Culture

Aviator Alfred Buckham created some of the earliest and most awe-inspiring bird's-eye images – to achieve them, he employed perilous, death-defying acts of ingenuity.

As people around the world mark Halloween, our editors pick the frightening scenes that have truly stayed with them.

Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat is a deceptively simple image of a real-life murder. But a closer look at the iconic painting reveals the political messages contained within.

Elizabeth II's sister had to choose between ending her engagement and renouncing her title in 1955. Or did she? In 1978, the BBC talked to the war hero who almost married a princess.

An unhappy bride plotting others' downfalls, 19th-Century anti-heroine Hedda Gabler is one of the great roles for women – and as new film Hedda is released, she remains controversial.

The Nazi high command was put on trial 80 years ago in 1945. The new film Nuremberg draws on a little-known detail of the tribunal to ask enduring questions about the nature of evil.

When the single was released in 1955, it was a big hit – but only after the original lyrics were changed. In 1972, the singer told the BBC that "there's nothing bad" about his music.

Albert Speer distanced himself from the Nazis' atrocities at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in October 1946. In History revisits a 1970 BBC interview with Hitler's former friend.

A hotel manager's glimpse of something strange in 1933 helped to create a modern monster myth. In 1987, the BBC reported on the scientists who used sonar to hunt for Nessie.

On 2 October 1925, John Logie Baird transmitted a moving image of a human face. Forty years later, the world's first television star told the BBC about that dramatic moment.

Hair was infamous for its nude scene, but other aspects were just as radical. In 1968, its director told the BBC how it would have fallen foul of an outdated censorship law.

In 1955, the British Empire planted the Union flag in its last piece of territory – a bleak, uninhabited rock. A Royal Navy commander told the BBC about securing Rockall.