Culture

The Portland spy ring trial began on 13 March 1961. The BBC reported on a Cold War tale of espionage, adultery, exorcism – and a deceptively ordinary-looking bungalow.

Traditionally, younger actresses have been favoured by the Oscars – but as BBC research shows, that's changing. Is it a sign that female ageism in the film industry is on its way out?

It isn't on any "best album of all time" lists, yet it's sold more than The Dark Side of the Moon, Purple Rain and Abbey Road combined. Why is the Eagles' 1976 LP so amazingly popular?

A ferocious Jessie Buckley and a heartbreaking Christian Bale star in a bold film of "huge scope and ambition" that is "loaded with surprises".

Twenty years ago, race-relations drama Crash controversially beat Brokeback Mountain to best picture, creating outrage. People including the film's co-writer reflect on what happened.

How the devastating meaning of The Meeting on the Turret Stairs is unlocked by a medieval Danish ballad – and why the painting can only be viewed for two hours every week.

In 1946, less than a year after the end of World War Two, Britain's wartime leader sounded an urgent warning about the Soviet threat to the West.

In 1957, the painter showed the BBC how he built up his pictures of industrial urban life from his imagination, and described the loneliness that informed them.

Shergar was the world's most famous stallion. When armed men seized him from an Irish stud farm on 8 February 1983, the BBC reported on a sensational true crime saga.

In a BBC archive clip, archaeologist Howard Carter describes the moment on 12 February 1924 when he and his team became the first people in 3,300 years to meet the Egyptian boy king.

Frank Serpico was shot on 3 February 1971, after exposing corruption in the NYPD. The following year, the BBC reported on the "widespread" rot in the Big Apple's police force.

For years, UK politician Jeremy Thorpe's affair was a secret – but when his former lover Norman Scott blurted out the truth, an astounding story emerged.