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The Invention of Christmas
Article by Judith Flanders about how what we think of as a British Christmas was invented or imported during the 19th century.

Lost Generation
With an emphasis on the battle of the Somme, the information on this large site – including history articles and a unique database of the names of soldiers on World War I memorials in Britain – provides an opportunity to turn those lost during the war into real people.

• 1000 AD
  This website invites you to step back in time to 1000 AD and presents an A-Z survival guide to Anglo-Saxon life.
• The 1940s House
  Information on what life was like in a London suburb during World War II.
• Allied tears, German tears
  Historian Gregor Dallas reveals how the Allies and the Germans viewed the 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front completely differently.
• Athens: The truth about democracy
  Examination of how the democratic Greeks were also slave owners and empire builders. Includes the article 'Who killed Socrates?'
• Because You're Worth It:
  100 years of make-up
  A decade-by-decade walk through the history of cosmetics, biographies of some of those who made it happen, and an investigation of the symbiotic relationship between celebrity and cosmetics.
• The British Slave Trade: A chronology
  From the first British slave trader Sir John Hawkins to the Slavery Abolition Act and US Emancipation Proclamation.
• Britain’s Trains and Railways: A beginner’s guide
  Everything you wanted to know about steam engines, railway companies and electric locomotives.
• Castle
  Take a virtual tour of medieval Britain's top 10 castles, watch video clips, study timelines and learn more about the period.
• Children and war
  The history of child warriors is a long and bloody one that extends from the youths of Sparta in the 1st millennium BC to the young people engaged in military activity around the world in the early years of the 21st century.
• Cities and disaster
  An examination of the calamities that befell seven cities: London (1666), Lisbon (1755), Chicago (1871), San Francisco (1906), Tokyo/Yokohama (1923), Florence (1966), New Orleans (2005).
• Class Quiz
  The British are obsessed with class, from the aristocrats to chavs and the underclass, with the middle classes in between, constantly jockeying for position. Here is a quiz to set you thinking about class.
• Crime Team
  Lifting the lid on eight grisly murders from crime history books, this website investigates the evidence, the people involved, the influences at work and the law at the time.
• The Devil in Essex: Witch-hunting in Old and New England
  Dr Malcolm Gaskill reveals how witch-hunts in Cromwellian England led to similar atrocities in the New World.
• The Diets that Time Forgot
  Info on weight-loss diets and fitness regimes popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and 1920s, plus general facts on diet and nutrition.
• Edwardian Country House
  Lots of fascinating information on and insights into the Edwardian age.
• The Firefighters
  The history of firefighting – from bucket chains to foam blankets, from the horse-drawn pump to the high-pressure hose.
• Forbidden Fruit
  Taboo and titillation, racial pride and prejudice – these mark the story of love and sex between black and white people. This site looks at how people's curiosity of the exotic was poisoned by the violence and brutality of the plantations. The timeline includes key dates along the route to racial harmony.
• Georgian Underworld
  Looks at the great social upheavals of the age and examines why they came about and what they led to.
• The Girl with X-ray Eyes
  The battle of beliefs and the appeal of visionaries throughout history, from Greek myths to the Cottingley fairies.
• Howard Hughes: A chronology
  This reveals all the American billionaire’s triumphs and disasters, then charts his descent into madness, squalor and death.
• The Hunt for Lord Lucan
  The disappearance of Lord Lucan in 1974 ignited one of the most compelling mysteries in modern criminal history – a peculiarly British affair, involving the dying traditions of aristocracy and honour.
• The Invention of Christmas
  Article by Judith Flanders about how what we think of as a British Christmas was invented or imported during the 19th century.
• London: The greatest city
  Edited transcript of the Channel 4 documentary on Britain's capital, together with many of the computer reconstructions that appeared in it.
• Lost Generation
  With an emphasis on the battle of the Somme, the information on this large site – including history articles and a unique database of the names of soldiers on World War I memorials in Britain – provides an opportunity to turn those lost during the war into real people.
• Martin Luther King
  This C4 Learning website analyses the role and importance of King in the civil rights movement in 1960s’ America.
• Masters of Darkness
  The barely believable stories of four men – John Dee, the Marquis de Sade, Rasputin and Aleister Crowley – whose sexual escapades, obsession with magic and radical ideas earned them the fear of their contemporaries and a place in modern culture.
• Nelson’s Navy
  While ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’ might be the stereotype of life at sea in in the 18th and early 19th century, it is far from the reality.
• Number 57: The history of a house
  How No. 57 Kingsdown Parade in Bristol was chosen to be the 'star' of the TV series and book.
• Origination
  Brings together the wealth of web resources recording and celebrating the contributions of immigrant cultures to contemporary Britain.
• Pioneer House
  Modern-day colonists striving to make it in 1628 America. The website reveals why the original pioneers left England, how they set up the first colonies and coped with their demanding daily lives, and examines their troubled relations with the Native Americans.
• Race in the 20th Century
  This C4 Learning website explores the representations of empire and immigration in Britain and civil rights in the United States.
• The Real History Show: A Victorian wedding
  What it's like putting together an 1840 wedding today.
• The Real Paul Raymond
  An examination of the tangled career and troubled personal life of Britain's foremost porn baron, beginning in the 1940s.
• The Real Da Vinci Code
  Millions of readers have been hooked by Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, but what do historians think of the book and do its major claims stand up to scrutiny?
• The Real Erich von Däniken
  The former Swiss hotelier who believed that the pyramids were built by humans after extraterrestrials mated with them and gave them an evolutionary kick-start.
• Regency House Party
  Background information on Regency life and culture.
• Regency House Party
  In this extract from her book, Lucy Jago tells how the Regency buck acquired his skills and attainments.
• Rescued from Oblivion
  An extract from Steve Humphries' book on the deprivations on the British home front during World War I.
• Restoration
  A fun film that, according to Justin Champion, gives a slightly more plausible account of the culture of Charles II’s court than many others.
• Scandal
  Aleks Sierz finds this version of the Profumo affair just a bit too rose-tinted.
• Secret History: Wartime crime
  How looters, thieves and conmen took advantage of the chaos and upheaval of World War II Britain, their activities often ignored or simply hushed up.
• Seven Ages of Britain
  In this extract from his book, Justin Pollard recounts the changes that women experienced following the Black Death.
• The Silk Route
  From traders in salt and lapis lazuli 6,000 years ago to the adventurer Marco Polo in the 13th century, merchants and others journeyed to and from China and the Middle East on ancient highways collectively known as the ‘Silk Route’.
• The Slave Trade and the Industrial Revolution
  How the slave trade helped Britain become the 'workshop of the world' while reinforcing a racist view of Africans.
• The Sultanate of Women
  For more than a century, says Professor Leslie Peirce, power in the Ottoman empire was centred on the sultan's harem in Istanbul.
• That'll Teach 'Em
  Shows how education today is very different from education in the 1950s, and asks why people have always criticised education and what is worthy of praise in it today.
• That'll Teach 'Em 2
  Find out the differences between the education system in 1964 and what teenagers face today, from lessons to teaching methods.
• That’ll Teach ‘Em 3: Boys v girls
  Who rules, girls or boys? Does splitting them up improve results? Can the government’s radical changes to the curriculum reverse the decline in school’s science?
• Titanic: A beginner's guide
  A selection of the best websites and books on the British liner that sank on 14/15 April 1912.
• UFOs: The secret evidence
  The last 60 years of UFOs, close encounters and alien abductions.
• Victorian Children
  Channel 4 Schools site that answers the question: What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?
• Victorians Uncovered
  Lifts the skirts of 19th-century respectability to reveal the naked truth beneath: child prostitution; sex and race; birth control; divorce.
• What the Papers Said
  Newspapers give a contemporary slant to historical events: Chartists, Great Exhibition, Suffragette movement, World War I, Russian Revolution, Treaty of Versailles, General Strike, Cold War, Vietnam War (Channel 4 Learning).
• Witchfinder General
  According to Malcolm Gaskill, this 1968 film set in Civil War England – a period-piece about love and loss, exploitation and vengeance – self-consciously manipulates the known facts.
• Witchfinder General: Interview
  Interview with historian Malcolm Gaskill on various aspects of the witchcraft hysteria in 17th-century Essex.
• Women in the 20th Century
  This C4 Learning website examines the roles of women during the last century in terms of war, work and the family.
• The Worst Jobs in History
  A journey through 2,000 years of British history and the worst jobs of each era.

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