On 14 January 1878, Queen Victoria welcomed a special guest and his newest invention to Osborne House, her private retreat on the Isle of Wight. In fact, the encounter was significant enough to warran

In the 1500s, Japan was fought over by hundreds of rival warlords. They battled for territory and power, resulting in a century of near-constant war, until the Tokugawa shoguns won a decisive victory

What do our beloved hostelries have to do with the discovery of DNA, the D-Day landings and The Lord of the Rings ? Everything, as Ashleigh Arnott discovers

The Germans possessed two monstrous M-Gerät howitzer guns nicknamed ‘Big Bertha’ – but they were barely finished and had undergone no testing when the First World War broke out. Even so, on 2 August 1

There’s plenty to criticise about that ancient approach We wouldn’t recognise the system practised in ancient Athens as democracy in the sense we understand it today. Women did not have the vote, and

When William Caxton opened Britain’s first printing press 550 years ago, he helped the country form a shared language and literary culture, as a new exhibition reveals