What if... alfred had lost the battle of edington?

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

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

I once met a man who claimed he saw a huge black panther (circa 1990) near his farmhouse in Scotland. It had a pheasant in its mouth. He ran to get his shotgun but the creature had vanished. I knew th

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