September 2021

Expert history articles from the September 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine

1907 re-enactment of the demonstration of ether anesthesia by W.T.G. Morton on October 16, 1846. Operating room of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Why we should remember... The pioneering use of ether

A group of Tunisian Jews are rounded up and marched through the streets of Tunis carrying shovels in December 1942

Second World War

Holocaust in the Middle East

Residents of a London workhouse drinking beer at rows of tables

How gruelling was the Victorian workhouse?

Daniel Lambert in a 19th-century painting

Super-sized Georgians: why satirists were fixated with fatness

A scene from the Salem witch trials, depicted in a 19th-century lithograph

When the devil stalked Salem: the story of the Salem witch trials

Illustration of the man in the iron mask standing by the window of his cell and guarded by two musketeers

Unmasking the ‘man in the iron mask’: do we know the identity of the famous prisoner?

Adolf Hitler stands with his back to a statue of Discobolos, the Discus Thrower

The classics and racial hatred: how the far right hijacked the ancient world

Premium

A bust of Ashoka the Great

History hero Nihal Arthanayake chooses Ashoka the Great (c304–c232 BC) . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Historian Alex Von Tunzelmann. (Photographed by Fran Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Alex Von Tunzelmann “Debates about statues are often posed in simplistic primary colours” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

HEX_Voices_AnnaWhitelock

Anna Whitelock's Talking Points Plot twists . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

HEX_Voices_EmmaDabiri

Emma Dabiri “Anarcha Westcott should be hailed as a ‘mother of gynaecology’” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

HEX_Voices_Michael Wood

Michael Wood on history festivals “The communal retelling of history is magical. Just ask the kids!” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Walter Scott: an engraving after a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence of the Scottish poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott

Walter Scott: the man who invented Scotland