Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

British gunners busily engaged in putting over a curtain barrage. Somme campaign, France, 1916. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The Somme soldiers’ stories

Britain’s Second World War and the Country House. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

‘Show me the money!’ A brief history of American spending power

(Photo by illustration by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

EU referendum: how significant is Britain’s vote to leave? Historians debate. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Radium Girls and the cotton revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Was Sarah Guppy the real inventor of the Clifton Suspension Bridge?

The most popular historical figures you've (probably) never heard of

Wolfson History Prizes: Nazi camps and St Augustine. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A detail of the decorative carving on the side of the Oseberg cart c850 AD. A woman with streaming hair apparently restrains a man’s sword arm as he strikes at a horseman accompanied by a dog. Below is a frieze of intertwined serpentine beasts. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The battle of Jutland and 1950s domestic dangers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A photograph of Queen Victoria c1887. (Alexander Bassano/Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

General History

9 of history's best quotes

Illustration by Arthur Rackham to the play ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ by William Shakespeare. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

The fairy menace

Kate Summerscale. (Photo by Fran Monks)

The wicked boy: the mystery of a Victorian child murderer. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A 1954 advertisement for Cooper's Y-Front. (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A revealing history of underwear

(BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd/Tiger Aspect/Robert Viglasky)

Peaky Blinders: behind the scenes with creator Steven Knight. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A combo picture of two images taken 13 August 2002 at Cairo Museum shows a foot of a mummy missing its big toe and beside it a prosthetic toe of leather and wood to replace the amputated real one. (Photo by Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images)

Q&AHow long have people used prosthetic limbs?

The history of consumerism and Chinese philosophy. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Edmund II - better known as Edmund Ironside - shown in a 14th-century manuscript. (Photo by Wikimedia Commons)

Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king

Swan Theatre, Bankside, London, interior from drawing by Johannes de Witt. The Shakespearian theatre, erected c1593 on Bankside – could hold 3,000 spectators – typical of the time. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

At the playhouse: watching Shakespeare's plays in Elizabethan England

German astronomer Johannes Kepler c1620. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

The astronomer and the witch: Johannes Kepler’s fight to save his mother from execution

Student life and working class culture. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Monopoly maps: the history of MI9’s secret Second World War escape programme

Shakespeare: the historians’ view

A portrait of Catherine Howard. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Catherine Howard: The death of innocence

A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

How Shakespeare rewrote history

A giant leap for mankind: William Harvey reveals the circulation of the blood

The Dissolution and a forgotten colony. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An illustration from an 11th-century manuscript depicting a king and his minister doing justice, c1050. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Medieval English law in the time of Magna Carta. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Democracy and an age of genius. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Franciscans treating victims of the plague, miniature from La Franceschina, c1474, codex by Jacopo Oddi. Perugia, Biblioteca Capitolare (Library). (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

The hospital experience in medieval England