The History of Britain Magazine

Still considered to be one of the most inexplicable episodes of the Second World War, why did Rudolph Hess, an experienced pilot, leading Nazi and Adolf Hitler’s deputy, crash-land in rural Scotland in 1941?

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.

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.

General Charles Cornwallis is best known for his part in the British defeat at Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War. But there is much more to Cornwallis than this: his career then took him to India and later to Ireland…

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…

A British Army intelligence officer, John André was hanged as a spy at Tappan, New York, on Oct. 2nd 1780 on the orders of George Washington..

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.

Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) was the name given to a series of evacuations between 1938 and 1940 to bring refugee children, mostly Jewish, from Germany and German occupied territories to the safety of Britain.