Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

Bribes, gifts and scandal: 7 stories of corruption that shocked Britain

Postwar occupations and Raleigh bicycles. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Viceroy’s House: the history behind the film. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

Charles Darwin sports his trademark bushy beard in 1877. (Photo by Corbis Historical/Getty Images)

From Charles Darwin’s beard to George Eliot’s right hand: 4 famous Victorian bodily quirks

BBC History Magazine

In pictures: The photographs of William Henry Fox Talbot

Anonymous engraving, master of the garden of love, 15th century, France, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale. (Photo by: Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

7 ways to say “I love you” in medieval Europe

The Duke of Wellington and his ‘Dearest Georgy’

The impact of war and a zoological institution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

James Sadler: From pastry cook to first English aeronaut. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

(Photo by Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo)

Who were 'Stella' and 'Fanny'?

A portrait of James Gordon Bennett, Jr (1841–1918), by Alexis Joseph Perignon, 1867. (Photo by The New York Historical Society/Getty Images)

Q&AWhy do we say ‘Gordon Bennett’?

5 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Dark Ages

"The idea that pharaohs were worshipped as all-powerful gods is just plain silly": John Romer on the truth about ancient Egypt. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Love, sex and marriage in ancient Egypt

View of Algiers with mediterranean galleys, published in Johannes van Keulen's Dutch Atlas, 1709. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

When Britons were slaves in Africa

6 strange newspaper stories that shocked Victorian Britain

Roman ruins in Ancient Ostia with the tenements of Serapide

FeatureFive facts about Roman insulae

The big questions of the Holocaust. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Ada Nield Chew: England’s forgotten suffragist

Festive QI facts: 8 things you (probably) didn’t know about the history of Christmas

A Roman relief showing a market scene

A handbook to shopping in ancient Rome

Two men carrying old woman as they migrate, following the Partition of India in 1947

10 historical turning points for modern India

Young women working in a textile mill in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1943

Famine and freedom: how the Second World War ignited India

Corner shops and Russian ballet. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

General History

The big questionWhy did the west dominate history for so long?

Persuading the people: British propaganda in the Second World War

What religion was practised by the people of Lithuania before their conversion to Christianity in the 14th century?

General History

Q&AWhy are kissing gates so called and what is their significance as entrances to graveyards?

First World War

What is the origin of the phrase 'to blow smoke up someone's arse'?