History Magazine
When London shook: Elizabethan and Georgian earthquakes
Two earthquakes shook London in early 1750. Then a third was predicted. Cue thousands of Londoners fleeing the city in panic, women clutching their ‘earthquake gowns’…
Defined by war: Audrey Hepburn’s early years
Audrey Hepburn’s name evokes the glamour and elegance of the golden age of cinema in the 1950s. Yet her childhood and adolescence were shaped by the harsh realities of Nazi occupation, starvation, and the devastation of war.
1842 – The Terrible Year
Often referred to as the ‘Hungry Decade’, the 1840s was characterised by social unrest, military losses and economic hardship. The year 1842 in particular was fraught with problems, which led to it becoming known as the Terrible Year, arguably the worst of the 19th century.
The Siege of Yorktown
In 1781, American and French forces under George Washington laid siege to the British army at Yorktown. This would become the most decisive battle of the American Revolutionary War…
D-Day Dodgers – Defying Danger in Italy
The campaigns in Italy in 1943 and 1944 were tough and bloody ones, with some of the most brutal engagements of the Second World War. Yet somehow the sacrifice of the troops involved in the Italian campaign came to be overshadowed by the events of the better-known D-Day operation: the Normandy landings.