The big picture

In the early 1940s, the Royal Mint replaced the familiar image of a portcullis on the threepenny coin with a thrift plant. This was part of the government’s campaign reminding the public of the need f

Is this the age of dictators?” asked veteran journalist Sir Sidney Low. He was writing in September 1923, the month in which a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in Spain. At the sa

→ When John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television set in 1926, a theatre impresario was so worried about the impact on the West End that he offered the scientist £1,000 to throw his de

Creativity in wartime, a Swedish mission to rescue Holocaust victims and tours of an iconic British warship

In spring 1953, Britain was looking forward. After the trauma of the war and its aftermath, people were no longer focused simply on surviving. Thanks in part to the postwar settlement and welfare stat

At the age of five, the celebrated children’s author Dame Jacqueline Wilson attended London’s Festival of Britain – a summer of activities and exhibitions around the South Bank to throw off the postwa