Dockers unloading wine barrels

Social history

BBC History Magazine

Top five hauntings in history

The bloody world of Georgian female boxing. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Man biting a bullet

Q&AWhy do we say ‘bite the bullet’?

Q&AWhy do we say 'saved by the bell'?

Quiz - Would you have been accepted to join the army and fight in WW1 in August 1914?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Kathryn Ferry, UK seaside expert in Hastings, East Sussex

History explorer: The interwar holiday revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Panic ensues in this depiction of the Peterloo Massacre, published in 1819. (The art archive/Getty Images)

Why were there so few casualties at Peterloo?

Photo of cherry bakewells

Q&AIs the Bakewell tart really from Bakewell?

10 tips for surviving on the home front during the Second World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

10 astronomers you’ve (probably) never heard of

An illustration of a Tudor street

“Mooke, fylthe and other vyle things”: Tudor dirt and dung. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A still from the set of 'Westward the Women', directed by William A Wellman. (Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

How the Wild West was spun. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A letter-writer depicted by Janez Subic, c1878. (© Getty)

The great Victorian letter swindle. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Crowds in Coronation Park, Delhi, celebrate the coronation of King George V in 1911. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The LibraryDid Britain make the modern world?

The World War Two French resistance and British holidays. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

William Kent, a Yorkshire-born artist and architect

History explorer: The English landscape garden. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An oil painting by John Cleveley The Elder depicting the Royal Naval Dockyard

The quest for longitude: the men who mapped the surface of the earth. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

7 Victorian jokes have been given a modern twist - and they're hilarious

10 amazing Punch magazine sketches from 1859 to 1981

How did it become a gesture of well-wishing to say to an actor before they go on stage "break a leg"? (Photo by Andrys Lukowski via iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Q&AWhy do we say ‘Break a leg’?

The Stygian Lake in the Fifth Circle of Hell from from Dante’s epic poem 'The Inferno'. The phrase "Paint the town red" may originate from the sentence in the poem "we are they who painted the world scarlet with sins". (Photo by Getty Images)

Q&AWhy do we say ‘Paint the town red’?

The decline of the pub: what can we learn from history?

English gardens and Latin American football. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Revealed: the secrets of the Tudor cross-dressers

Incent's House as it stands today on the Berkhamsted High Street. (Creative Commons)

The hunt for the Tudor hitman. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A nurse on the French Eastern border treats a wounded soldier during the First World War. (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

Pain through the prism of war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

For sale: 7 amazing historical homes owned by Henry VIII, Charles II and Winnie the Pooh

A mosaic depicting the poet Virgil writing the Aeneid. (Photo By DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

How to succeed in Ancient Rome. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

BBC History Magazine

Chloroform, Jean Harlow and the Marquess of Dorset: 3 things that happened On This Day 7 June

Wolfson History Prize special. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.