The Friday Digest brings you the best of the week's history news gathered from the experts:
* WWI led to ‘ladette culture’ as women turned to drink. It is remembered as a period in which women emerged to play a greater role in society, with more moving into the workplace and finally getting the vote. Now, new research has shed light on another area in which the First World War changed the lives of women.
* Such is the popularity of Sherlock Holmes has been the subject of a number of sequels, adaptations, and imitations. There has even been a revival of Sherlock Holmes in modern times. But who does Sherlock Homes belong to? Some 95 years after the last Sherlock Holmes story was published, several parties are locked in a landmark US litigation case.
* The Samuel Johnson Prize 2013 shortlist has been announced, the overall winner of the £20,000 prize will be announced on 4th November.
* Was Neville Chamberlain really a weak and terrible leader? Seventy-five years after the Munich Agreement signed with Hitler, the name of Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister at the time, is still synonymous with weakness and appeasement. Is this fair, asks historian Robert Self.
* Author pleads 'Please don't buy my new novel on Amazon'. Jaime Clarke, a Boston-based author and independent bookstore owner, sends out a public plea for readers to resist buying his new novel from the e-commerce giant.
* Michael C. Munger, chairman of political science at Duke University gives10 tips on ‘how to write less badly’.
* Archaeologists working with London's Crossrail project have uncovered 20 skulls believed to be from the Roman period. It is likely the bones were washed from a nearby burial site along one of London's "lost" rivers - the Walbrook. Since the Crossrail project began, about 10,000 Roman items have been discovered.
* Women in trousers: fiction's sartorial trailblazers. From Agatha Christie to Bridget Jones women wearing trousers has been a developing story in the world of fiction. Who were the pioneers of the pant?
* There is scarcely a member of the Borgia family who does not seem to be cloaked in an aura of iniquity. But were they really so bad?
* Crime writer Alexander McCall Smith has become the latest contemporary writer invited to reinterpret the work of Jane Austen for a modern audience.
* Long relegated to the dusty corners of history, mead - the drink of kings and Vikings - is making a comeback in the US. But what's brewing in this new crop of commercial meaderies - as they are known - is lot more refined from the drink that once decorated tables across medieval Europe.
* A new exhibition at London's British Library looks at 10 classic children’s books of the 20th Century and how they have been illustrated and re-illustrated across the years.