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

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 ...

During his reign as King of England, as well as Denmark and Norway, Cnut had succeeded in the mission which his father had endeavoured to achieve, to rule over a vast North Sea Empire, united by his ...

Common in the highlands, islands and lowlands of Scotland, the prickly purple thistle has been Scotland’s national emblem for centuries. The thistle, which grows to a height of five feet, has no ...

From the World Heritage Site of Hadrian’s Wall to the lesser known villas and amphitheatres that once dotted the land, Britain has a surprisingly large amount of Roman ruins that can still be visited ...

Born around 1068, very little is known of Henry’s early life: as the youngest son of William the Conqueror he had never expected to be king. Inheriting the throne from his eldest brother William II, ...

The word “clann” comes from the Gaelic and means children, and its members claimed kinship from the common ancestor whose name they bore, and even the poorest clansman considered themselves of nobler ...

An invention that changed the world was 200 years old in 2004. Britain celebrated the bicentenary of the steam railway locomotive with a year-long events programme, but it was not an engineering giant ...

The hobby of collecting cigarette cards is known as Cartophily. These cards were originally given away in cigarette packets as a marketing gimmick, primarily to encourage people to buy more cigarettes ...

Sir Francis Drake – to the Spanish, a wayward pirate; to the English, a hero. He could be considered a morally dubious hero in many ways, perhaps even a villain, but was still incredibly influential ...

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 ...