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Want to live like a Tudor? Historian Ruth Goodman did, and here are five crucial lessons she learned
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
“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 levels were slowly rising, but for most families, practical competence was what mattered most. Read more | The most common accidental way to die in Tudor England reveals surprising truths about daily life Daily life followed the agricultural calendar, and children had to play their part. “Kids generally were hauled in to do the ancillary jobs from quite young ages to learn by doing.” For a Tudor family, this served two functions. Firstly, having an extra pair of hands was a genuine help. But secondly, it meant that children would learn the skills that would make them competent and useful members of their community in adulthood. In small, tightly knit communities, the knowledge shared among households sustained entire villages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-162500876-b757a32-e1764846147617.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1563 illustration shows a Tudor family at prayer, reflecting the central role of religion in daily life during a time of intense religious change. Scenes like this capture the influence of the Reformation on both public worship and private devotion." title="Tudor Family At Prayer" /> Lesson two: Tudor work centred on the land The Tudor economy is sometimes imagined as a one of busy merchants, bustling inns, guild workshops and market towns. But in reality, England remained overwhelmingly rural. “Almost everybody was making a living off the land,” Goodman said. “Even people with job titles like ‘carpenter’ would probably have had a patch of land as well.” Work was physically demanding and shaped by daylight and weather. Agricultural tasks were relentless, and “men spent so many hours ploughing”, says Goodman. Read more | Tudor England had no standing army, but this humble hobby kept its people ready for war As for women, “every stitch of clothing has to be made entirely by hand, and so that involved nearly the entire female population spinning yarn, then making that yarn into cloth, and then turning that into clothing.” This was the essence of Tudor work, Goodman emphasises. Everything that a person needed to be able to sustain themselves had to be made. Today, she says, “our work tends to be very separate from survival, and it tends to be very self-contained. And that's not how Tudor work was. It was very clearly about staying alive, in a visceral way.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-639161340-be26d9e-e1764846258529.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="This modern reconstruction drawing imagines a rural English landscape around 1600, highlighting the rhythms of Tudor farming life. Agriculture dominated the economy, with seasonal labour, smallholdings, and common land shaping the everyday experience of most of the population." title="Rural landscape, c17th century, (c1990-2010)" /> Lesson three: Tudors had fun too Despite such demanding lives, Tudor England was rich in a blossoming culture of entertainment. Feast days, fairs and Sunday games punctuated the year. Inns hosted musicians and travelling performers would ply their trade for entire towns. “They’re going to the playhouse, they’re enjoying the bear baiting, they’re engaged in all sorts of sports, they’re dancing, they’re playing music, they’re writing poetry, they’re getting drunk,” Goodman says. But the pinnacle of leisure and entertainment for an ordinary Tudor was the theatre. Read more | 5 facts about Shakespeare’s Globe theatre “Theatre was a vibrant and lively world. There were lots of street theatres, school kids were being encouraged to do their own plays, and there were town plays going on too.” In addition to the church, Goodman says this was something that could tie a community together and create deep communal bonds. Lesson four: Tudor food was seasonal and varied Tudor diets revolved around bread and grain, supplemented by dairy, vegetables and preserved foods. For most, meat was an occasional addition, while fish, particularly herring, was more common, especially on church fast days. As for how it tasted, Goodman says, “they used a greater variety of herbs than we do nowadays,” which helped to add pops of flavour. “It was a varied diet,” Goodman explains, largely dictated by availability. “It’s a very fresh diet. It’s a very seasonal diet. I like it, I’ll be honest.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-639160814-b5b88a0-e1764846038428.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This modern reconstruction shows a Tudor kitchen at Kenilworth Castle, prepared for Queen Elizabeth I’s visit in July 1575. The lavish reception, hosted by the Earl of Leicester, was part of his prolonged — and ultimately unsuccessful — courtship of the queen." title="Tudor kitchen, July 1575, (c1990-2010)" /> Read more | Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century But what about when fresh food wasn’t as available? Households instead relied on salting, smoking, pickling and cool storage, and most food lasted longer than we might expect – even without a fridge. Instead of using a fridge, which Goodman says were designed for the climates of the southern US rather than the cooler weather in Britain, Tudors used airy pantries and suspended cages to store their food. “Bacteria don’t like the conditions of a traditional pantry with lots of air flowing through. These pantries don't need it to be as cool [as a fridge] to get the same amount of safety.” For anything that needed to be kept away from vermin on the floor, Goodman shares that an “open cage suspended from the ceiling with lots of air flowing through worked really well.” Lesson five: Tudors were no smellier than people today To modern eyes, perhaps the most counterintuitive aspect of Tudor domestic life is cleanliness. While infrequent bathing is today often taken as proof of dirtiness, Goodman argues that the Tudor approach was just as effective, given what they had at their disposal. “Having a bath is not the only way to keep clean,” she says. Read more | This unassuming accessory gave the poor of Tudor England a vital way to survive Instead, Tudors depended on their linen underwear, which covered the whole body, to soak up daily grime. “Linen is exceedingly absorbent,” she notes. “When you take it off, you’re taking all that sweat and any grease and dirt with it.” Regular changes of linen, combined with vigorous household laundering, kept bodies remarkably smell-free. During her six months living as a Tudor, Goodman tested this in practice. “It was perfectly comfortable,” she said. “I remained in very good health.” Could you live the life of an ordinary Tudor? While ordinary Tudors lived close to the land, close to each other, and close to the limits of subsistence, their days were also filled with music, games, storytelling and tactile work. It was a world of hard work and community, and it was, as Goodman told the HistoryExtra podcast, “a very nature-centred world.” It’s an easy lifestyle to romanticise, but there’s no denying the challenges. The crucial difference, Goodman concludes, was the culture. “We’re all human beings. Our bodies are the same. Our brains are the same. But the culture that we live in is utterly different, and that's what makes the Tudor world so fascinating. Tudors were people like us, but living in a different world.” Ruth Goodman was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think
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
“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" /> Despite the uncertainty, Sidebottom notes that “the one thing they all agreed on was that gladiatorial combat was an import to Rome.” That claim wasn’t a denial of ownership so much as an affirmation of Roman cultural pride. Sidebottom explains that the attitude was that: “We Romans take the best from everything else in the world… and we then perfect it, transform it, adopt it, adapt it and make it ours.” Read more | If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate? The earliest evidence of gladiatorial games from Rome indicated that this combat, wherever it was imported from, was initially tied to funerary rituals, where fighters battled in honour of the dead. But by the late Republic, the arena had become a distinctly political theatre. Julius Caesar’s lavish games, staged to commemorate relatives who had died decades earlier, show how far the custom drifted from those roots, and its main purpose was now a display of reputation-bolstering public entertainment. How the arena became Roman imperial propaganda By the time Caesar’s successor Augustus established the principate (the first period of the Roman empire, 27 BC–284 AD), gladiatorial games had become integral to public life. Roman emperors were expected to act as patrons, offering grand spectacles of entertainment to secure loyalty among the city’s masses. As Sidebottom puts it, emperors became “the ultimate patron of the plebs” and were hugely popular. With imperial sponsorship came larger crowds, grander staging and an appetite for novelty. Read more | This is what a Roman gladiator really looked like Romans prized variation as well as violence, with hosts of the games keen to find new and surprising ways to entertain. It was within this atmosphere that female gladiators took to the arena. So, what exactly was a ‘gladiatrix’? The term gladiatrix is modern, but the women themselves are historical fact. Evidence includes a carved relief from the ruins of Halicarnassus (near modern-day Bodrum, Turkey), plus a few inscriptions and references by Roman writers. It’s scant evidence, but Sidebottom says it collectively confirms that women did, at times, fight in the arena. The real question is what role they played. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-122213857-a9e150f-e1764671324506.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This marble relief from Halicarnassus, dating to the 1st–2nd centuries AD, commemorates the honourable discharge of two female gladiators known as “Amazon” and “Achillia.” Shown armed like their male counterparts but bareheaded to reveal their hairstyles, the pair exemplifies the rare but striking presence of women in the arena — a reminder of the diversity and spectacle that characterised Roman gladiatorial combat." title="Roman civilization, Relief portraying fight between female gladiators" /> The role of Rome’s female gladiators On that, Sidebottom is cautious. “The debate is: were they serious gladiators, or were they a novelty act?” On balance, he believes their purpose was spectacle rather than elite competition. “It was confounding gender expectations; it was women doing things that men did.” This doesn’t diminish the danger they faced. Even if staged for astonishment, their bouts likely still involved real weapons and real risk. But it did mark them out as different from their male counterparts. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide Many forms of Roman entertainment relied on dramatic inversion, temporarily upending norms to delight or shock spectators. Men acted as animals and some emperors played enslaved people in mock performances in front of delighted crowds. Female gladiators fit that pattern. Roman moralists insisted that respectable women stay out of the public gaze and avoid any association with bloodshed. To see a woman step into the arena – armed and on display – created a deliberate clash between expectation and reality. The appeal highlighted the transgression, thereby enforcing it, rather than contradicting it as some Roman form of female empowerment. Their rarity amplified this effect. A female fighter would have been an event precisely because she was unusual. In that way, the female gladiators illuminate a great deal about Roman society. They demonstrate how the arena functioned not only as a site of violence, but as a stage for political messaging and social commentary. Their fights exploited the thrill of seeing boundaries broken, while upholding and reinforcing the structures that created those boundaries outside the amphitheatre. Read more | 6 women who changed the course of Roman history They also highlight how gladiatorial combat was the product of centuries of Roman adaptation. As Sidebottom notes, Romans of all periods agreed on its broad evolution: from funerary rite to mass entertainment, and eventually to an imperial tool of persuasion. Within that long story, the gladiatrix embodied both the transgression of norms and the sensational drama that kept an empire entertained. Harry Sidebottom was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Step inside the lost Native American city that rivalled medieval London
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?
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 were similar in scale, supported by intensively farmed hinterlands of maize, beans and squash. This agricultural revolution, made possible by the longer growing seasons of the Medieval Warm Period of 900–1300, underpinned huge expansions of urban growth. Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster As DuVal notes, this expansion led to other changes, allowing for “urbanisation, centralisation and the rise of complex economies and powerful religious and political leaders.” Supported by new food surpluses, these urban centres became hubs of cultural growth. Within them were full-time craft specialists, ritual practitioners and political elites, while long-distance trade brought in copper, shells, obsidian, feathers and pottery from far-reaching networks. Cahokia: a major city in the heart of the continent The largest and most influential of these centres was Cahokia, located in present-day Illinois near the Mississippi River. DuVal describes it as “the centre of the North American world”, with “12,000 or so people in its main centre […] comparable to places like London.” Cahokia’s layout was a work of serious planning. Monumental earthen mounds formed the foundations of temples, houses and elite residences. The most famous, Monks Mound, remains the largest prehistoric earthen structure in the Americas. Wide plazas hosted markets, athletic games and political ceremonies. Surrounding the city was a constellation of satellite towns and farming communities, tied to Cahokia through political alliances and economic exchange. Archaeology reveals woodhenge-like timber circles used for celestial observations, intricately crafted shell ornaments, and evidence of large-scale feasting. It was the work of a highly organised and complex society. Read more | What and when is the National Day of Mourning in the United States? And Cahokia wasn’t alone. Across the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast, other mound-building cultures flourished, while in the Southwest, the Ancestral Puebloans built multi-storey stone cities such as Chaco Canyon. Each region had its own traditions, but they shared similar patterns of urban life, monument building and political hierarchy much like the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/native-american-city-cahokia-85d0d31.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This illustrated reconstruction of Cahokia shows the Native American city when more than a hundred earthen mounds rose around broad ceremonial plazas. At the centre stood Monks Mound — a massive, terraced platform supporting temples and elite residences — surrounded by neighbourhoods of wooden houses, palisades, and bustling marketplaces." title="native-american-city-cahokia" /> Why these cities changed Urban life in North America was closely tied to climate and agriculture and when conditions shifted around the 13th century, the consequences were profound. As the Little Ice Age began, growing seasons shortened and droughts increased. Communities that had grown around stable food supplies suddenly faced scarcity. Powerful leaders struggled to retain legitimacy. “In some cases,” DuVal explains, “people revolted against leaders who had claimed to be able to control the weather and feed the people when there were times of famine and drought.” Elsewhere, people simply dispersed. Cahokia was largely abandoned by the end of the 14th century, its population relocating to smaller and more sustainable settlements along rivers and floodplains. Unlike in Europe, many North American societies adapted to the environmental pressures by decentralising and shifting into more flexible forms of community. This transition was a transformation rather than a collapse, and Indigenous societies across the continent continued to thrive in new political and cultural configurations. What survives of Cahokia today The skeletons of those once-colossal cities are still beneath the ground but are easy to miss. As DuVal points out, “what exists of them today in most cases are just these large earthen mounds […] now they just look like big hills”. As most structures were built from wood, cane and thatch rather than stone, they have not survived like European cathedrals or fortresses. Though, the emerging history of their presence proves that far from being an untamed wilderness, North America was a land of cities, monuments and nations. By the time Europeans arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries, many of these urban centres had already changed or dispersed. Colonists encountered mobile, village-based societies and mistakenly assumed that such patterns had existed unchanged for thousands of years. In reality, they were stepping onto a continent in the aftermath of centuries of immense change. Kathleen DuVal was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires
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
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. But by the Neo-Assyrian period of the 7th century BC, the picture changes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-919829722-708eb05-e1764087243324.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="These 9th-century BC orthostates from Tell Halaf show the hero Gilgamesh flanked by two bull-headed demigods who raise a sun disc above him, imagery drawn from Mesopotamian myth. Gilgamesh was celebrated across the ancient Near East as a hero and semi-divine king, while bull-man figures and solar symbols evoked themes of power, protection, and cosmic order central to Mesopotamian religion." title="Orthostates Depicting Gilgamesh Between Two Minotaur Demigods Holding Up The Sun Disc. From Tell Hal" /> “We start to get some texts which do appear to refer to what happens,” Blair says, “and what you should do, if corpses start walking around; if they rise up and fight against the living.” Read more | He tried to conquer knowledge itself – instead this ancient Mesopotamian king resorted to rule with terror These texts instructed priests on how to restore order when a corpse became spiritually dangerous, which tells us that fear of the living dead was part of established Mesopotamian religious practice. In fact, this concern was deeply rooted in the broader Mesopotamian cultural context of beliefs about life and death. In ancient Mesopotamian belief, death didn’t automatically close the book on a person’s existence. A peaceful death, ideally at an old age, with proper rituals and descendants to continue offerings, allowed the life force to dissipate cleanly. But that wasn’t the case with a sudden death. That’s a recurring theme in vampire mythology, explains Blair. Becoming a vampire “often happens to people whose lives have been cut short untimely,” he says. “An important factor in all this is lack of completeness. The people are cut short and their life forces have not dissipated in the normal way. They are still pent up in the body, and that means trouble.” Why young women were especially feared One of the most persistent features of these early beliefs is the gender of the dangerous dead. “There is one category of people that’s very important here: young women,” Blair says. “In many cultures, the dangerous dead have been largely female and, in particular, women between the ages of about 15 and 25.” Read more | Ancient Mesopotamia's weirdest job? Meet the veterinary exorcist This age bracket of women was particularly vulnerable to the idea that, if they were to die, their roles in society would be seen as ‘cut short’. For example, death in childbirth was common. Unmarried young women could die before fulfilling their expected social roles. Both scenarios left unfinished business, and according to ancient Mesopotamian beliefs, meant there was a higher chance of becoming ‘dangerous dead’. And, in some cultures – including Anglo-Saxon England, millennia later – young women were believed to possess heightened spiritual power. Blair explains there was a belief that this power would fade away as women grew older, passing down to younger women, “But if they die young, then the ‘powers’ are still caught up in the body.” Again, that’s a motif that can be seen in the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia. Blair explains that there was a demon named Lilitu, who was “childless, and therefore preys on the children of other people,” while Lamashtu, another demon who had been “thrown out of heaven,” was feared for harming infants and pregnant women. Read more | Vlad the Impaler was medieval Europe's bloodiest warlord, but is the scale of his murder just a myth? These demons weren’t vampires, and nor were they the living dead. But they fit into a broader sense of fear about unfulfilled lives, and how they might come back to haunt the living. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-501582205-dd4fd29-e1764087501298.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This bronze head of Pazuzu, likely from Nimrud and dating to the Neo-Assyrian period (c. 800–550 BC), represents one of Mesopotamia’s most striking supernatural figures. Though a fearsome demon associated with destructive winds, Pazuzu also served as a powerful protector, warding off the deadly forces — especially the demoness Lamashtu — believed to threaten mothers and infants." title="Bronze head of Pazuzu, probably from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), Neo-Assyrian, about 800-550 BC." /> How these ideas spread across the ancient world Mesopotamian culture profoundly influenced the wider ancient Near East. As its cities traded, conquered and interacted with surrounding cultures, supernatural beliefs moved with them. Greek myths of lamiae, child-harming female monsters, strongly echo their Mesopotamian predecessors. Hellenistic magical texts include spells to ward off the returning dead. Roman writers describe corpses rising to demand justice. Early Christian theologians, inheriting this tradition, warned of improper burials leading to spiritual disturbances. Read more | Would you kidnap a god? This ancient Mesopotamian empire did – and for a genius reason And none of that’s a surprise. Many elements of Mesopotamian mythology were passed down into later beliefs: the Biblical flood may even be a version of an older Mesopotamian story. By the Middle Ages, these ideas of the undead had evolved into the better-known revenants and vampires of European folklore. Looking across these traditions, the consistency is striking. And, Blair argues, such beliefs emerged from innately human concerns: the trauma of sudden death and the fragility of social bonds. Long before gothic fiction, priests and healers in ancient Mesopotamia were recording what to do with unruly corpses – proof, in Blair’s eyes, that we can look much further back in history to find proto-vampire stories. John Blair was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
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
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="This illustration depicts Richard the Lionheart paying homage to King Philip Augustus of France during the Third Crusade. Although allies in their campaign to the Holy Land, the two monarchs maintained a tense partnership" title="Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus" /> How many crusades were there? "There were eight crusades during the period from 1095 to 1291 in the Near East," says Rist. However, Rist is careful to caveat this: it's a number that's subject to debate, as what precisely counts as a full-scale crusade is difficult to define. Still, according to Rist, the eight major crusades were broadly as follows: "The First Crusade (1095–99), is where the crusaders take Jerusalem and set up the crusader states. The Second Crusade (1147–50), is a subsequent response to the fall of the first crusader kingdom of Edessa (the crusader kingdom in the north). The Third Crusade (1189–92) is launched to try to win back Jerusalem and is perhaps the most famous because it involved Richard the Lionheart. The Fourth Crusade (1202–04) doesn't end up in the Holy Land at all, but the crusaders instead sack the town of Zara and then Constantinople. The Fifth Crusade (1217–21) is an attack that the crusaders make on Egypt, on the town of Damietta in particular (and this ends in failure). The Sixth Crusade (1228–29) is very interesting because it's not authorised by the papacy, but it’s a crusade where emperor Frederick II, goes out under excommunication. He has a lot of success and makes a truce with the sultan and gets Jerusalem back for 10 years. Finally, I like to think of the Seventh (1248–54) and Eighth (1270) Crusades, which are the two crusades of Louis IX, launched respectively at Egypt and at Tunis." Read more | Is the world still living in the shadow of the crusades? In addition to these eight core crusades, there were other conflicts that need to be recognised. "There were also many more minor expeditions [with] small groups of fighters between these major crusades as well. So we can think of the Barons’ crusade of 1236, for example, or the crusade by Edward, prince of England, sometimes called the Ninth Crusade (1271–72). These little ventures are going on between these major responses [when] great papal calls are put out, and very large armies take up that call." How many people died in the crusades? The crusades' death toll likely came in at around 5-6 million, possibly reaching as high as 9 million, according to Rist. But, once again, there are serious caveats to consider. "It's very difficult to estimate [the crusades' death toll] because of the source material. We're dealing with very unreliable sources: medieval chroniclers are notoriously unreliable when they give figures of battles and losses." Despite the problems with the sources, it's still possible to come to a very broad conclusion. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Crusades "There are figures ranging from 1 million to 9 million over the whole period from 1095 to 1291. John Robertson famously, in his Short History of Christianity – a very old but seminal book first published in the early 20th century – had that really huge figure of 9 million. But I've seen other historians estimate much lower numbers. When I'm giving these figures, I'm including Christians, Muslims and all those who followed the armies, not just the combatants. "Historians generally prefer to try to give estimates for individual battles rather than for the crusades overall, and I think that gives us a better sense of the carnage and the losses. Regarding the overall estimates between 1 million and 9 million, certainly one million seems far too few to me." She concludes, "I would go for a much higher figure: 5 or 6 million." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/06/GettyImages-1435556881-76ecf57-e1764009379800.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 14th-century illustration by the Maître de Fauvel depicts the Battle of Dorylaeum on 1 July 1097, one of the First Crusade’s major engagements. It shows crusader forces rallying after a surprise Turkish attack, capturing the drama and brutality of a battle that helped secure the crusaders’ advance into Anatolia." title="The Battle Of Dorylaeum On 1 July 1097" /> What caused the crusades between 1095­–1204? The motivations behind the crusades were a mixture of: "religious, political, social, and economic," says Rist. "To highlight a few definite motivating factors: I think the papacy granting a ‘remission of sins’ in the 12th century is a driving force. People want to be free from their sins, to try to wipe the slate clean, and they know that crusading will assure them that spiritual privilege. There is another religious motivation: to help fellow Christians. The pope had called for the First Crusade to help the Byzantines in the east. The Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus, had asked for help from the west because the Byzantines were struggling against the Seljuk Turks at this time." But it was far from just religion that motivated the conflicts, as Rist explains. Read more | Did the crusaders fight for God or gold? "There are many other non-religious motivations, such as the charismatic preaching that we see happening with these crusades. Take a figure like Bernard of Clairvaux on the Second Crusade. He preaches all over Europe drawing large crowds, and influences kings to ‘take the cross’. "I think crusaders were also spurred on by the idea of the glory that can pertain to their families if they take part in these great expeditions. Certainly, kings and emperors think it will do their ‘PR’ no harm. They take the cross often when they become kings. Often, it's a way of showing that there is a new reign and that they’re different from their fathers. "There's no doubt that there were also ideas of adventure. At the time of the First Crusade, there had been very bad harvests; there was famine in Europe, so people wanted something different and new. Of course, when they get out there, they didn't necessarily like it. But there were all kinds of romantic and adventurous ideas associated with the crusades." Ultimately however, Rist stresses that the motivation behind crusades was neither singular, nor homogenous. "An individual crusader doesn't just have to have one motivation. He can be conventionally very pious. He can also be hoping to be in favour with his lord. He can be hoping that there might be some land parcelled out to him. He can be inspired by charismatic preaching." How did the crusades end? The crusades ended in 1291 "when the Mamluks captured Acre," says Rist. She concludes, "For decades, Acre had been the centre of what remained of the kingdom of Jerusalem – and so it was the most important city that was still left of the crusader states. It fell to the Mamluk Sultan Khalil in 1291. In the days that followed, the rest of the remaining crusader towns – Beirut, Haifa, Tyre, Tortosa – all fell in a domino effect." The First Crusade Member exclusive | Walk in the footsteps of the first crusaders, witnessing the hardships they faced, meeting the people they came across and seeing the landscapes they traversed through their eyes. Listen to all episodes now
Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America
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
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 technology was already offering. Read more | When a Victorian ghost hunter investigated Britain’s most haunted house, this is what he found The result was a wave of ‘spirit photographers’, who offered people a chance to be photographed beside the ghost of a dead loved one. Of course, it was all trickery, relying on the public’s lack of understanding of how photography worked. But some early photographers were able to master the chemistry of exposure, and worked on overlaying negatives, adjusting lighting and controlling depth of field – all to create convincing ‘ghosts’. Some of the resulting “ghost images” look crude today: translucent faces, faint white smears, or “a paper ghost behind them”, as Vernon describes. But in an age before image manipulation was common knowledge, such details were persuasive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-515449646-1-cd96ac2-e1763739871308.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="President Abraham Lincoln visits General George B. McClellan at his headquarters near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on 3 October 1862—just weeks after the Battle of Antietam. Hoping to urge McClellan to press his advantage against Robert E. Lee, Lincoln found the general unwilling to act, a decision that soon cost McClellan his command. The photograph gathers key Union figures of the moment, capturing a pivotal clash of leadership in the midst of the Civil War." title="Lincoln Visits Civil War Headquarters" /> William Mumler and the business of grief The greatest example of the impact of spirit photography came from the hands of William Mumler. He was a Boston engraver who stumbled upon the technique of double exposure by accident. When he noticed that faint second images appeared on his negatives, he realised their ghostly potential. Soon, bereaved families were queuing at his studio. They posed for portraits and received photographs appearing to show the faint image of a deceased relative standing beside or behind them. Read more | History’s smallest billionaire? Meet the tiny titan who was, briefly, the richest man alive Mumler’s fame reached its height when he photographed Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of the assassinated president, with the spectral figure of Abraham Lincoln at her shoulder. “It’s literally just Mary Todd Lincoln with what looks like a glove on her shoulder,” Vernon says. “And then a double exposure of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln behind her. It looks terrible.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/mary-todd-william-mumler-spirit-photography-27f2fe5.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This William Mumler photograph shows Mary Todd Lincoln with the faint, ghostlike form of her assassinated husband behind her. One of the most famous examples of 19th-century spirit photography, it reflects both the era’s deep grief after the Civil War and the widespread fascination with attempts to capture the dead on camera." title="mary-todd-william-mumler-spirit-photography" /> Yet for many, the image was incredible proof of what they already wanted to believe: that all those who had died during the American Civil War might not really be so far away. William Mumler’s trial and controversy But not everyone was convinced. In 1869, Mumler was arrested and charged with fraud in New York, accused of exploiting the grief of the bereaved. Crowds packed the courtroom as expert witnesses demonstrated how the “spirits” could be produced through trick photography. And yet, Mumler was acquitted. “He was acquitted because so many people involved in the case – and people on the jury – were spiritualists,” Vernon explains. “It was such a widespread religion that people subscribed to. There were so many people biased towards spiritualism involved in prosecuting him.” Read more | Skip the office and give your money away: a Victorian billionaire’s guide to financial triumph His release spoke volumes about the power of spiritualism. The belief had spread far beyond fringe circles, and counted scientists, writers and politicians among its adherents. Spiritualism across the Atlantic After Mumler’s trial, spirit photography crossed the Atlantic, finding eager audiences in Victorian Britain (which was grappling with the changes caused by industrialisation, and increasing religious doubts) where spiritualism was also flourishing. The movement was bolstered by interest from the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir William Crookes, who believed the dead could be studied as scientifically as any natural phenomenon. Though Mumler’s name eventually faded, his pioneering techniques persisted. Spirit photography survived well into the 20th century, adapting to new technologies while also latching onto new explosions of grief brought about by the First World War. In all, Vernon concludes that there’s a very simple, and human, explanation for the rise of spiritualism, and the success of figures including Mumler. “Spiritualism came at a point in history where people were grieving on a mass scale and wanted to contact the dead.” Alice Vernon was speaking to Jon Bauckham on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore more Victorian history with exclusive content from our archives Was Victorian life really so grim? 5 reasons why the Victorians were 'happy' An appointment at the house of death: the horror of the early Victorian hospital From murder bottles to arsenic wallpaper: 5 hidden killers in Victorian Britain Cricket, cocaine and cocoa houses: 5 ways Victorians spent their free time Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers
The REAL history behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and more
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
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
Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence
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
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="This reconstruction shows the Chester Roman amphitheatre as it may have appeared around AD 100, soon after the founding of the legionary fortress of Deva Victrix. Excavations reveal it hosted a range of spectacles — from cockfighting and bull-baiting to boxing, wrestling, and, most notably, gladiatorial combat — making it a major centre of entertainment in Roman Britain." title="Chester Roman Amphitheatre, c2nd century, (c1990-2010)" /> The morning of the gladiatorial games At dawn, horns would have sounded across the city, heralding the start of a day characterised by excitement and spectacle. The games would have begun with the pompa, a celebratory parade rich with religious meaning and pageantry. Then, the gladiators would have marched through the streets towards the amphitheatre. The sharpness of each sword and spear would have been tested before the crowd, ensuring that everyone was keenly aware of the fact that this was no staged theatre. Read more | Was Maximus Decimus Meridius real? Finally, the event would have opened with solemn prayers to Jupiter, Mars and Nemesis, asking the gods to bless the day’s combat. The first fights, however, wouldn’t have involved men at all. Animal hunts and executions “[First] you had professional huntsmen hunting animals in the arena,” Sidebottom explains. “It was a way of giving the urban plebs a vicarious taste of an elite lifestyle, because hunting was an elite sport.” These venationes (beast hunts) showcased exotic creatures from across Europe and Africa. Brought in were lions from north Africa, bears from the Alps and leopards from Syria. They were living symbols of Rome’s control over nature. Their capture, transport and killing were part of an immense imperial machine that stretched from the shores of Britain to Mesopotamia. After the animal fights, the audience would have still had to wait to see the gladiators in action. The next piece of entertainment was executions, “and these executions were really horrible,” says Sidebottom. Criminals, rebels and various other unfortunate people condemned to death were brought in to die for public amusement. Some were burned alive in the tunica molesta, which was a shirt soaked in flammable liquid that was then set alight. Others faced wild beasts unarmed. Between scenes, entertainers including acrobats, jugglers and musicians kept the crowd amused. But it was all only delaying the gratification of the main event. The afternoon: the gladiators make their entrance “The big event was the afternoon, when the gladiators actually fought. We assume, like any good sporting event, the best fighters were kept back until the end,” Sidebottom explains. The matchups were deliberately theatrical: the secutor, armed with sword and shield, against the retiarius, fighting with trident and net. “The main division was between the big shield men and the small shield men. But within those categories, there were lots of different types with different armour.” Sidebottom adds that pitching those varieties against each other enhanced the “novelty and the fun of the games.” For the crowd, the combat was thrilling not only for its danger, but for its discipline. Gladiators were trained to prolong the fight and heighten the drama. When a fighter fell, the final decision lay with sponsor of the games – often a politician or Roman emperor seeking popularity. A gesture from the stands (the famous turning of the thumb) determined what would follow: death, or a merciful chance to fight again. The evening: gifts and rest As the games were brought to their conclusion, the spectators filtered out of the stands and back to their homes. But that wasn’t the end of the story for the fighters. For those who survived, recovery began immediately. “In the better schools run by the emperor,” Sidebottom explains, “there was excellent medical care, because these guys were expensive investments.” Caesar: Death of a Dictator Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since. Listen to all episodes now Doctors would have quickly seen to wounds and stitched the gashes back together. That evening, the surviving fighters would have been fed their usual sagina, a calorie-dense barley and bean stew. The next morning, training would have resumed, and soon the cycle would have begun again. For all that the ancient Roman republic and empire are remembered for their technologies and ‘civilising’ innovations, the sheer violence and delight in suffering seen in its greatest form of entertainment shows how their social and moral values were unrecognisable to many of us today. As Sidebottom observes, “it’s moments like that that the gulf between us and the Romans becomes really almost unbridgeable.” Harry Sidebottom was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
How do you cope with living in a century of chaos? By learning how to predict the future
Explore how modern Britons sought signs of divine order in a collapsing world – from searching snails’ shells to eating moles’ hearts
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 church leaders and intellectuals, they proved immensely popular. Such prophecies provided a sense that a pre-ordained fate, rather than chaos, governed the world. But this was all part of an evolving Christian lens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-804449166-e3c1e4f-e1763482070277.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This portrait of William Lilly (1602–1681), reproduced in the late 19th century from his Christian Astrology, shows the astrologer whose reputation soared — and soured — after the Great Fire of London. Accused of having predicted the blaze 14 years earlier, Lilly was even questioned as a possible arsonist, though he was cleared." title="William Lilly English Astrologer 1647 (Late 19th Century)" /> The search for signs The Protestant Reformation had stripped away many rituals of the medieval Church, leaving a spiritual vacuum that people filled with other methods of finding meaning. “People look for some kind of guidance,” McGill explains, “some way of seeing, ‘Well, is it a good idea to get on this ship and go try and seek my fortune on it?’” And for many, fortune-telling deepened their connection to Christianity, rather than conflicting with their fate. “Many practices relied on the belief that God has made a plan for the universe, and that is writ everywhere in the natural world,” McGill explains. “The elements reflect His will in some respect.” That conviction transformed the natural world into a language that could be read to uncover the future. People watched how nutshells burned in the fire, or how oil floated on water, or how smoke rose from a hearth. Each offered signs for what the future might hold. Prophecies from snails, moles and wolves Animals, God’s living creations, also offered keen clues. “You could search in a snail’s shell very carefully,” McGill says, “and if you were lucky, you might find a little purple stone that supposedly lived within the body of snails. If you then placed that stone under your tongue, you might be able to prophesise and tell of future things.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-152204469-0d9c7eb-e1763482194797.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Engraved with interlocking stars and mystical symbols, the Sigillum Dei — the “Seal of God” — was used by the Elizabethan mathematician and occult philosopher John Dee (1527–1608). Dee placed this seal beneath one of his crystal “shew stones,” the reflective objects through which he and his scryer attempted to communicate with angels during their esoteric experiments." title="Engraved with concentric star shapes and other designs, the Seal of God (Sigillum Dei) was used by the Elizabethan mathematician, magician and astrologer John Dee (1527 1608)" /> Others resorted to darker – and bloodier – rites. “You could try getting a mole, cutting it open, and eating its heart while it’s still palpitating,” McGill continues. “This is thought to give you insight into the future.” Other methods included sleeping with a wolf’s tooth under one’s pillow, inhaling vapours of violet or linseed, or burning the blood of a dove. These all were said to be ways of reading God’s natural language, summoning visions or revealing hidden truths. Read more | What was the Reformation? In practice, looking to the future was at the edge of a fraught moral frontier. In the Christian context of the early modern period, interpreting God’s signs in nature was acceptable, but conjuring spirits or invoking magic wasn’t. But where that line was drawn in practice was unclear. England’s witch trials of the late 1500s and 1600s often drew on the same fears that surrounded fortune-telling, homing in on the idea that someone might possess secret, forbidden knowledge. For McGill, these customs reveal how ordinary people in a violent century sought to make sense of their world, with the promise of foresight (however tenuous) providing some measure of control. Dr Martha McGill was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
History’s sexiest revolutionary? Meet the mesmerising general whose charms helped win a war
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
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 he became a national hero, Garibaldi was an outlaw. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-526344372-445f05c-e1763032458737.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 19th-century engraving depicts the Battle of Milazzo (17–24 July 1860), fought during the Sicilian campaign of the Risorgimento. Garibaldi’s volunteers, bolstered by Hungarian veterans, clashed with troops of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, securing a crucial victory that opened the way for the unification of Italy." title="Risorgimento. Sicily Conquest. Batlle of Milazo. 17-24 July 1860. Engraving. 19th century." /> Garibaldi’s exile As a young man, Garibaldi joined Giuseppe Mazzini’s radical organisation Young Italy, which plotted to overthrow foreign influence and unite the peninsula under a republican flag. When a revolt failed in 1834, Garibaldi was condemned to death in absentia and fled to South America. But his revolutionary spirit was still very much alive. While in Brazil and Uruguay, Garibaldi fought for independence movements, commanding volunteer forces in small-scale but ferocious conflicts. Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars “He developed [a] reputation while in exile in Latin America …”, Laven explains, “he was a really effective guerrilla fighter and leader.” But that doesn’t mean he was a cold or ruthless guerilla warrior. “He really enjoyed fighting,” Laven notes, “but he’s not a bloodthirsty man. He’s an incredibly kind and decent man. Almost everyone agrees this about Garibaldi. He gets ever so upset about hurt animals.” That slightly strange combination of daring and decency became central to his image. The hero of Italian unification When multiple revolutions to secure constitutional liberty, individual rights, and unity for nations swept through Europe in 1848, Garibaldi returned home to join in. Over the next two decades, he became the military heart of Italian nationalism, leading volunteer armies against far larger foes. His most celebrated campaign came in 1860 with the Spedizione dei Mille (the Expedition of the Thousand), a daring campaign to liberate Sicily and southern Italy from Bourbon rule. With roughly a thousand poorly armed volunteers, Garibaldi defeated royal forces many times the size of their army, and handed control of the south to King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont-Sardinia. When Garibaldi met the man, saluting the monarch and declaring him ‘King of Italy’, it became the symbolic moment of unification that many regard as the birth of modern Italy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-3353411-1b50bb2-e1763031994908.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1860 image shows Giuseppe Garibaldi, the legendary nationalist whose daring campaigns helped unify Italy. Revered as the hero of the Risorgimento, Garibaldi became a symbol of popular revolution and the fight for a single Italian nation." title="Giuseppe Garibaldi" /> How the ‘people’s general’ became an unlikely sex symbol Garibaldi’s appeal reached far beyond the battlefield, but why was he so uniquely successful, and able to wield such power and influence? “He was not just a successful leader of men, he’s a successful leader of women too,” Laven says. “To start with, he was dead handsome. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, he has reddish-brown hair, he’s got a lovely smile. He’s sexy.” This particular part of his appeal, says Laven, caused a stir among the upper echelons of society upon his visits to Britain. “Lots of posh women think he’s the perfect bit of rough,” he says, describing Garibaldi as the “perfect sexy fantasy.” Read more | Peaceful war: was the 19th century a time of relative peace? But the revolutionary’s striking good looks weren’t his only weapon. “He also uses language well … he’s quite an inspiring speaker,” says Laven, and that was combined with his penchant for underdog fights. “He's also got this incredible record of bravely fighting against the odds. He was always fighting against bigger armies with ill-equipped troops and pulling it off” In all, Garibaldi was uniquely charismatic, courageous and intelligent. That combination turned him into an international sensation, and he found particular fame in Britain and the United States where bakers sold Garibaldi biscuits, and newspapers compared him to the first US president, George Washington. However, not all of his methods of leadership were so benign, and behind Garibaldi’s fame lay the hard realities of running a rebellion. His armies were volunteer forces, and that meant having the right enforcers around him. “He was very good at picking his lieutenants,” says Laven. “He gets good men around him.” One of those men was Nino Bixio, a fierce and pragmatic officer whose ruthlessness contrasted with Garibaldi’s idealism. “Bixio was basically a bit of a psychopath,” Laven remarks. “When Garibaldi needed someone to be nasty, he could get Bixio to be nasty.” When certain groups or people needed to be repressed, says Laven, “Garibaldi doesn’t go and shoot peasants; Bixio does it.” Delegating such brutality allowed Garibaldi to preserve his image as a noble revolutionary, which was necessary to maintain his power. Ultimately, Garibaldi lived long enough to see his dream realised. By the 1870s, Italy was officially unified under Victor Emmanuel II, and Garibaldi had become its most celebrated son. But, never willing to slot easily into authority, he remained restless, supporting democratic reforms and championing causes of national freedom abroad. Dr David Laven was speaking to Spencer Mizen on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.