Britain

Despite the popularity of shows like My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Britain’s Gypsy Travellers still face longstanding prejudice, warns Becky Taylor.

History Today was launched in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. Barry Turner challenges Arthur Marwick’s impressions, first published in 1991, of the year that austerity Britain glimpsed a brighter future.

Adam Hochschild looks at an unlikely pair of siblings whose high profile yet very different approach to the events of the early 20th century reflect a turbulent age.

The ‘biggest, bloodiest and longest battle on English soil’ was fought at Towton in Yorkshire on Palm Sunday 1461. Its brutality was a consequence of deep geographical and cultural divisions which persist to this day.

Richard Cavendish describes the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary on May 27th, 1936.

A major battle in the Peninsular War took place on 16 May 1811.

The Victorian era was an age of faith – which is why it was also a golden period of progress, argues Tim Stanley.

As the Coalition government marks its first anniversary Martin Pugh sees its blend of Liberal and Conservative policies mirrored in the long and chequered career of the most famous of all 20th-century prime ministers.

Almost none of the large outdoor artworks commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain has survived. Alan Powers discusses one that did, a mural by John Piper, which returns to London’s South Bank this month.