Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

Live Aid stage at Wembley, London, in 1985

When Live Aid rocked the world

Between 1613 and 1754, a legal loophole meant that on-the-spot marriages could be carried out in an area surrounding the Fleet Debtors’ Prison known as the ‘Liberties of the Fleet’. (Photo by Getty Images)

General History

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the history of London

A 19th-century painted glass rolling pin and wooden pastry jigger. (Photo ©Emma Kay)

Biscuit tins and pastry jiggers: the history of 6 baking tools

Jacob Rees-Mogg. (Photo by Getty Images)

Jacob Rees-Mogg on the Victorians. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Men enjoying a drink and a chat in a coffee house, 1674. Coffee houses became known as ‘schools of the wise’, where people would gossip, argue and discuss the breaking news of the day. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee

Peasants in the Middle Ages at a cattle market. Cows appear to have been difficult to manage in the medieval period, and caused several deaths. (Photo by INTERFOTO /Alamy)

5 strange causes of death in the medieval period

A group of household servants photographed in Northumberland, c1860–80. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

What was life like as a 19th-century servant?

In his native Como, Pliny the Younger's fame is reflected in his statue on the city cathedral's imposing west front, which was built in the 15th century. (Image by AKG Images)

Pliny's Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins

A portrait of Fridtjof Nansen, taken after his daring expedition across Greenland. (Image by Alamy)

My history heroPaul Rose chooses Fridtjof Nansen

A 1954 illustration of a woman wearing nylons. Lightweight, easy to conceal and fiercely sought after, stockings were a favourite with smugglers. (Photo by Bridgeman)

Nylon pirates: the postwar craze for cut-price stockings

Historian and geographer Jared Diamond

Books interview with Jared Diamond: “With countries, as with people, crises attract attention”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Jared Diamond (Photo by Jochen Braun)

Jared Diamond on countries in crisis. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Great Pyramid of Giza. Egypt. (Photo by Olgakostenko | Dreamstime.com)

10 of the most surprising numbers in history

Members of Preston Ladies' Football Club (formerly Dick, Kerr’s Ladies) pose while carrying out leg exercises during practice, March 1937. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

1921: the year when football banned women

Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring on the balcony of the Reichs Chancellery, Berlin. One British journalist recalled how, in 1933, Göring began an attack against the foreign press unlike any he had previously witnessed. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Reporting on Hitler: how foreign correspondents in Nazi Germany battled to expose the truth

Paul Morland (Photo by Fran Monks)

How population has shaped world history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Portrait of theologian and Bible translator John Wycliffe (c1330–84). (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

The murderous history of Bible translations

The pirate Blackbeard

10 brilliant beards from history

Record producer Joe Meek

Joe Meek: the life and legacy of the British record producer

Japanese troops celebrate the capture of a British artillery position, Hong Kong, December 1941 (Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

The lion and the rising sun: Britain and Japan's 400-year relationship

Attempted assassination of Queen Victoria (1819-1901). On the evening of Wednesday 10 June 1840 Victoria and Prince Albert were travelling in a carriage along Constitution Hill near Buckingham Palace, London, when Edward Oxford fired a pistol at the Queen

Edward Oxford: the man who tried to assassinate Queen Victoria

A brief history of marathons

Queen Elizabeth II driving her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne at Windsor, 1957. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Why do Brits drive on the left-hand side of the road? Plus 4 other facts about the history of driving in Britain

Bemused families in Narodychi, Ukraine watch neighbours preparing to leave home shortly after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, just 50 miles (80km) to the east. The Soviet state proposed to re-house rural inhabitants in badly affected districts, but many preferred to stay despite (or perhaps unaware of the danger of) the high radiation detected by Geiger counters. (Photo by Igor Kostin/Sygma via Getty Images)

Eyewitness account: the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster

British spy writer Ian Fleming at his home, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. (Photo by Harry Benson/Express Newspapers/Getty Images)

The man behind James Bond

An illustration from 1883 shows the phrenology chart of the skull

The Victorian phrenology craze

Anita Anand, photographed in London. "My grandfather was in Amritsar on the day of the massacre. This story has been woven into my DNA," she says. (Photography by Alastair Levy)

Books interview with Anita Anand: “Singh hoped that he would be the catalyst for a revolution”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A protester in a headlock, Southall, April 1979, when a member of the Anti-Nazi League died after being struck on the head. (Images by Getty Images)

1979: Britain in meltdown

Thatcher holds up two shopping bags to show how much less a pound would buy due to inflation under Labour. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Are we still living in Thatcher’s Britain?

A souvenir for a burlesque adaptation of the classic opera 'Carmen' at the Gaiety Theatre, 1890. (Image by Bridgeman)

Victorian burlesque: cheap thrills for the chattering classes