In the Middle Ages, a man called Geoffrey Chaucer was revolutionising the literary scene of the day, becoming one of the greatest poets and fathers of literature in England. His use of English in his ...

The Highland Clearances remain a controversial period in Scotland’s history and are still talked of with great bitterness, particularly by those families who were dispossessed of their land and even, ...

“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn.” So wrote Samuel Johnson and for many, this remains true today. Think of an ...

The year was 1888 and the location Bow in the East End of London, a place where some of the most poverty stricken in society lived and worked. The Match Girls’ Strike was industrial action taken up by ...

Who are the British? Do they really drink tea, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and never leave home without an umbrella? Find out more about true Brits; past and present, myth and legend, fact ...

The reign of Edgar the Peaceful was a rare period of peace and stability in Anglo-Saxon England. Not long after his cornonation, King Edgar’s council at Chester ...

Britain’s ports and harbours were once menaced by the dreaded press-gangs. Impressment, to give it its proper name, was the scourge of maritime communities across the British Isles and Britain’s North ...

The term ‘hangover’ is universally understood to mean the disproportionate suffering that comes after a night of over-indulgence. But where does the term actually come from? One possible explanation ...

The chimney sweep, or climbing boys as they were often called, was a harsh profession to be in and most likely one that would severely cut your life short. Those employed were often orphans or from ...

We take single-sex public toilets for granted today. It is hard to believe that when public conveniences were first constructed, the vast majority of these toilets were just for men. Great Exhibition ...

On Tuesday 29th October 1929 the Wall Street Crash caused a cataclysmic chain of events which affected nearly every country across the globe. The Great Depression, also known as ‘The Slump’ ...

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 ...