On World Population Day, University of Cambridge researchers bust some of the biggest myths about life in England since the Middle Ages, challenging assumptions about everything from sex before marriage to migration and the health/wealth gap.
Millions of historical employment records show the British workforce turned sharply towards manufacturing jobs during the 1600s – suggesting the birth of the industrial age has much deeper roots.
The COVID-19 pandemic should only present a short-term interruption to 250 years of improving life expectancy, argues historian Leigh Shaw-Taylor.
In 2003, researchers embarked on a project to piece together a picture of changes in British working life over the course of 600 years. The emerging results seem to demand a rewrite of the most important chapter in our social and economic history.
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