Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

A 14th-century Flemish illustration depicting the burying of plague victims in coffins in Tournai in 1349. (Photo by Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Black Death: “Oh father, why have you abandoned me?”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Four police officers, members of the Bow Street Horse Patrol, pose for a photograph with a horse.

The rise of the Great British 'bobby': a brief history of Britain's police service

Second World War

5 facts about the Bevin Boys

A contemporary pictorial depiction of the Great Plague.

The Black Death: the historians’ view. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Street urchins in Lambeth, London, 19th century

Escaping the workhouse: the Victorian war on child poverty

Michael Wood on... slavery. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A brief history of London tourism since 1800

Medieval bodies. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Kinder Scout

History explorer: The fight for the right to ramble. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The real history behind ‘The Crown’ with Robert Lacey

Biddenden Maids Cake. (Public Domain)

Sisters of mercy: the Biddenden Maids

Opposing the Nazis. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

c1930: a man wrestles his tamed bear. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

Bizarre England: 11 of the strangest attractions and traditions in history

Hitler meets members of the Reich Labour Service. (Photo by AKG)

Q&A: Are any laws made by the Nazi regime still in use?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Brunel: a hard taskmaster

A compilation of compass drawn circles, and variants found in many of the churches

Medieval graffiti: the lost voices of England’s churches in the Middle Ages

The postwar world. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Bikes on a canal in Amsterdam and the Basilica of Saint Nicholas church in the background. (Photo by maydays via Getty Images)

My favourite place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

John Julius Norwich pictured at the Oxford Literary Festival in 2014. (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)

Books interview with John Julius Norwich: “Most British people know practically nothing about French history”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of Catherine of Siena, who in the 1360s experienced a vision from God during which – according to her biographer, Raymond of Capua – she drank the water from the wound in Christ’s side. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

The medieval mystics with a hotline to God

Husband and wife Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang), pictured at their wedding in 1928. The pair “dominated Chinese politics for two decades [and] were among the most prominent non-westerners on the planet throughout the 1930s and 1940s”, says Rana Mitter. (Photo by Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Six lives that shaped China

An engraving from Ulrich Molitor’s ‘On witches and female soothsayers’, depicting witches bringing down the rain. Germany, 15th century. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

A spell-binding history of witches

Radio Times cover, 1931. (Photo by Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)

Radio nation

Wendy Webster. (Photo by Claire Wood/BBC)

Books interview with Wendy Webster: “In its finest hour, Britain’s population was multiethnic and multinational”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Marshall Plan and the Cold War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A crowd gathers to watch the witnesses arrive for the trial of John George Haigh, the 'acid bath murderer', in Lewes, East Sussex, July 1949. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

10 facts about crime on the home front in the Second World War

Elizabethan England’s relationship with the Islamic world

A woman votes for the first time in 1918 Britain

What was the 1918 Representation of the People Act?

Notre Dame and Paris, France

The LibraryMy favourite place: Paris, France

Living with the oceans. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.