A Norman noblewoman, Mabel de Bellême became Countess of Shrewsbury through her marriage to Sir Roger de Montgomery. Shrewd ...

King James I succeeded the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I, becoming the first Stuart king of England. He had already reigned as King James VI of Scotland for the last thirty-six years. Mary Queen of ...

We take single-sex public toilets for granted today. It is hard to believe that when public conveniences were first constructed, the vast majority of these toilets were just for men. Great Exhibition ...

Elizabeth I began her reign on 17th November 1558 as a young woman of only 25 years of age. However, by the time Elizabeth gave her first speech to Parliament in early 1559 she declared that it would ...

The South Sea Bubble has been called: the world’s first financial crash, the world’s first Ponzi scheme, speculation mania and a disastrous example of what can happen when people fall prey to ‘group ...

The story of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians and one of the most powerful women to have lived during the Dark Ages. We also look at the role she played in uniting England. As Æthelflæd reached her ...

In 1838 an extraordinary young woman, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, helped to save nine people after the fatal crash of a steamship which sank off the coast of the Farne Islands. A heroine in ...

“There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.” Oscar Wilde in his novel, ‘The Picture of ...

The Highland Clearances remain a controversial period in Scotland’s history and are still talked of with great bitterness, particularly by those families who were dispossessed of their land and even, ...

The British Empire is remembered for its extensive, long-lasting and far-reaching imperial activities that ushered in an era of globalisation and connectivity. The British Empire began in its ...

Who are the British? Do they really drink tea, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and never leave home without an umbrella? Find out more about true Brits; past and present, myth and legend, fact ...