On the afternoon of October 6, 1915, Leslie Beauchamp, a New Zealander in the British Army, gave a class in grenade throwing. He didn't survive it.

How did the 19th century murder of a vivacious young Englishwoman affect the invasion of a Maori pacifist settlement one year later?

Why stay home in the holidays? Catherine Smith checks out the Heritage Festival's highlights.

Standing in the light of a gas lamp and pressing your nose against window panes to peer into a quaint colonial shop or cottage will become a thing of the past for visitors to Auckland Museum.

Forgotten for nearly 500 years, the sheet music owned by Henry VIII's second wife could shed new light on her life - and loves, says Ivan Hewett.

The Auckland Council is holding the line on rules to protect the city's built heritage after being advised they are a burden on landowners seeking to develop their properties.

Genuine world-class cities venerate heritage. Unless we get real about protecting our heritage, Auckland is in danger of becoming a fake, writes Elizabeth Aitken-Rose.

If there is one event that defines the modern world, it is the blinding, searing, radioactive explosion over the city of Hiroshima 70 years ago today.

Seventy years on, the feared nuclear Armageddon has been kept in check - but a new threat is mounting, writes Alexander Gillespie.

I've written, enough times to make it seem memorable, of hikers, hunters, divers and cavers coming unexpectedly upon human bones.

Neglected Campbell Island seems to me like New Zealand's planet Pluto.

And before the advent of local anaesthetic, the process of treating them sounds fairly miserable.

Grant Bradley revisits a long-held interest with a tour of Colditz, the German castle which housed POWs during World War II.

Politics have scuttled an event to celebrate the discovery of the "ghost ship" SS Ventnor, which sank off Hokianga in 1902.

In Auckland's 175th anniversary year, Suzanne McFadden examines an issue vexing Aucklanders perhaps now more than ever - property.

Isis jihadists have planted mines around the ancient ruins in Syria's Palmyra, prompting fears for the Unesco World Heritage site.

Pam Neville finds the spirit of Joan Baez still lingers in Hanoi’s Metropole Hotel.

King's School in Auckland is to replace its old boarding house and clock tower with a $30 million glass-fronted building with views of Rangitoto Island.

Paul Lewis looks at the link between the city's growth and the ASB, a sponsor of this series.

Despite Magna Carta's venerable character, its written contribution to present New Zealand law is relatively thin, writes Stephen Winter.

Suzanne McFadden discovers just how much the city changed to host American servicemen during WWII.

Andrew Stone goes in search of his ethnic roots with the help of science and a little bit of saliva.

93: A soldier plagued by wartime foot injuries later had an Auckland rugby league trophy named after him - the William Devanney Stormont Shield.

Suzanne McFadden revisits the occupation of Bastion Point, a defining moment in the Maori land struggles of the 1970s.

91: Southland surgeon-captain was tending wounded men when bayoneted by Germans.

A 71-year-old working for a Tokyo antique book dealer was sifting through a stack of old documents acquired from a Japanese collector when he made a fascinating discovery.