Homes for Indian nannies
Sherlock Holmes
Christabel Pankhurst
Suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh
Captain Scott's Diary
Suffragettes protest
Indians on the Western Front
World War I
Russian Revolution
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
The General Strike
The Great Depression
Gandhi in Britain
British Union of Fascists
Appeasement
Kristallnacht
Wanted poster for Hitler
World War II ultimatum letter
The Keys
Dunkirk evacuation
Dig for Victory
Make Do and Mend
Auschwitz survivor
The Atom Bomb
Independence and Partition
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
NHS established
Immigration from India
Windrush: post-war immigration
Chinese restaurants
Middle Eastern food
Wolfenden Report
Paul Robeson's Othello
Man lands on the moon
Cuban Missile Crisis
Assassination of Kennedy
Beatles arrive in the USA
Mods and Rockers
England win the World Cup
Robert Kennedy Assassinated
Dr. Martin Luther King
Student protests, Paris
Women's liberation
Punk fanzine
The Oz trial
The Black Panther
President Nixon resigns
The Sex Pistols
Charles and Diana marry
Tiananmen Square massacre
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Release of Nelson Mandela
Peace declared: Northern Ireland
The Belfast Agreement
With an aggressive Germany looming large, Europe's major powers had settled into opposing sides through defence treaties. On 28 June 1914 they suddenly came into play when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. The Allies (mainly Britain, France, Russia) were rapidly at full-scale war with the Central Powers (Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria). Their various colonies became involved too.
The conflict between them was to involve 70 million in combat, and result in 15 million deaths. The lasting image of WWI is one of horror and futility: filthy, flooded trenches in a muddy Belgian field, with opposing troops facing each other through months of stalemate across barbed wire.
The Armistice eventually came on 11 November 1918. Germany and Russia were defeated, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires ceased to exist. The map of central Europe was redrawn with new smaller states. Society and values changed too, leading to the radical new world of the 1920s.
This photograph was taken on the western front in France, 1916. It shows British troops going over the top of the trenches during the battle of the Somme. This was one of the bloodiest battles of World War One, claiming over a million casualties in five months. Photography copyright Getty Images.