HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-04T11:22:02.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Want to live like a Tudor? Historian Ruth Goodman did, and here are five crucial lessons she learned
items: Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think
items: Step inside the lost Native American city that rivalled medieval London
items: Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires
items: Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
items: Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America
items: The REAL history behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and more
items: Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence
items: How do you cope with living in a century of chaos? By learning how to predict the future
items: History’s sexiest revolutionary? Meet the mesmerising general whose charms helped win a war

Want to live like a Tudor? Historian Ruth Goodman did, and here are five crucial lessons she learned
type: item
date: 2025-12-04T11:11:00.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: What did everyday life look like for the millions of ordinary people living in Tudor England? Historian Ruth Goodman found out by living the way they did, uncovering a world that was hard, industrious – but also fulfilling
encoded: “Fridges are a bit overrated.” That’s one of the conclusions that Ruth Goodman came to after spending six months living the life of an ordinary Tudor. Living and working in a farmstead meticulously constructed to be Tudor-authentic, she immersed herself in the granular details of 16th-century Britain, eating Tudor food, sleeping in a Tudor bed, and doing Tudor work. It’s a stark contrast to the popular focus on the Tudor-era that’s often seen through the prism of palaces and politics. Landmark moments in history such as Henry VIII’s marital troubles, the Reformation, and Elizabeth I presiding over an age of exploration take the limelight. But these headline events have never been the sole focus of Goodman’s interests. Instead, she wanted to know about the ordinary people. “I'm not posh, I'm not rich, I'm not a bloke, and I'm not one of the elite,” she said. “Why would I be interested in them?” “I wanted to know about people like me in the past. I wanted to know about the ordinary details,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to try and get inside the skin of someone: to think those thoughts and to feel those feelings. “It's time travel, but it's also anthropology and self-exploration too.” But other than a disdain for fridges, what did Goodman really learn about ordinary Tudors and the rhythms of their lives? Goodman poured her knowledge and experience into a HistoryExtra Academy series on Tudor Life, and speaking about that series on the HistoryExtra podcast, she reflected on five key lessons learned. Lesson one: Tudor childhood was an apprenticeship for adulthood In 16th-century England, childhood was brief and productive. For most families, survival depended on the contributions of every member, and children entered the world of useful labour much earlier than we might expect. “Tudor children needed to know how to do things such as milk a cow, or grow a crop of beans, or make a piece of clothing,” Goodman explained. Formal schooling existed but was limited; literacy le…

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Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think
type: item
date: 2025-12-02T11:13:22.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Though rare, female gladiators did appear in the Roman arena, challenging ancient Rome’s expectations and revealing how spectacle, politics and social boundaries shaped life in the empire
encoded: “There were female gladiators and there’s no doubt about that.” That's the assessment of historian Harry Sidebottom, author of Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. A female gladiator is an image that challenges what many think they know about the role of gladiatorial combat in the Roman empire, and the role of women in ancient Rome more broadly. Or does it? In fact, Sidebottom argues, the role of female gladiators wasn’t a subversive example of female empowerment. Instead, it was designed as a spectacle to shock and delight audiences, intentionally playing with preconceptions – and upholding them. Still, it’s a hard image to reconcile with what we know of the gladiatorial games, and women’s lives across the Roman empire. So how should we understand the presence of female gladiators in a society that imposed such strict regulations on women’s behaviour? And how does it fit into the broader story of gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, and the way in which it evolved through antiquity? Sidebottom has some of the answers. Gladiatorial combat: a Roman spectacle with mysterious beginnings Even the Romans were unsure how their most famous form of entertainment began. “Ancient writers said it was an import from the south, from Campania. [Others] said no, it was an import from the north, from Etruria,” Sidebottom explains. Their disagreement reflects how far back the practice reached, well before gladiators became imperial icons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-152190511-fe3456d-e1764672038606.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This detail from the 'Ten Girls' mosaic at the Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina shows young women training with hand weights and a discus. Dating to the early 4th century AD, the scene highlights the place of athletic exercise in elite Roman life." title="Detail of the Ten Girls Mosaic depicting women athletes" /> De…

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Step inside the lost Native American city that rivalled medieval London
type: item
date: 2025-11-29T11:20:43.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Archaeology reveals that a millennium ago, North America was home to thriving urban centres as large and sophisticated as those of medieval Europe. But how and why did these rise, flourish and decline?
encoded: A thousand years ago, the land that is now the United States looked very different from the version many might imagine. Instead of a sparsely populated wilderness dotted with small villages, much of North America was home to dense agricultural regions and large urban centres, with cities as complex and politically powerful as those of medieval Europe. This picture has long been obscured by the absence of preserved stone ruins, and has created an inaccurate perception of what the Native Nations of the United States looked like a millennium ago. But, thanks to the work of archaeology, anthropology and Indigenous oral history, the reality is gradually emerging. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Kathleen DuVal, author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, explains that the centuries around AD 1000 marked “the height of urbanisation in Native North America.” These places weren’t anomalies. They sat at the heart of political systems, trade routes and agricultural networks that shaped life across the continent. So why, when Europeans arrived centuries later, had these cities vanished? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1326286109-c6da67c-e1764245209722.jpg" width="1502" height="998" alt="A depiction of the Native North American Blackfoot camp set against the plains landscape. Tipis, riders, and figures at work show the rhythm of daily life within a nomadic community whose culture centred on kinship, mobility, and the great bison herds of the northern plains." title="Blackfoot Camp Scene" /> The urban landscape of medieval-era North America Across what is now the United States and northern Mexico, large towns and cities formed the hubs of regional societies which were, as DuVal explains, “equal in size and complexity and sophistication to cities in Western Europe”. In context, medieval London around AD 1000 housed roughly 12,000 people. In the same period, multiple Native North American cities w…

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Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires
type: item
date: 2025-11-25T16:26:25.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Fear of the living dead, in the form of vampires, is a near-constant trope in modern popular culture – from the regular reinterpretations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to 20th century Buffy. But the tradition has far deeper roots. Discover how ancient Mesopotamians shaped these beliefs and spread the world’s earliest vampire traditions – and why young women were the most terrifying of all
encoded: The vampire is an archetypal symbol of late-medieval folklore and gothic literature. However, the idea of the restless dead: spirits of the prematurely deceased who were believed to walk again and cause harm to the living, is ancient, seemingly entangled deep within the fears of the human psyche. But just how far back does the story of vampires really go? That’s the question that historian John Blair, author of Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to The New World discussed on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. As he reveals, the origin story of vampires and other images of the living dead emerged not with Bram Stoker in 19th-century Europe, nor even in the medieval period, but in the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, where some of humanity’s earliest surviving texts describe a fear that's been present through thousands of years. And, it might be even older than that. Mesopotamia's living dead Humans seem to have feared the dead long before the first written languages were created. Archaeologists have uncovered prehistoric burials that appear intent on keeping the dead in the ground, with bodies pinned beneath stones, decapitated, or bound tightly – actions that seem designed to prevent them from rising again. Read more | This ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of the Bible's most famous stories Blair refers to this practice, noting that “there is some archaeological evidence from prehistory, including way back to the Palaeolithic.” But it’s only with the emergence of writing that more concrete evidence becomes available. The beliefs “first appear in written sources, and the earliest written sources are from Mesopotamia.” Mesopotamia, a network of the world’s most ancient civilisations found in what it now modern Iraq and parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran, was home to the world’s first cities of Uruk, Ur and Babylon. It was also where the first writing system, cuneiform, emerged. The earliest Mesopotamian texts are silent on the undead. …

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Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:30:10.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Crusades
subject: Historical people
description: Who won the crusades, how many were there, and what caused them? Medieval expert Rebecca Rist answers these major questions, exploring how centuries of religious conflict reshaped the medieval world
encoded: The crusades were a centuries-long sequence of era-defining medieval holy wars that transformed dynamics of power and religious ideas across Europe and the Middle East. But who won the crusades, and just how many crusades were there? Those are two of the questions answered by professor Rebecca Rist, an expert on the crusades and their broader medieval context. Speaking about the topic on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Rist steps into the dust of medieval roads and the heat of besieged cities to explain why these campaigns erupted, what the major expeditions set out to accomplish, how those ambitions played out on the ground, and how the long arc of conflict finally came to an end. Who won the crusades? Overall, the Muslim forces won the crusades, and the Christians lost. However, as Rist explains, while that was the final state of play, the granular details were far from that simple. "The final bastions of the crusader states were lost in 1291 (having been founded originally in 1099) to Muslim forces. In that sense, obviously the Muslims won the crusades and the Christians were defeated. "However, the crusades span a very long period of time, starting with the First Crusade in 1095 and ending with the loss of Acre in 1291. There were many individual crusades within that period, some of which were won by the Christians – by the Western Franks, like the First Crusade – and others by Muslims. For example, the Muslim forces were successful in the Fifth Crusade in capturing Damietta." In other instances, Rist says there were greater degrees of complexity. "In some crusades, we have partial victories. If we take the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart was partially successful, in the sense that he was able to take and maintain Acre. But, of course, he didn't win back Jerusalem with a military victory." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/06/GettyImages-1186332544-4f0a3d8-e1764009254971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Th…

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Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America
type: item
date: 2025-11-22T10:45:44.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In the aftermath of the American Civil War, a grieving nation turned towards spiritualism in the hope of seeing the dead once more. Facilitated by new technologies like photography, some unscrupulous fraudsters stepped in to manipulate the vulnerable
encoded: In the decades after the American Civil War ended in 1865, the United States was a nation still grappling with its own grief. As many as 750,000 people had died in the conflict as they fought their own countrymen. It was a scale of loss unprecedented since the inception of the United States as an independent nation. Families were torn apart, as many husbands, sons and fathers had died on American battlefields. Of course, with the widespread loss, many people were struggling to come to terms with their grief, which in turn created a vulnerability. And, for some less scrupulous individuals, that uncertainty and collective sadness presented a new opportunity for fame and wealth. Enter William Mumler, a so-called spirit photographer. Born in 1832, Mumler later became a fraudster who claimed to be able to reunite people with their dead loved ones via his photography. Mumler was only a small part of a quasi-religious movement, which, in the wake of the war, became a subject of fascination. “It was in the middle of the 19th century that ghost-hunting became a cultural obsession,” explains Alice Vernon, author and academic at Aberystwyth University, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It swept across America as this new pseudo-scientific religion called spiritualism.” The rise of spiritualism was inseparable, says Vernon, from this wave of collective mourning. Science and spiritualism in the 19th century The idea of spiritualism offered many people a kind of conceptual comfort, and new technologies, including photography, were giving it a seemingly evidential backbone. “I think the reason why spirit photography became so popular at that moment,” Vernon says, “was because photography was a fairly new innovation, and it was something that people didn’t really understand.” Early photographs were incredibly precious. So when spiritualists claimed that cameras could record the unseen world – as well as the images of the dead – many saw it as a logical extension of what the te…

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The REAL history behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and more
type: item
date: 2025-11-20T13:17:18.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: TV interest
description: If you thought Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power or The Hobbit was pure fairytale, you would be way off. HistoryExtra's James Osborne explains more
encoded: From the epic battles of Beowulf to the myths of Old Norse sagas and the real-world struggles of the Anglo-Saxons, Tolkien’s legendary world was deeply rooted in the past. But how exactly did these influences weave their way into The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit? In this video, we explore the sources that helped Tolkien forge his fantasy masterpiece, uncovering the warriors, monsters, and lost kingdoms that made Middle-Earth feel so real. View Green Video on the source website

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Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence
type: item
date: 2025-11-20T10:38:18.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: From ritual parades to blood-soaked duels, explore a single day in the life (and death) of the most brutal entertainment in the ancient Roman empire
encoded: It’s a hot morning in ancient Rome, and the city is simmering with anticipation. Crowds stream toward the amphitheatre, and by mid-morning, more than 50,000 spectators are packed into the stands, ready for a day of spectacle. As a symbol of the Roman empire, the gladiatorial games were both civic ritual and political theatre. But for those taking part in this vicious entertainment, that symbolism had a very tangible cost. For the Roman gladiators who made it to the arena, what was the experience like ahead of, and after, the great event? Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Harry Sidebottom, author of Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind, explains what life as a gladiator would have really been like in the 24 hours surrounding the games. The night before as a Roman gladiator “The day of a gladiator started the night before the fight,” Sidebottom explains, “with a weird social ritual called cena libera, meaning ‘the free dinner’. The public was allowed into the gladiatorial school to watch the gladiators eating.” The ritual meal took place in the ludus, or training barracks, where fighters sat at long tables under the eyes of the spectators. “There are some incredibly pretentious explanations behind this ritual,” says Sidebottom, “but I think it is a very simple one. There was gambling on gladiatorial fights, and the guys who appeared calm and in control were going to have the shortest odds.” Read more | Think you know what an ancient Roman gladiator looked like? The reality will make you think again For the fighters (mostly enslaved men, prisoners of war or convicted criminals) this would have been a final test of composure before the fight itself. After the dinner, once the spectators had left, the gladiators would have gone off to bed, with guards keeping a watch over their doors. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-639163578-2-0c28aae-e1763634537128.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Thi…

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How do you cope with living in a century of chaos? By learning how to predict the future
type: item
date: 2025-11-18T16:38:19.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Explore how modern Britons sought signs of divine order in a collapsing world – from searching snails’ shells to eating moles’ hearts
encoded: Seventeenth-century Britain was gripped by chronic instability. Over the course of the century, religious tensions pulled the country’s civilians apart; civil war raged across England, Scotland and Ireland while kings were executed and governments toppled. “This is a particularly chaotic period of history,” says Dr Martha McGill, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “[As well as] periods of civil warfare, you’ve got outbreaks of plague, you’ve got famine. “There are an awful lot of uncertainties to life. People died unexpectedly and their children died young, very commonly. Faced with all of these challenges, people look for reassurance.” Many found comfort in prayer and scripture. But some instead turned to prophecy and divination. While this might seem to have echoes of witchcraft to our modern minds, trying to read the future wasn’t necessarily blasphemous in the early modern period. Instead, it was understood as an attempt to glimpse God’s plan. Read more | The murderous history of Bible translations But how, exactly, did these early modern Britons try to see the future? What methods did they use? And why did they believe those methods worked? The rise of prophecy and popular astrology The 17th century saw an explosion of printed almanacs and prophetic guides. Astrology offered ordinary people a structured way to interpret uncertainty, and a means of predicting everything from the outcomes of harvests to broader political events. Among the most famous of the figures leading these emerging practices was William Lilly, an astrologer whose annual Merlinus Anglicus almanacs sold in the tens of thousands. During the English Civil War, Lilly became notorious for predicting political upheavals, including ominous ‘fiery visitations’ that many later linked to the Great Fire of London. Read more | Elizabeth I’s shadowy spy network was tasked with uncovering secret conspiracies. Here’s what it found Others wrote competing almanacs and despite initially drawing the ire of …

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History’s sexiest revolutionary? Meet the mesmerising general whose charms helped win a war
type: item
date: 2025-11-15T11:15:32.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Giuseppe Garibaldi’s courage and charisma made him a hero of Italian unification in the 19th century. Here’s how he became a celebrity who captivated the world
encoded: With his sun-bleached auburn hair, heroic exploits and easy charisma, Guiseppe Garibaldi was adored from London to New York, hailed as the man who turned the 19th-century dream of a united Italy into reality. His admirers wore his trademark red shirt, while poets and painters immortalised him in their works. Even Queen Victoria reportedly found him very handsome. But, as historian Dr David Laven explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, Garibaldi’s magnetism was more than skin-deep. His courage, compassion and populist flair made him not only a romantic icon, but the embodiment of the new Italian nation that was taking shape. The fracturing of Italy “Garibaldi is probably the most famous Italian of the 19th century,” says Laven. “He’s famous for a series of events from the late 1840s through to the 1860s, in which he’s one of the key drivers of Italian unification.” Understanding his importance to Italy depends on understanding what the region looked like before unification. “Italy in the 19th century had been divided into many smaller states for a very long while,” Laven explains. For centuries, the peninsula had been a mosaic of duchies, city-states and foreign-ruled territories. The north lay under Austrian control; the Papal States dominated the centre; and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ruled the south. Read more | When did Italian replace Latin as the language of Italy? “Briefly, it was semi-united under Napoleonic rule in the early 19th century, but basically it was a divided peninsula.” It was the fragmented nature of the region that caused the emergence of the Risorgimento (‘the resurgence’), a political and cultural movement seeking national rebirth. It blended liberal reform with revolutionary zeal, and its leaders included not only Garibaldi, but figures such as Giuseppe Mazzini and Camilo Benso, Count Cavour. Garibaldi, as a sailor-turned-soldier whose daring captured the public imagination, was by far the most recognisable face of the movement. But before…

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