In the late 1920s and early 1930s, photographer Clifton R. Adams was commissioned by the National Geographic to document life in England. Adams’ beautiful autochromes—a process of producing color images by using potato starch—present images that capture th…
These photographs were taken in 1940 by John Topham while he was visiting the base of the Royal Artillery Coastal Defence Battery at Shornemead Fort, near Gravesend, in Kent. The intention had been to photograph the British troops rehearsing in drag for the…
George V (1865-1936), King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1910, went to India in 1911 to be crowned Emperor of India in a great durbar in Delhi on 12 December 1911. The site for the durbar was in northwest Delhi and a city of tents came up across 25 …
The airship R33 was built by Armstrong Whitworth and was completed after the end of the First World War. Her first flight was in early 1919. She was sent to Pulham airship station where she clocked up over 300 flying hours in tests and the training of crew…
The Battle of Cable Street was a clash between anti-fascist protestors and the British Union of Fascists on Sunday 4 October 1936. The BUF was an organization inspired by Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and allegedly included 50,000 members at its height before b…
Princess Diana visited the United States in early November 1985 with her husband Prince Charles. The royal couple stayed at the White House, where they attended a gala dinner on 9 November. The 24-year-old Princess was photographed dancing with the acto…
These rare historical photographs were taken from 1873 to 1877 and are part of Street Life in London, a book that was one of the first examples of social documentary photography. The authors, photographer John Thomson and journalist Adolphe Smith, aimed…
These mugshots of Edwardian Britain depict minors arrested for petty crimes and are part of a wide photographic collection of Tyne Wear Archives. The age of the subjects starts from 12 years old to 21 which was the legal age of adulthood. These minors w…
These amazing color photos of Belfast capture the shipyards, the lively streets, the everyday life, the fashion, and document a city worlds away from the one we know today. The pictures were taken by documentary and Press photographer, Bert Hardy, who's be…
Alice Liddell was the middle daughter of Henry George Liddell, Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. Alice, along with her sisters Edith and Lorina, first met Lewis Carroll on April 25, 1856, as he and a friend were setting up to photograph Christ Church Cathed…
The outbreak of war in 1914 left many Belgians homeless and penniless. Germany invaded Belgium on its way to France, sending hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees fleeing for their lives. The number of people who fled the country from 1914-18 was ap…
This is the story behind the famous picture of the test pilot George Aird ejected from his Lightning F1 fighter plane. The picture was taken by Jim Meads on September 13, 1962. It was published in newspapers all around the world at the time and many peo…
In 1910, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott led a privately funded expedition to become the first people to successfully reach the South Pole. The expedition was Scott's attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole, as well as carry out important s…
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, many close to the British royal family wanted the Queen Mother and her daughters, princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, then 13 and 9 years old respectively, to evacuate to Canada. But the Queen Mother refused. She …
Edwardian fashion refers to the clothing that was in style between the late 1890s and 1914 or the beginning of the Great War. Also called La Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Era), and the Gilded Age, this was a time when women's fashions took on a new opulence …
In 1964, the Beatles achieved an unprecedented level of success both in their home country of Britain and in the United States. They amassed crowds of adoring fans that followed them wherever they went, a phenomenon often referred to as “Beatlemania.” O…
The knocker-upper profession started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time. They would be paid a few pen…
The Anglo-French Concorde was co-developed by BAC, a forerunner of BAE Systems, and Aerospatiale, now a part of Airbus, and has a storied history. New technology was required throughout the plane. A distinctive design innovation was the plane’s droop no…
Dunkirk was the largest of the multiple evacuations of British, French and Belgian troops from Northern France following the Allied loss of the Battle of France. Over the course of the evacuation, 330,000 men were transported from Dunkirk and the surroundi…
In the 1920s and 1930s, sheep were routinely introduced into London parks to keep the grass under control and reduce mowing costs. Shepherds competed for the privilege of grazing their flocks on Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Clapham Common, and other past…