Members of the British royal family follow behind the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II as it is carried out of Westminster Abbey after her state funeral.
Gareth Cattermole/Pool Photo via AP
A scholar of British history explains how the ornate church and its significance to the monarchy have changed over centuries.
Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation, age 27.
PA images
Other queens were just teenagers when they ascended the throne.
JC JBB.
Britain has gone through unimaginable change culturally and politically during Elizabeth’s 70-year reign.
Shutterstock.
Tariq Ali’s scathing new book assessing Winston Churchill’s life and legacy paints him as a racist opportunist but overstates Churchill’s enduring influence on politics today.
Reagan emphasised the special relationship between the US and the UK.
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Reagan was the first US president to address the UK parliament. What he said still carries weight for Anglo-American relations decades on.
Scrapbooks made for the coronation in 1953 atop other scrapbooks made for royal events throughout the 20th century.
Scrapbooks on the Royal Family are more meaningful objects for our families, and our own communities, than we might first expect.
Tracing our ancestors’ connections to colonialism and industrialisation can help us personally connect with the climate crisis.
Shutterstock
Understanding how our ancestors may have benefited from industrialisation and colonialism could help us become more climate-friendly citizens.
Dennis Sylvester Hurd / Wikimedia Commons
From the tax we pay to the wine we drink, many policies in Britain today have their roots in imperialism.
FALKENSTEINFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo
Warring countries have ben imposing sanctions on their enemies for hundreds of years. They have met with mixed success.
Protests against Section 28 ranged from marches to invading the nightly news.
Gianni Muratore / Alamy Stock Photo
Opposition to the controversial law reflected the British national character, reminiscent of comedies like the Carry On films.
Pupils from a German ‘Napola’ at Ballenstedt before a football game with a visiting side from an English public school.
Even after the notorious Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, some headmasters thought pupil exchanges with Nazi Germany were a good idea.
Karl Collins and Rochelle Rose in Rockets and Blue Lights at the National Theatre.
Brinkhoff Moegenburg
Black British women have been staging plays in recent years about Britain’s role in slavery, a history the country is too eager to forget.
Henry ‘Box’ Brown’s arrival in Philadelphia.
Wikimedia
Abolition in the UK tends to focus on the work of Yorkshireman William Wilberforce but there were many Black abolitionists whose tireless work has been forgotten.
An Anglo-Saxon burial mound in Taplow Court, England.
(Shutterstock)
New analysis of Anglo-Saxon skulls suggests that being an Anglo-Saxon was a matter of language and culture, and not genetics.
Lord Brougham as John Bull, calling on the Prince Regent (later George IV) to curb his extravagance.
Alamy/World History Archive
The excesses of political leaders have always needed checking.
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 with his ‘piece of paper’ ensuring peace in Europe.
Shawshots / Alamy Stock Photo
The Post’s editor, Arthur Mann, withstood extreme pressure to fall in with orthodox political thinking over appeasement with Nazi Germany.
The impeachment trial of Warren Hastings in 1788.
Library of Congress
In the early 19th century, the British – who had invented impeachment centuries before – decided it no longer served its purpose. Instead, they found a more effective way to handle a bad leader.
‘Bridgerton’ tells the story of the courtship and marriage of Daphne Bridgerton and Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings.
( Liam Daniel/Netflix)
‘Bridgerton’ alludes to and obscures social, racial and political tensions in England’s Regency era, the extraordinary decade that marks the dawn of the modern world.
Capture of William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’) in Germany in 1945.
Bert Hardy, No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit/IWM
In the early days of the second world war, a Nazi propagandist broadcasting to England built up a large following.
Still image from the 1940 propaganda film ‘Christmas Under Fire’ produced by the Crown Film Unit.
BFI Archive
Despite rationing and the Blitz, Christmas on the domestic front in 1940 was cheerful and optimistic.