Kemi Badenoch wants to end ‘rip-off degrees’ – but I wouldn’t have created Horrid Henry without mine

I studied Old and Middle English. Although I didn’t know it, I couldn’t have chosen a better subject to train me to become a children’s author, says author Francesca Simon

Frank O’Gorman obituary

Other lives: Manchester University historian who wrote books on 18th- and 19th-century society

Qiu Xigui obituary

Paleographer, historian and expert on ancient Chinese writing

Carol Diethe obituary

Other lives: Lecturer in the history of ideas who became one of the UK’s leading Nietzsche scholars

John Seed obituary

Other lives: Author, poet and academic whose books often fused history with verse

Bob Moore obituary

Other lives: Medieval historian at Sheffield and Newcastle universities who wrote influential books on heresy and the roots of intolerance

Brian Maidment obituary

Other lives: Academic expert on downmarket illustrated books, prints and ephemera of Georgian and Victorian eras

Richard Rathbone obituary

Other lives: Professor of African history at Soas who delighted in his membership of a local choir in Wales

John Shepherd obituary

Other lives: Historian of the Labour party who wrote a biography of the 1930s leader George Lansbury

Newly uncovered sites reveal true power of great Viking army in Britain

Previously unseen artefacts show invading forces included communities of men, women, children, craftworkers and merchants

‘I’m a mixed Black female historical re-enactor in a sea of men with beards’

Not everyone would want to spend their weekends dressed in a tunic fighting medieval battles, but my love of re-enacting is rooted in keeping history alive

‘Henry VIII is a serial killer and abuser’: why is Britain still so obsessed with the Tudors?

England has long adopted the version of events informed by the Victorians’ biases and neuroses. But what is behind the flood of 21st-century retellings, including the new TV series The Mirror and the Light?

Dame Janet Nelson obituary

Historian who combined impeccable scholarship with a high degree of empathy towards figures past and present

Heinz-Peter King obituary

Other lives: Lecturer and historian at St Andrews University who was an expert on the Cistercian Order

Undercover women: the story of how Victorian female police cracked crime

Although women weren’t allowed to become police officers until 1917, a new book explores their vital role as ‘searchers’