnam and Iraq: a history of war trauma

Families in a London slum, c1900

From slums to suburbs: Britain’s council house revolution

Cavalry charge into a crowd of protesters at St Peter's Field, Manchester, as depicted in an 1819 engraving. What followed was the worst violence ever to occur at a political meeting in Britain. (Picture by Alamy)

The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle called Mata Hari (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)

First World War

Mata Hari: exotic dancer, femme fatale, traitor and spy

General Early Modern

Everything you need to know about the Holy Roman Empire

Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico's left-wing president who in 1940 legalised drugs. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The year Mexico legalised drugs

An 1824 cartoon depicting the drinking escapades of Oxford students. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The history of student life: 7 things you didn’t know

One of the earliest and most famous examples of extremism comes from ancient Rome. Starting in 264 BC and continuing for more than a century, Rome engaged in a series of wars with neighbouring Carthage. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of extremism – from ancient Rome to al Qaeda

Q&A'God Save The Queen': how old is the British national anthem?

The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides

General ancient history

Happy plants and laughing weeds: how people of the ancient world used – and abused – drugs