The succession of mass rallies across the UK against the genocide in Gaza form the single biggest protest movement in recent British history. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to show their sympathy for the bombed, starved and displaced civilians of Gaza.

The book’s black and white cover photo is very clearly a scene from the 1960s — a woman with a distinctive beehive haircut is looking out from her 17th-floor flat, carefully holding a young child as they gaze into the distance.

On the evening of 6 May 1527, Henry VIII entertained an embassy from France at a lavish party in Greenwich. The festivities took place in a banqueting house and a theatre, both built for the occasion. At the feast’s end, Henry led his guests out through a great archway.

In the middle of Seven Dials, an area of Covent Garden that can be crossed on foot in a matter of minutes, is a thin, elegant stone pillar. I’ve walked past it countless times, assuming it must be as old as this part of London, laid out by Thomas Neale MP in the early 1690s.

Not all memoirists are keen to share their life stories. For Margaret Atwood, an author who has sold more than 40m books, the idea of writing about herself seemed “Dead boring. Who wants to read about someone sitting at a desk messing up blank sheets of paper?”

After reading​ Geoff Browell and Eileen Chanin’s concise history of the Strand, you will never walk down that street again without thinking of the hippopotami that wallowed in a primeval swamp at the Trafalgar Square end.

In 1755, Samuel Johnson (this was before his honorary doctorates) defined the herring as ‘a small sea-fish’, and that was it. By contrast, Graeme Rigby has spent 25 obsessive years documenting the cultural and economic importance of this creature.

Unseen pictures that’ll change the way you see the past: These rare photos from the Mail’s archive show 20th century Britain at its vibrant, scandalous and joyful best – from show girls to ‘biker gangs’

A lot of what, and who, we think we are as individuals and social beings is concentrated in our hands. When teaching the rhetorical trope of synecdoche to undergraduates, I always use the expression ‘give me a hand’ to illustrate the difference between figurative language and simple truth-telling.