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The Royal Shakespeare Company in Britain use a real human skull in their production of Hamlet. This is not as offensive as it sounds because the skull belonged to a Polish pianist who fled to Britain to escape the Nazis and wanted it to be used for this purpose upon his death. He died in 1982...

It was the State Opening of Parliament today, one of those great British state occasions which involve dressing up in ceremonial dress and undertaking centuries-old rituals. One of those rituals symbolises, ironically after the recent events surrounding the arrest of Tory MP Damien Green, the...

England has its fair share of loonies, oddballs and eccentrics. On a per capita basis, England probably has more of these than any other nation. Why this should be is probably a bit of a mystery. Take William John Cavendish Bentinck Scott, the fifth Duke of Portland. This man hated daylight...

For centuries, the Speaker of the House of Commons in Britain has protected the Commons' ability to undergo their business - the business that they were elected by the people to undertake - without unwanted interference from the outside - such as meddling monarchs (as was the case in the 17th...

British soldiers in Afghanistan (the men, anyway), had the ultimate morale-booster last week - by being visited by several of The Sun's world-famous Page 3 girls. The girls were even taken down to a firing range to have a go at firing some of the weapons and even brought with them a special...

Artist Heather Jansch, of the little village of Olchard near Newton Abbot in Devon, makes beautiful life-size sculptures of horses out of driftwood that had been washed up on the nearby beach. You can buy one, but you'll have to have up to £55,000 handy.... Pictured: The stunning life-like...

Since 1994, the Labour Party have been known as the New Labour Party, the brainchild of Tony Blair (who eventually became PM in 1997 after 18 years of Tory rule) and Gordon Brown (who became Chancellor in 1997 and PM in 2007). But, after lurching from one disaster to another in recent years...

A newly-restored letter written by Horatio Nelson reveals how raisins helped him to win the Battle of Trafalgar, a battle which eventually led to the downfall of Napoleon and France's expansionist ways. Whilst on the Royal Navy warship HMS Minotaur in 1805, the Admiral wrote to a supply ship...

Like Constable, who painted beautiful portraits of the British countryside, British artist Carl Warner likes nothing better to have pretty pictures filled with trees, flowers, fields, haycarts and the sea. However, these are no ordinary pictures. These pictures all use items of fruit and...

Since 1330, the Bethlem Royal Hospital - also known as "Bedlam", and which gives its name to any place in which confusion and uproar has taken place - in London has been housing the country's lunatics, though it isn't quite as notorious nowadays as it was during its height in the 1700s. It was...

When the Daily Mail's Science Editor Michael Hanlon was growing up, comic books and TV shows of the time depicted the 1990s as being a time of flying cars, robot servants and people living on the Moon in great cities. In the 2000s, still none of these things has come to pass. So when WILL the...

Four police officers were killed early today in a road accident on Britain's border with the Republic of Ireland. The smash happened in County Down, just a few miles away from the border with the Irish Republic. It is the biggest single loss of life for police in Northern Ireland since the...

During the 18th and 19th Centuries, when the Royal Navy dominated the seas (usually, the Royal Navy was at least a third larger than the next largest navy), life aboard Britain's mighty wooden warships wasn't as romantic as is often portrayed. The food was awful (biscuits were infested by...

Thanks to those clever boffins at Britain's BAE Systems and MoD, British troops will soon be able to see out of the corner of their eyes whilst fighting the enemy on the battle field. British soldiers will be able to spot an enemy out of the corner of their eyes without even turning their...

A recent IPSOS-MORI poll has found that the British think Charles will make a good king, and they believe he should continue to speak out about his views close to his heart - such as helping young people, architecture, the environment etc - when he is king. Peter Hitchens agrees, because our...

British author and poet Lewis Carroll, who was born in the little village of Daresbury in Cheshire in 1832, is famous for being the author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" and for writing the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky." He loved...

Britain's Houses of Parliament are infested with vermin - no, not politicians, but rats and mice. £60,000 was spent last year in trying to eradicate pests which include fleas in government buildings. The current Houses of Parliament, which are actually a royal palace (Westminster Palace)...

If you don't like going to the dentist today, then thank God you didn't have to go to the dentist in 18th Century Britain. This was, after all, the days before anaesthetic. A book written in 1770 by Thomas Berdmore, who was the dentist to King George III, gives helpful tips to give you a...

Did you know that Prince Charles appeared on Coronation Street in 2000? That he is the only royal to appear nude in a magazine? That his was the first royal birth since the 1600s to not be witnessed by a government minister? And that the ONLY time he had a servant put toothpaste on his...

The Mary Rose was the pride of the Royal Navy during the reign of King Henry VIII. Built in Portsmouth between 1509 and 1510, she was named after Henry VIII's sister Mary and the red and white rose emblem of the Tudor royal dynasty. She originally had 78 guns, but that was upgraded to 91 in...