The hanging gardens of babylon

After spending over a decade mapping our Milky Way, the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite is now being put into retirement. The spacecraft has almost depleted its reserves of the cold nitrogen ga

Alfred and Bede. These are the two figures who tower over the first half-millennium of the history of Anglo-Saxon England. There’s a reason for that, of course: they wrote this history. The Venerable

I use a lot of images in my blogs, published articles and presentations. Some are photos of people. Many are diagrams, graphs or copies of documents from parish registers, books and articles or websit

One day late in 1939, a small article appeared in our daily newspaper. It was submitted by the government and was an appeal for British women to knit socks for men in the army, which was unable to obt

Shaka the african savannah elephant is standing in the middle of an expansive field, staring intently at us. His ears are forward, his face is alert and he doesn’t appear stressed or, can we say, unha

KATHERINE COBB is a member of AGRA based in Somerset JAYNE SHRIMPTON is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist ROGER KERSHAW is migration records specialist at The National Archives ST