History

Britain’s smallest city has 1,800 residents and anchors this six day Welsh drive

St David’s earns its city status from a 12th century cathedral rather than its size, and it sits roughly halfway along a coastal road trip that runs from the Severn crossing to Anglesey.

Old Burghley House has 115 rooms and a roof that covers three quarters of an acre

William Cecil’s house holds 115 rooms under three quarters of an acre of roof, and the public circuit alone runs to more than a quarter of a mile.

Christopher Wren studied astronomy and then rebuilt London after it burned down

Christopher Wren, born 394 years ago next Tuesday, had studied science and astronomy rather than architecture when he was handed 51 churches and a cathedral to build.

Drake’s drum hangs in a Devon house and is said to beat when England is in danger

Raleigh’s scaffold pipe, Livingstone’s red shirt and a full size replica of the ship John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland are all sitting somewhere in Britain waiting to be visited.

Winston Churchill gives his famous speech "The Few" in the House of Commons

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Two English villages were emptied for the war effort and nobody was let back in

From a Yorkshire village cleared out for sheep around 1500 to a Welsh slate valley that fell silent in the 1940s, here are five corners of Britain where nobody lives.

The Saxon world ended 960 years ago this week and England still runs on it

From the shires and the boroughs to the names of half the towns on the map, the six centuries between Rome leaving and William arriving are still underfoot.

Rosslyn Chapel was begun 580 years ago and the carvers never finished the job

Five centuries of folklore have gathered around a small unfinished church seven miles south of Edinburgh, and Dan Brown only added to the pile.

The Luftwaffe dropped 13,000 tons of bombs in ten weeks and morale held

Joan MacKenzie went from fire-watching on a Shell Oil roof to plotting Fighter Command’s aircraft at North Weald, and she was on shift when the first V-1 crossed the coast.

Queen Victoria kept Albert’s watch beside her in bed for 40 years and it is still there

The Isle of Wight villa the royal couple built with their own money has been left exactly as it stood on the January morning in 1901 when the Queen died in it.

Flowers still arrive at the spot where England’s last Saxon king fell in 1066

Wednesday marks 960 years since the Battle of Hastings, the single October day that swept away Anglo -Saxon rule and remade England in Norman stone.

Bletchley Park's 10,000 codebreakers signed the Official Secrets Act and not one talked

Ruth Bourne was 18 when the Navy sent her to a windowless room full of Bombe machines and told her never to ask what the work meant.