Why you should record the stories of your parents or grandparents

The story of GR Gemin’s Italian immigrant parents moving to Wales in the 1950s has inspired his new book, Sweet Pizza. One regret: never recording the oral history of his dad before he died

Tudormania: Why can’t we get over it?

The Long Read: Our fixation with the sexy powerplays of the Tudor court shows no signs of fading. What is it about this 16th-century dynasty that still obsesses us?

Keith Jeffery obituary

Historian who wrote on the British and Irish military and chronicled the early years of MI6

Donald Weinstein obituary

Other lives: Historian in the study of the Italian Renaissance

John Blatchly obituary

Other lives: Headteacher and champion of historical activities in Suffolk

The Jewish story, the Arab story … and a plan by Mr Davies

After a trip to Israel and the West Bank, teacher Michael Davies is planning to change the way students learn about the history of the conflict

Why my alternative second world war story is from a female point of view

When Julie Mayhew was researching her book The Big Lie, which explores what would happen if the Nazis won, she discovered the stories of the women and girls including Sophie Scholl, who dared speak up against the atrocities

Russian region bans British historians’ books from schools

Authorities in Yekaterinburg tell schools to ‘prevent access’ to works by Antony Beevor and John Keegan, claiming they promote Nazi stereotypes

The best horrible history facts ever

Horrible Histories author Terry Deary and the stage-adaptor and actor Neal Foster got together to pick their all time favourite horrible history facts…

Wolf Hall is wrong: Thomas More was a funny, feminist Renaissance man

Jonathan Jones: He was a literary wit, a family man ... and a proto-feminist. Evidence that Hilary Mantel’s version of More is a travesty abounds in Hans Holbein’s revealing painting and the statesman’s own masterpiece, Utopia

Gwynne Lewis obituary

Historian whose books on the French Revolution emphasised social tensions as the root cause of the uprising

Death in the city: the grisly secrets of dealing with Victorian London’s dead

In this extract from his new book Dirty Old London, Lee Jackson investigates a much-overlooked aspect of the city’s 19th-century filth problem: the human corpse

Rex Russell obituary

Other lives: Teacher who encouraged the study of local history in Lincolnshire

Terence Ranger obituary

A champion of African nationalism, and one of the continent’s most radical and influential historians

Ethel Lang, the last Victorian, has died but Victorianism lives on

Kate Williams: Much of what our society holds important was shaped in the 19th century – including some of our attitudes