Before the village pub, there was the village forge. You couldn't have a working village without one: the smith made the ...

The brightly coloured little beach huts at the seaside have a rather curious Victorian ancestor: the bathing machine. Designed to preserve modesty and dignity, these little huts on wheels rolled into ...

The Grand Tour was the utlimate Georgian / Victorian gap year experience. Expensive and glamourous, this was a rite of passage for rich aristocratic young men (and later, women) who travelled Europe, ...

Dating from the Georgian era, gentlemen’s clubs were reserved exclusively for the aristocracy and the elite, to meet, drink, socialise and gamble. They were also the unofficial stomping grounds of ...

Lucozade! Many baby boomers will remember this sparkling, lurid-coloured drink when the glass bottle still came wrapped in crinkly cellophane. This iconic tonic only appeared when a child was ill in ...

Mary Tudor, favourite sister of King Henry VIII, was feted around Europe for her pale skin and good looks. Henry arranged for Mary’s marriage to the aging and gouty King Louis XII as part of a peace ...

Known as the “wicked Duke”, John Dudley was a powerful Tudor statesman who served loyally during the reign of Henry VIII and his son, Edward VI, before a plot to usurp the Catholic Queen Mary led to ...

Mystery, legend and myth surround the Knights Templar, a religious military order of knighthood formed at the time of the Crusades and sworn to defend Christian holy sites in the Holy Land. One of ...

638 – Jerusalem is captured by the Caliph Omar. April 1081 – Aug 1118- Reign of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. 1088 – 1099 – Reign of Pope Urban II. March 1095 – Byzantine Emperor Alexios I ...

St Dunstan was a prominent English religious figure during the Anglo-Saxon period and became a significant advisor to many of the kings of Wessex, helping to initiate monastic reforms and influence ...

There have always been fashion ‘tribes’, from fops and beaux, bucks and dandies to Goths and punks, but the ‘macaronis’ of the 1760s and 1770s exceeded them all in their dedication to excess and ...