The first recorded date of Christmas in England was in the year 597 when Augustine baptised 10,000 Saxons in Kent on ...

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 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 ...

“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 ...

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 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 ...

Cotton, a valuable raw material and a mainstay of the textile industry, has been around for centuries and remains one of the most crucial resources to this day. Cotton has been used by humans as far ...

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 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, ...

Richard I the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) is perhaps best known for his exploits in the Third Crusade. His war against Saladin is one of the classic stories of medieval chivalry and crusading. But ...

As that well known footballing legend Bill Shankly so eloquently put it …’some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is ...

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 ...