HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-05-01T04:30:13.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Historical anniversaries | May
items: The profits of slavery: the dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside
items: Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history?
items: The murder of James III: who killed the king of Scots?
items: The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation
items: "I felt very alone in a world gone horribly mad": the experiences of evacuees in WW2
items: “The reverberations lasted for generations” | Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry on the civil war of Charlemagne's grandsons
items: Lilian Lenton, the 'Elusive Pimpernel': the courageous and daring suffragette who took direct action
items: Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
items: Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?

Historical anniversaries | May
type: item
date: 2025-05-01T04:30:13.000Z
subject: General History
subject: On This Day
subject: Period
description: What historical anniversaries are in May? We round up the events, births and deaths…
encoded: 1 May 1851: Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition It was a magnificent spectacle that met the young queen as she arrived, cheered on by huge crowds, at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. Trumpet fanfares, cannon fire and a 1,000-strong choir singing the national anthem all heralded the opening of the Great Exhibition, a world’s fair devised by her husband, Prince Albert, as a display of culture and industry; a testament of the age. In her remarks, the queen expressed her hope that the exhibition would be in the “common interests of the human race, by encouraging the arts of peace and industry [and] strengthening the bonds of union among the nations of the earth”. Over the next six months, millions of people came to see the objects, inventions and wonders gathered from around the British empire. 2 May 1946: A battle breaks out between prisoners and guards at Alcatraz An escape attempt from the notoriously inescapable maximum-security prison, on an island in San Francisco Bay, escalated into a firefight and a siege of one of the cellhouses. After 48 hours of the so-called battle of Alcatraz, more than a dozen people were injured and five dead: two officers and three of the escaping prisoners. 3 May 1481: Earthquakes and tsunamis batter Rhodes The Greek island suffered severe damage in a series of earthquakes throughout the year, but the worst struck in early May and also triggered a tsunami. There were an estimated 30,000 casualties. 4 May 1471: Edward IV reclaims the throne at Tewkesbury At the battle of Tewkesbury, the Yorkist king, who had been overthrown the previous year, secured a decisive victory in the Wars of the Roses against Lancastrian forces. Henry VI ended up a prisoner in the Tower of London, where he died shortly afterwards in mysterious circumstances, while his rival’s son and heir died in the fighting. Try our quiz | How much do you know about the Wars of the Roses? Coupled with his victory at the battle of Barnet less than a month earlier…

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The profits of slavery: the dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside
type: item
date: 2025-03-21T08:30:02.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Slavery
description: We know that enslaved Africans and their descendants suffered in the distant colonies of empire. But, as Corinne Fowler explains, the colonial system also led to significant changes for the countryside and its people of the ‘motherland’
encoded: For an encounter with one of the most eye-opening legacies of Britain’s colonial projects, take a drive along the A31 in southern Dorset. On the stretch between the delightfully named villages of Winterborne Zelston and Sturminster Marshall, the road kinks nearly 90 degrees; lining the verge here you’ll notice a wall – not hugely tall, but impressively long. Reputedly stretching for 3 miles and comprising nearly 2 million bricks, it was almost certainly built with profits from slavery. This is the so-called ‘great wall of Dorset’ – one of England’s longest, built around 1841 to encircle the vast Dorset estate of Charborough Park. It belongs to the Drax family, an old propertied clan who owned tobacco and sugar plantations in Barbados – and who massively increased their wealth by boosting profits through the use of slave labour. Read more | Slavery's painful legacy: the British empire's role in the trade of enslaved people It is easy to forget that colonial governors, slave-owners and East India Company employees and their heirs commonly became rural magistrates, customs officials, industrialists and politicians in Britain. The newly acquired land and social networks of these men allowed them to hold sway over other Britons in countryside regions. So it’s important to understand that, when it comes to exploring rural history, it’s not enough to ask where the money came from to buy country houses or fund village schools. What also matters is how these figures and their descendants exercised their power, wealth and influence in such areas. Back in 2020, I undertook an audit of published academic research about National Trust properties and their colonial links. So I already knew that country estates such as Basildon Park in Berkshire and Harewood House in Yorkshire were built and landscaped with colonial profits, and that Speke Hall near Liverpool was bought and restored with money from Jamaican slavery. I’d found, too, other architectural stories of places not managed…

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Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history?
type: item
date: 2025-03-14T09:17:44.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: British prime ministers
description: Over two decades ago, a BBC poll named the wartime British prime minister as the Greatest Briton. Now, on the 150th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s birth, David Reynolds ponders whether he deserves to remain as top dog in the pantheon of British history
encoded: In a much-publicised poll in 2002, the BBC asked viewers to rank figures from British history, as part of the television series 100 Greatest Britons. The poll was in no way scientific, but simply reflected votes – more than 1.6 million of them – from people who chose to contact the BBC, following presentations championing famous individuals ranging back in time from the 20th century to William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I. As is well known, Winston Churchill came out a clear first, garnering close to 457,000 votes. Two decades later, as we mark 150 years since he was born, it’s interesting to revisit that moment, and to reflect on how perceptions of Churchill have changed over time – and also on what is meant by historical ‘greatness’. Because Churchill’s craving to make himself ‘great’ lies at the heart of his extraordinary story. In the run-up to the BBC poll, politician Mo Mowlam – Churchill’s advocate – insisted that “he was the greatest Briton because he showed the determination and courage to protect Britain from invasion, and without his inspiring leadership the outcome of World War II may have been very different”. Let’s unpack that claim a bit. Did Churchill really make such a difference in 1940 – and, if so, how? The answer to the first part is surely: yes – most of all through his energy and drive. Although the tempo in Whitehall would have intensified anyway with the end of the ‘Phoney War’ and the German invasion of France, Churchill’s appointment as prime minister had a galvanising effect, dramatically symbolised by his famous red labels stuck on urgent documents: ACTION THIS DAY. Equally important, Churchill took a firm grip on military strategy. Mindful of the confusion and infighting of 1914–18, he appointed himself minister of defence. There was no ministry – that did not come until the 1960s. Churchill simply wanted the authority to deal with the chiefs of staff directly rather than via their politician ministers. He yearned to be a war leader, unl…

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The murder of James III: who killed the king of Scots?
type: item
date: 2025-03-05T09:49:55.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Death
subject: Medieval battles
description: A portentous witch, a sinister cleric, a blood-soaked shirt – Gordon McKelvie delves into the mysterious murder of a Scots king who had legions of enemies eager to see him dead
encoded: On 11 June 1488, a Scottish king gathered his army and marched to a field south of Stirling known as Sauchieburn. This man was James III – great-great-great-great grandson of Robert the Bruce, famed for his pivotal victory over the English at the battle of Bannockburn. James faced not a foreign invasion, but a rebellion by his own subjects. To counter this threat, and eager to be seen as a ‘new Bruce’, he wielded the sword of his famous ancestor. Rather than winning a heroic victory, though, by the end of the day James lay dead – killed by one of his own subjects as he fled the battlefield. But by whom? The answer is a mystery that’s endured for more than five centuries. James III was a divisive figure. He alienated many Scots with his determination to secure a marriage alliance with England, and his familial relations were little better: he fell out with one brother, Alexander, Duke of Albany, who then joined an English invasion of Scotland in 1482. He was also accused of ordering the death of his other brother, the Earl of Mar, and of being behind the alleged poisoning of his wife, Margaret of Denmark, in 1486. As ruler, James proved unable to control feuds between rival noble families and debased the Scottish coinage, causing economic problems. In summary, he fell short in almost every way imaginable. Writing perhaps three-quarters of a century later in The Historie and Chronicles of Scotland, Robert Lindsay said that James, standing on the field of battle in 1488, had “remembered the words of the witch that said to him before that he should be destroyed and put down by his nearest of kin” – a dramatic image reminiscent of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The witch was not real, but the drama certainly was. The army that toppled James III had as its figurehead none other than the king’s eldest son who, on his father’s death, became James IV. Then just 14 years old, Prince James had left his residence in Stirling Castle in February 1488 and joined a group of individ…

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The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation
type: item
date: 2025-02-20T17:10:19.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Slavery
description: Slavery, exploitation and racism. These tragedies have long dominated histories of Africa. But there’s another way to tell this story, argues Luke Pepera. And it’s one that puts Africans right at the centre of their continent’s extraordinarily rich and vibrant past
encoded: In 1414, in the Chinese city of Nanjing, a giraffe caused a stir. Amid a crowd of shocked, noble spectators, an official, leading the creature via a rope tied round its face, presented it to China’s Yongle emperor. His officials said it was a qilin – an auspicious unicorn – which his sage governance had made appear. This giraffe was a gift from the sultan of Bengal. But it had originally come from Africa – specifically, the city-state of Malindi in today’s Kenya. In 1415, ambassadors from Malindi and Mogadishu sailed to China. In a special ceremony, the Malindi ambassadors gifted the Yongle emperor another giraffe. Delighted at having received his second qilin, the Yongle emperor gave an order. His senior eunuch, Zheng He, whom he’d charged with overseeing the construction of a 200-strong fleet of treasure ships, was to sail to Malindi to obtain more giraffes and other goods. With the holds of his ships full of treasures, including gold, silver, silk and ceramics, Zheng He set sail for Malindi in 1417. He exchanged what he had for goods including live animals such as leopards and zebras, frankincense and ivory. Sometime between then and 1423, Malindi’s king himself sailed to China to meet the Yongle emperor in Nanjing. He made it as far as Fujian, a province in south-eastern China, where he died, seemingly succumbing to illness. He was buried in Fujian, and the Yongle emperor decreed that his grave be given a small sacrifice every year. This is an intriguing story. But for Africa, it’s not extraordinary. For at least 2,000 years, African civilisations have been plugged into international trade networks. Third-century AD Nubia (now northern Sudan and southern Egypt) exported goods including gold, ivory and ostrich feathers to Rome and Yemen. Along Africa’s eastern coast, from northern Somalia to southern Tanzania, east African merchants exchanged similar goods for date syrup from Persian traders, swords from Yemenis and carnelian beads from Indians. Chinese pottery a…

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"I felt very alone in a world gone horribly mad": the experiences of evacuees in WW2
type: item
date: 2025-02-20T17:03:03.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Children
subject: Wartime Britain
description: It was a moment of possibilities, dislocation and dread. Dan Todman tells the story of the 1.5 million urban Britons evacuated to the countryside at the start of the Second World War
encoded: It’s October 1939, and an aristocratic couple are discussing how to manage the horde of ill-spoken, slovenly evacuees from the city who have been billeted in their house. Not to worry, the husband tells his wife: bringing the children into a more refined environment will soon civilise the youngsters. Instead, as the sketch plays out on the BBC Home Service, the couple’s lordly airs and graces disappear. It’s the evacuees – sent away from home at the behest of the authorities – who change their hosts, rather than the other way around. It’s a skit that fits with how the story of Second World War evacuation has often been constructed, both at the time and in the years since. Here is a narrative that emphasises a clash of cultures: the rural rich suddenly confronted by the urban poor – a moment replete with topsy-turvy possibilities. But the circumstances around the recording of the sketch itself reveal how evacuation was a much larger and more complex event than this straightforward narrative suggests. Read more | Persuading the people: British propaganda in the Second World War It was performed by a cast of variety performers who had also been evacuated, from London to Bristol. That move was part of the BBC’s own preparations to maintain a schedule of light entertainment to intersperse with the news bulletins and government announcements expected to dominate the airwaves over the first weeks of the war. Seen in this light, the first wave of evacuations was specifically a product of conditions in the autumn of 1939 – but it was also an event that came to have a deep significance in the British folk memory, emblematic of the longer and wider disruptions, separations and anxieties experienced by so many civilians. It was, too, part of a global phenomenon, as states and communities sought to move people out of harm’s way. Thinking about evacuation therefore helps us understand not only Britain’s war, but also a wider human experience – national and local differences notwi…

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“The reverberations lasted for generations” | Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry on the civil war of Charlemagne's grandsons
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T12:18:07.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Early medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval battles
description: David Musgrove talks to Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry about the ninth-century civil war among Charlemagne’s grandsons, which shook the empire to its core and reshaped Europe
encoded: David Musgrove: Let’s begin with the battle of Fontenoy in AD 841. What happened there and why was it so important? Matthew Gabriele: Fontenoy is nowadays just a small village lying a little south-west of the city of Auxerre in central France. Even in the 840s, it wasn’t particularly significant. But it was there that a civil war erupted between the grandsons of Charlemagne, who were fighting about the fate of the Carolingian empire. After the death of their father, Louis the Pious, on 20 June 840, the three surviving brothers gathered at Fontenoy. Lothar, the eldest and the Frankish co-emperor, was trying to stitch the partitioned empire back together; his younger brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, had their own claims. Lothar was joined by his nephew, Pepin II of Aquitaine, the son of another brother, also Pepin, who had died in 838. The three brothers and their nephew basically argued about the form that the empire should take. Should it be coherent and unified under Lothar, or would Charles and Louis be able to function as independent kings in their own domains? This dispute boiled over into a massive, bloody battle fought on 25 June 841. For most medieval battles, we have just a sense of where and when they were fought. For this clash, though, we have very specific details of the day and the time when the battle started, as well as the location. That’s because – as we argue at the start of our new book – it was so horrifying for everybody involved. It shook the empire and its participants to their core, creating reverberations that lasted for generations. What’s the backstory to the dispute? Matthew Gabriele: The Franks rose to power in the fifth and sixth centuries when, after interacting with the Romans for a long time, they were finally able to establish their own realm. The resulting empire was ruled for several centuries by a dynasty called the Merovingians. They were supplanted in 751 in a coup d’état by high nobles who started a new dynasty…

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Lilian Lenton, the 'Elusive Pimpernel': the courageous and daring suffragette who took direct action
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T12:00:42.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: The Suffragettes
description: Some suffragettes marched with banners, or printed and distributed propaganda pamphlets. Others took more direct action. Diane Atkinson tells the story of one activist who employed arson to spark awareness of the burning issue of women’s suffrage
encoded: Recalling her career as a suffragette arsonist and Houdini-like escapologist in interviews later in her life, Lilian Lenton lit up as if a fire had been started in her heart. “To say I enjoyed making fires sounds rather awful,” she later admitted. “But it really was lovely to find that you’d been successful – that the thing really had burned down and that you hadn’t got caught. There it was blazing, and there we were in the glare of the lights…” Listen | Deeds Not Words: the suffragette story Lilian Ida Lenton was one of the youngest, yet most militant, of suffragettes in the three years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Her career was daring, dangerous and dramatic, reported in newspapers around the country. The new half-penny dailies, with their half-tone photographs and full spreads, often featured her pyrotechnic activities. Lilian was 5ft 2ins tall in her stockinged feet, with brown hair and eyes – a “tiny, china-like figure, but wiry and… wily”. She soon gained a romantic nickname, ‘The Elusive Pimpernel’, for her effective disguises and her ability to elude the policemen and detectives who guarded the places where she was kept under house arrest while released from prison on licence. With her tiny stature, she easily passed as a child, a delivery boy or a little old lady. Becoming a suffragette Born in Leicester in 1891, Lilian was the eldest of the five children of Isaac, a carpenter and joiner, and Mahalah, who had worked in a hosiery factory before her marriage. Lilian trained as a dancer, but was then inspired by hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak about women’s suffrage. As soon as she was “21 and my own boss”, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Lilian was first arrested on 4 March 1912, one of about 200 detained during a campaign of window-smashing. Frustrated at the government’s refusal to give women the vote, and outraged at the force-feeding of suffragettes in prison, activists shattered hundreds of windows in Whi…

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Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T10:59:20.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: Seven historians put forward their nominations for the most accomplished leader to have sat in the White House
encoded: George Washington In office: 1789–97 Party affiliation: none Nominated by: Thomas Kidd, historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale, 2022) George Washington was the first president in US history – and I’m nominating him as the best, too. I am basing this on his success as a leader, his ability to negotiate conflict in his administration, and most importantly the example he set for future presidents. Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War were enamoured with the ideal of the virtuous republican leader, in the model of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus. Washington was no perfect man, of course, and like many elite southern Americans he was a slaveholder. But in politics he came the closest to manifesting the republican ideal of any American president. Washington became president after serving as the commander of the Continental Army during the fight for independence from the British. His leadership of the army was not uniformly positive, but his tenacity ultimately led to a successful outcome. Many suspected he might simply remain in the position as a kind of benevolent autocrat, but he resigned from the army in late 1783, returning to his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. Befitting the respect that he commanded, Washington was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the US Constitution was drafted. Then he became the first president to be elected under that Constitution in 1789, in a unanimous vote of the electoral college. Washington dealt with major political conflicts in his administration, especially between the treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who bitterly disagreed over economic policy and the direction of the new republic. Washington was largely (if not completely) able to rise above the partisan bickering, and always believed that the republic and its leaders needed to manifest consensus for the public good. He assiduously reached out to m…

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Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T10:11:34.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Marco Polo’s adventures in Asia in the 13th century earned him everlasting fame, with his very name now synonymous with the excitement of exploration. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar
encoded: Life had taken a turn for the worse for Rustichello of Pisa. In the dying days of the 13th century, the Italian romance writer found himself locked up as a prisoner of war. Over the previous years, Rustichello had made something of a name for himself as the first author to pen an Arthurian romance in Italian. Yet he had got himself captured while fighting for his native city in the Genoese-Pisan War. And so here he was, denied his freedom, languishing in a Genoese jail. Yet if Rustichello was searching for some sort of salvation, he didn’t have to look far. It lay in the identity of the curious individual with whom he shared his cell. That man began telling Rustichello an extraordinary story. It was a tale of an epic journey to China – of encounters with unimaginably rich and powerful rulers, of strange and exotic lands, of brushes with creatures that would make your heart race and skin crawl. And it triggered in Rustichello an idea. The Italian writer soon saw the potential of turning the memoirs of his well-travelled cellmate into a book. And so he set about writing them up in the default language of medieval romance: Old French, but with a smattering of Italian. The result – The Travels of Marco Polo, or Le Divisament du Monde (‘The Diverse Parts of the World’), as it was originally known – was Rustichello’s crowning achievement. And it would turn his cellmate, Marco Polo, into one of the most famous figures of the entire Middle Ages. Can we trust The Travels of Marco Polo? Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit. But look beyond its remarkable impact, and how much credence should we give to the text that Rustichello committed to paper following his incarceration with Polo? How useful is the book in understanding life in Asia – especially China – in the Middle Ages? In short, can we really trust Marco Polo’s word? Read more | Why…

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