Steve Tibble discusses the Assassins and Templars, two of history's most legendary groups. One was a Shi’ite religious sect, the other a Christian military order created to defend the Holy Land. Steve Tibble traces the history of these two groups from their origins to their ultimate destruction showing how they survived only by perfecting...

It is over twenty years since Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) was introduced in the UK. The purpose was to have one day where all the elements of the horror of the Holocaust (the Nazi Genocide against the Jews of Europe and the Gypsies, Roma and Sinti) and the Nazi Persecution...

New year – a new set of historical events to understand and learn about. Coming up for 2026 are some exciting anniversaries including some on technology – telephones in particular; important books and authors – see Paddington and Beatrix Potter; musical births – time for the jazz hands; protest and...

From mid-November until mid-December it is Disability History Month (20 November–20 December). It might seem odd to have the ‘month’ straddling two months rather than being one single calendar month, but actually it makes rather good symbolic sense. It starts a few days after Remembrance Day and goes into December,...

When the generation of men and women first adopted the wearing of a poppy in the aftermath of the First World War they were doing so for many reasons. For some veterans the poppy had been a symbol of new life on the battlefield, while the inclusion of a pressed...

This talk explored the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved, wherever possible in their own words. Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh shines a light on the lives of revolutionaries like Toussaint Louverture, José Antonio Aponte, Nat Turner, and the pregnant rebel Solitude; touching on the stories of the freed...

This month at the Virtual Branch, renowned medieval historian David Carpenter will delve into the enduring legacy of Magna Carta. Drawing on his recent work uncovering and authenticating a Magna Carta document in the United States, Carpenter will explore why both the dating and the content of this foundational charter...