The destination for history
Articles
Browse popular categories below or search above.
-
Go to
Aviation
- Flying a De Havilland 4 in World War I
- Alcock and Brown: First to fly the Atlantic non-stop
- The showgirl and the Schneider trophy
- The captured RAF Chaplain-in-Chief’s cross
- A view from the RAF front line during the Cold War
- Aviation landmarks of Norfolk and Suffolk
- The end of an era for Laker Airways
- The Spitfire: R.J. Mitchell’s radical design development
- The nose art of the Lancaster bomber
- Concorde chronology
- The R34 airship
- Concorde: An icon in the news
- The RAF and Imperial War Museums
- The first flight of the Gloster Meteor
- Amelia Earhart and Neta Snook: Pioneering aviators
- Flying for the RAF: Bizarre incidents
- Zeppelin Hindenburg, transatlantic workhorse
- Concorde: Flying hotel to pocket rocket
- The maiden flight of Zeppelin Hindenburg
- The enduring appeal of hot air balloons
- Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown & the gateway to supersonic flight
- Gatwick Airport: The first fifty years
-
Go to
Biography and memoir
- 10 things you should know about Robert Burns
- Travelling the world in a double-decker bus
- Who was Abraham Lincoln?
- Churchill’s feline dynasties
- Alison Plowden: Historian and biographer
- The Brontës: Love, jealousy & sibling rivalry
- Re-examining the life of Anne Frank
- Fighting fascists: Battling Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts
- Doris Delevingne: The Mistress of Mayfair
- Mrs Guinness: The rise and fall of Diana Mitford
- From Roald Dahl to George Bernard Shaw: Sheds of famous authors
- Nelson Mandela: Release and reconciliation
- The beginnings of Bond
- Tsar-crossed lovers? The truth about Nicholas II and ‘Matilda’
-
Go to
Entertainment history
- Playing Gay Q&A
- How British theatre raised funds in World War I
- Orson Welles on Churchill
- At the Oscars with producer Michael Deeley
- Have A Butcher’s: Making Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
- 50 years of Radio 1
- All you need is love
- Why do people still love Marilyn Monroe?
- Audrey Hepburn: Life beyond Tiffany’s
- Recording Pink Floyd’s ‘Atom Heart Mother’
- Edgar Wallace at the movies
- Bond hits and myths
- Christmas television past
- Solo’s run: The legacy of Han Solo
- Americans in Rome after World War II
- Early Beatles gigs expressed in posters
- Inventors and artists: The Lumière Brothers
- Dorothy Squires’ love: Roger Moore
- 30 iconic album covers
- Why is Albert Finney special?
- How Carole Lombard’s career was almost over before it began
- Octopussy: My private revolution
- Five guitars that made rock history at Woodstock
- Alan Tomkins recalls working on Cleopatra and Dr. No
-
Go to
Espionage and the SOE
- The Twins: The SOE’s brothers of vengeance
- The Last Cambridge Spy: John Cairncross
- French SOE hero Robert Maloubier
- How Lorenz was different from Enigma
- St. Ermin’s Hotel and the origins of SOE’s Section D
- Britain’s secret homes: Orchard Court
- The secret history of signals intelligence
-
Go to
Great War Britain
- Chapel Street: The bravest little street of World War I
- A Gloucestershire Lad in World War I
- Woodchester Wayside Cross: Britain’s first war memorial
- Liverpool during the First World War
- How the Pershore Plum helped win the First World War
- Growing up during the First World War in Worcestershire
- The First World War and Eastern England
- The Middlesbrough Ambulance
- Bloody Easter 1916: The Liverpool Irish in Dublin and France
- Hull in The Great War
- Zeppelins on the East Coast
- In their footsteps: The impact of World War I in West Yorkshire
- The Derbyshire Yeomanry in the First World War
- How the well-organised women of Cheltenham contributed to the war effort
-
Go to
Irish history
- The Battle of Clonmult: The IRA’s worst defeat
- Bloody Easter 1916: The Liverpool Irish in Dublin and France
- An introduction to Brehon law
- The 1916 Easter Rising
- The Orange walks of Northern Ireland
- The Falls Curfew: Reassessing the past
- Five daring women from Irish history
- The secret court martial records of the Easter Rising
-
Go to
Kings and queens
- Love rats: Three of England’s lustful kings
- Mary, Queen of Scots in seven actresses
- The House of Lancaster in seven people
- Royal engagement rings through the centuries
- Duke of Clarence: A title through time
- The Eleanor Crosses: Longshanks’ love set in stone
- Richard III, the missing princes, and bones discovered in the Tower
- King Arthur in history and legend
- The moment Princess Elizabeth became queen
- Mary, Queen of Scots’ great escape
- Henry V: Cold-hearted ruler or virtuous king?
- Five little-known facts about Queen Mary I
- William the Conqueror: Crowned at Christmas
- Why was Edward VIII’s abdication a necessity?
- The House of York: Edmund of Langley and his children
- A haverin’ history of Mary, Queen of Scots
- Infamous royal marriages
- Charles II and Catherine of Braganza: A loveless marriage?
- Great Scot, it’s Robert the Bruce!
- A beginner’s guide to the Babington Plot
- Being a Scottish monarch is not good for your health
- King Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson
- The top ten longest-reigning British monarchs
- Richard I: A mighty king or a menacing tyrant?
- The betrayal of Richard III
-
Go to
Local history
- Stay Local, Shop Local
- Shameless Herefordshire
- Strange customs in the Garden of England
- The English village fête
- 20 things you never knew about Coventry
- A brief history of Cornwall’s rivers
- Aberdeen’s granite men: Hard men, hard work
- An expert guide to local history from THP’s authors
- A short history of the Fens
- Merseyside in the 1960s
- Top five Bristol mysteries
- How militant were women’s suffrage campaigners in Gloucestershire?
- Llywelyn the Last
- When Henry VIII met the Holy Maid of Kent
- The devastating storm of 1953
- The origins of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth
- The Black Country alphabet
- 10 cultural milestones from Cardiff’s past
- 10 things I love about Lincolnshire
- Essex Land Girls
- What makes Wales great
- Talking Tyke: 10 Yorkshire dialect words
- The rich history of Somerset
- Just how different was Norfolk?
- Cotswold Arts and Crafts architecture
- Leith: The creative heart of Edinburgh
- Norfolk in the spotlight: Theatres, fairgrounds, and family fun
- Tracing history through the names of pubs and inns
- The Prison of Norman Cross: The Lost Town of Huntingdonshire
- Women of the Durham Coalfields
- Bristol’s other slave trades
- Yorkshire versus Henry VIII
- 10 little known facts about Cumbria
- Why short stories matter
- Recollections of the Sapperton Canal Tunnel
- Royals in Essex
- 10 Cambridgeshire crimes
- A history of Oxfordshire
- By royal appointment: Herefordshire’s regal connections
- Sussex poetry: A country saved...a country lost
- The Manchester Blitz
- Guernsey’s evacuees
- Bennachie’s casualties of war
- Vintage visions above the high street
-
Go to
London history
- Tube Life: Archival images from London's Underground
- Fitzrovia: The other side of Oxford Street
- Ask the author: Phil Stride on London’s Thames Tideway Tunnel
- A brief history of Notting Hill
- The last Thames frost fair
- A curious history of London
- Vintage London: 1910 to 1960
- Growing up in London’s East End
- London in the Second World War
-
Go to
Maritime
- Penguins and polar bears: The wildlife at Earth’s poles
- The craziest things overheard on a cruise ship
- Seven things you (probably) didn’t know about Portsmouth Dockyard
- Wonders of the UK’s waterways
- Salsette: 100 years under the sea
- Top tips for narrowboat life
- RMS Mauretania: Cunard’s most luxurious ocean liner
- The sinking of the RMS Lusitania
- Day-trip to disaster: the Zeebrugge disaster
- Sea devils: Pioneer submariners
- Terrible true tales of life at sea
- 10 facts about Blackbeard
- Diving the wreck of Carpathia
- The sinking and raising of the Mary Rose
- The progression of transatlantic liners through history
- The brief but glorious career of SS Normandie
- The Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916
- The romance of the high seas
- Q&A with Simon Mills, owner of the HMHS Britannic wreck
-
Go to
Medieval
- St Davids Cathedral’s famous faces
- Ask the author: Gemma Hollman on Royal Witches
- Three things you might not know about Owain Glyndŵr
- Robert the Bruce: Earl, outlaw, king
- Joan, Lady of Wales
- The death of Henry III
- Fact vs fiction: The Battle of Lincoln explored
- Battle of Hastings history timeline
- Where did the Black Prince get his name from?
- The Woodvilles: Were they as bad as history states?
- The Bayeux Tapestry in numbers
- Winchelsea at war
- Alfred the Great: King of the Anglo-Saxons
- Medieval tales from many lands
- The Battle of Tettenhall: Aethelflaed’s greatest victory
- Braveheart: The immortality of William Wallace
- England’s first great naval victory
- The Clifford’s Tower massacre
- Eleanor of Aquitaine’s greatest gamble
- The Black Death: Human history’s biggest catastrophe?
- Family loyalty and deceit within the clan of Dracula
- The Battle of Verneuil: a second Agincourt
- Eleanor Talbot: The Secret Queen
- Why is Magna Carta still celebrated?
- Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians timeline
-
Go to
Military
- Animals at war: The PDSA Dickin Medal
- The fall of Tenochtitlan
- Camp debate: Bloody Sunday 1972
- The Battle of Goose Green
- Gibraltar: Conquered by no enemy
- The Battle of Culloden 1746
- Britain’s last invasion: Fishguard 1797
- Hastings 1066: The Battle
- The man who saved the ninja
- Embed: With the world’s armies in Afghanistan
- Interpreting the Battle of Bosworth Field
- The ninja or samurai myth
- Helmet history: Impractical German headdress
- From socks to scout cars: How to supply the army at war
- The poppy as a symbol of remembrance
- How Russian was the revolution of 1917?
- The Siege of Mafeking: A timeline of events
- An A-Z of the Falklands War
- King Shaka’s Zulu
- Five great battles from history
- Operation Unthinkable – Churchill’s plans to invade the Soviet Union
- Family loyalty and deceit within the clan of Dracula
- Special Force: Legacy of the Chindits
-
Go to
Modern history
- Ten things you might not know about the Apollo Missions
- Radio Caroline: Teenage music memories
- The Festival of Britain 1951
- The Falklands War: A chronology of events
- THP’s Desert Island Discs
- Cold War Allied aerial espionage
- Mandela: From prison cell to president
- The reality of working for the Prime Minister
- The Vietnam War: Tet Offensive
- Spying in Berlin during the Cold War
- Four key events in Britain’s nuclear weapons history
- The golden days of Kennedy’s special relationship with Britain
- 1966: When Britain was the envy of the world
- Einstein’s Theory of Gravitational Relativity proven after 100 years
- Reminiscences of the Queen’s Coronation
- Escaping from Hungary’s Iron Curtain
-
Go to
Social and cultural history
- A pig called Alice
- 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the history of the static caravan
- Five Abolitionists you should know
- The media vs the mighty in seven quotes
- Peace symbols through history
- 10 things you didn’t know about Britain’s black community during the World Wars
- 10 street photography tips
- Slavery in history
- The price of a bouquet: Vincent Van Gogh and the art market
- The Duke of Somerset, Scotland and Brexit
- 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Burma
- Celebrating 80 years of the Speaking Clock
- Elizabeth Fry: Saint of prison reform
- Graffiti of the East End
- Bringing up baby in the 1950s
- Indonesia and the coconut
- From martyrdom to capitalism: A timeline of Valentine’s Day
- The history of Scotland in seven people
- A short history of the Post Office
- A history of British pub names
- How an escaped slave became the most photographed American of the 19th century
- The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833
- The history of street photography
- Six strange objects from the history of medicine
- Ask the author: Emma White on dogs throughout British history
- Changes to medical practice from 1914 - 1918
- Immigration to the USA by White Star liner
- Magna Carta: Justice for all?
- The swinging sixties
-
Go to
Storytelling
- Animal folk tales of Britain and Ireland
- Folk tales of rock and stone
- Buckinghamshire: Where old and new sit side-by-side
- Piskeys, Night-riders and Jack ‘o’ Lanterns: Fairies in Cornish folklore
- Finding the folk tales
- How the Birds helped the Hedgehog
- Connecting story, science and self for a sustainable future this Earth Day
- Essex landscapes and ghost tales
- Here be dragons
- Storytelling: Painting the tales
- What I love about performance storytelling
- 10 things you might not know about storytelling
- Why the story you tell is important
- Storypower: The gift of storytelling
- Capturing native animal folk tales of the British Isles
- Medieval tales from many lands
- Collecting Scotland’s folk tales
- Bringing forests to life through the power of stories
- What lies beneath...
- Flower fairies – fey or fearsome?
- ‘We’re still here’: Lost voices from Wales to America
- Michael Rosen on the power of storytelling
- The art of historical storytelling
- The Ballad of Eliza Woodcock
- The challenges of adapting a folk tale
- The art of visual storytelling
- Folk tales: Do they need updating?
- The Storyteller: A poem about the art and practise of storytelling
- The folklore of the Isle of Man
- Growing up with stories
-
Go to
The Tudors
- Six things you (probably) didn’t know about Edward VI
- What if the Princes in the Tower survived into Tudor England?
- The final days of Henry VIII
- Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell and the Pilgrimage of Grace
- The diabolical death of Henry, Lord Darnley
- 12 little-known facts about Catherine of Aragon
- The execution of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset
- Katherine Howard: Vixen or victim?
- Margaret Douglas: The other Tudor princess
- Teenagers in Tudor times
- Memento mori: Reminding the Tudors of their mortality
- Margaret Tudor: English princess, Scottish queen
- Mary I: Tyrant or trailblazer?
- Lady Jane Grey in six places
- Attitudes towards women in the Tudor period
- Henry VII in seven facts
- Do we know the real Henry VIII?
- Henry VIII: Avaricious, suspicious, inconstant
- The royal bed of Henry VII & Elizabeth of York
- Catherine Parr: Henry VIII’s last love
- Catherine of Aragon’s arrival in England
- Why is Shakespeare’s real life (and his death) so undebatable?
- Thomas Cromwell and the ‘ungoodly’ executioner
- It Could Be Ye: England’s first lottery
- A guide to historic Tudor sites
- Evil May Day: When Tudor London rioted against foreigners
- Five little-known facts about Queen Mary I
- Queen Elizabeth I: A brief history
- Thomas Cromwell and the fall of Anne Boleyn
- Dogs in Shakespeare
-
Go to
The Victorians
- Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace: The computer’s most passionate partnership
- Lieutenant-General John Nicholson: Hero or villain?
- The Victorian Society: Campaigning for Victorian and Edwardian architecture
- Timeline of the 1842 retreat from Kabul
- Colonial disasters you (probably) haven’t heard of
- The first Victoria Cross hero
-
Go to
Women and war
- Black women of World War One
- A nursing sister on the Western Front
- The role of women in the First World War
- Edith Cavell and her furry four-legged friends
- How the well-organised women of Cheltenham contributed to the war effort
- Nursing during the last days of the Somme
- The 100th anniversary of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
- ‘Doing their bit’: The female fighter pilots of World War II
- Kate Luard and the Third Battle of Ypres
- Women of the Home Front in pictures
- The heroine of Operation Basalt
- Knitting for Tommy
- What was a typical day like for First World War field nurses?
- Stella Rutter: Spitfire draughtswoman and D-Day secret keeper
- Writing Love and War in the WRNS
- Mildred: American WWI front-line witness
- 10 things you didn’t know about Edith Cavell, nurses & Mary Lindell
- The history of the Auxiliary Territorial Service
-
Go to
Women’s history
- THP’s favourite women in history
- Medicine’s anti-thalidomide heroine
- Q&A with the authors of A History of the World with the Women Put Back In
- In search of Sarah Wilson
- Women in STEM: From unacknowledged helpers to feted pioneers
- Birds of a feather: The female founders of the RSPB
- Pocahontas: The English connection
- 11 little-known things about Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
- Emily Hobhouse: Pacifist and patriot
- Flirting with fascism: Lady Houston and Oswald Mosley
- Seven things you (probably) didn’t know about Anne Brontë
- Ask the author: Lyndsy Spence on society women
- Mary Shelley’s monster: Women writers and the work that has overshadowed them
- Literary legends: Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters
- The mysterious Princess Caraboo
- Nancy Astor: The first lady of British politics
- The deb of 1930: Margaret Whigham enters society
- Joan of Arc: Three ways the ‘Maid of Orléans’ made history
-
Go to
World War I
- Britain’s forgotten soldiers: POWs of the First World War
- The first trenches of the First World War
- The first and last Victoria Crosses of the First World War
- The boys who won the First World War
- How the First World War changed combat forever
- Somme timeline
- Tactics at Ypres
- The forgotten front: East Africa 1914-1918
- Verdun: Setting the scene
- How the talking book was born
- Kitchener: A great man or a great poster?
- 17 First World War books recommended by our military experts
- The Battle of the Somme in infographics
- The ‘big naval show’ of the Great War
- ‘Kitchener’s Mob’ on the Somme
- Three ways to find your ancestors’ World War I medals
- The Battle of Flers-Courcelette
- Bread: A slice of First World War history
- Neuve Chapelle 1915: The BEF’s first offensive
- A timeline of Passchendaele
- Kate Luard and the Third Battle of Ypres
- Early aerial warfare: Darfur 1916
- Combined arms warfare at Cambrai
- The Armistice and its aftermath in photographs
- Chapel Street: The bravest little street of World War I
- How British theatre raised funds in World War I
- A British soldier’s kit in the First World War
- Black servicemen: Unsung heroes of the First World War
- Weaponry in World War I
- A victim of the Somme
- Civilians in Palestine and Syria in the First World War
- The first Victoria Crosses of the First World War
- Verdun timeline
- The siege of Kut-al-Amara, 1916
- Espionage from neutral Holland in World War I
- Changes to medical practice from 1914 - 1918
- Gerald Gliddon’s reflections on the Somme
- 10 defining objects from the Somme
- The Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916
- Captain David Henderson: Labour Party leader’s son on the Somme
- Memoir of a Tommy: Life on the Somme
- The signing of Armistice
- Room 40’s brilliant World War I codebreakers
- The Commonwealth War Graves Commission: A centenary of commemoration
- The Third Battle of Ypres in photos
- Executions for desertion in World War I
- The poppy as a symbol of remembrance
- Zero hour at Amiens: The dawn of victory in 1918
- A Gloucestershire Lad in World War I
-
Go to
World War II
- The Katyn Massacre: Deceitful diplomacy and mass murder
- The sinking of Hitler’s battleship Tirpitz
- How to make money from the Enigma machine
- The Road to Rationing: Preparing to feed Britain in World War II
- Hiroshima: The first atomic bomb
- The evacuation of children during the Second World War