Satan's little helpers this christmas, do toy-buying parents really know what hellish traps for their children they are leaving bundled up in shiny paper beneath the yule tree? sd tucker recalls a classic moral panic – and helps readers shop more safely this festive season.

Many birds have fabulous plumage to attract mates or send warning messages. Some of the colours in their feathers are produced by microscopic structures on the feather surface that absorb and reflect

How a Castilian knight fought Christians and Muslims alike to become a national icon

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

In 1798, Britain’s most celebrated admiral pursued the French across the Mediterranean, attempting to thwart General Bonaparte’s mission to Egypt. The pursuit culminated in what was arguably the most strategically important naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars

In the works of Plato, a Greek philosopher who lived around 2,400 years ago, the island of Atlantis was said to have been drowned in the Atlantic Ocean after the hubris of its people angered the Gods.

For me, stories are like towers. They are layers of differently shaped and variously coloured narrative bricks, piled on top of each other to create one mighty self-contained chronical. I’m one of tho