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Kavita Puri explores the rise, fall and enduring charm of a Suffolk village
Lavenham is one of Britain's best-preserved medieval and Tudor villages. Roaming its narrow streets, past crooked timber-framed houses with steep gables, you feel as if you’ve stepped back in time. Henry III gave this Suffolk settlement a market charter in 1257, stimulating the local economy, and Lavenham soon became a major hub for the wool trade. By the late 15th century, it was one of the richest towns in England, that status reflected in magnificent buildings built by prosperous merchant families. By 1524, it was the 14th-wealthiest place in the kingdom, paying more tax than large cities including Lincoln or York. The village was famed for its prestigious ‘Lavenham blue’ cloth. This was coloured at the raw wool stage using a natural dye from a plant called woad, then spun into yarn before being woven into fabric. Woollen cloth and raw wool were Britain’s most important exports during the Middle Ages. Continental Europe – especially towns such as Bruges and Ghent – depended on English wool to fuel their textile industries, and Lavenham was a significant contributor. Read more | Want to understand modern Britain? Look towards its villages However, the village’s fortunes declined precipitously during the 16th century. Flemish weavers arrived in nearby Colchester and began to weave cheaper, lighter and more fashionable cloth, with a greater variety of dye colours, using new techniques. Lavenham failed to adapt to these newer methods, or to diversify its industry beyond the wool trade. As that income dwindled, money was no longer available to update village houses in newer styles, and Lavenham essentially became preserved largely as it was five centuries ago. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/05/GettyImages-118386210-d2f0f3a-e1777621450819.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two wooden wool carders with angled handles rest on a wooden surface; one has raw wool fibres caught on its metal teeth." title="Lavenham’s Guildhall is a precious survivor of the Tudor era, featuring relics reflecting the village’s wool-dyeing and weaving heyday (Image by Getty Images)" /> One building in particular reflects the changing fortunes of the village and wider society: the Guildhall. Five guildhalls are recorded as being built for wealthy cloth and wool merchants from Lavenham over the years, but only one survives to this day. When built in 1530, it was called the Guildhall of Corpus Christi. The religious guilds, which dated back to the 11th century, were originally associated with the monasteries. By the 14th century, though, as well as their role in raising funds for Catholic priests’ duties and celebrating patron saints, the guilds also took on community responsibilities that included repairing roads, and establishing schools and almshouses. After the Reformation, Protestants ensured that such guilds were abolished through acts of parliament in 1545 and 1547. Luckily, the Guildhall that still stands today in Lavenham was then repurposed for various uses. In later years, it operated as a workhouse to help the poor of the village and others who’d fallen on hard times. Up to 40 people lived and worked there, mostly spinning yarn, and were trained as housemaids or apprentices to help them find jobs. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors From 1785, another part of the Guildhall was used as a ‘bridewell’, or jail. One moving story from the records of that time tells of a young girl called Ann Baker. Probably no more than 10 years old when she was apprehended, Ann was whipped and locked in the jail with others who had fallen foul of the often harsh laws of the time. Convicted of larceny, this “incorrigible rogue” was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to the penal colony in New South Wales (now in Australia). She survived the arduous seven-month voyage, arriving in June 1790, but died there at the age of just 29. Over time, the Guildhall also served as a Methodist chapel, a pub, a grain store and a social meeting place for US soldiers stationed nearby during the Second World War. Today, it’s one of the finest timber-framed buildings in England, managed by the National Trust. Unsurprisingly, given its exceptionally coherent medieval and Tudor architecture, Lavenham has featured in many film and television productions, perhaps most notably being transformed into the wizarding village of Godric’s Hollow for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Lavenham has experienced both great fortune and sad decline – and the Guildhall reflects the many stages in its rich history. This article was first published in the April 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
It was medieval England's worst antisemitic massacre. Here's what happened next
Kavita Puri explores York's long and complex Jewish history
On a cold, grey January day in York, I climbed the steps to Clifford’s Tower, continuing all the way to the top to enjoy panoramic views across the city. This structure was for many years a notorious prison, and housed a royalist garrison before being taken by the parliamentarians during the Civil War. Long before then, though, it was the site of one of the worst antisemitic massacres of the Middle Ages. Towards the end of the 12th century, peaking around the time of the Third Crusade, anti-Jewish hostility swelled in England. Antisemitic rioting broke out in London and across the east of the country. In spring 1190, as Jewish properties in York were looted or burned, concerned royal officers sheltered some 150 Jewish people inside a timber structure in York Castle that almost certainly stood on the current site of Clifford’s Tower, built perhaps 60 years later. Read more | “Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history A mob surrounded the tower and prepared to attack. On the night of 16 March, many of the Jews inside – seeing no safe way out of the situation – took their own lives, having set their possessions on fire, which ignited the tower itself. One of the aggressors reputedly offered an amnesty to any Jew willing to convert to Christianity – but all who left the tower to do so were murdered. However, that terrible incident did not mark the end of Jewish life in York. Within a few years, a new community was established, which endured in the city throughout the 13th century. Research from the University of York published in 2023 shows that a synagogue stood on Coney Street from 1205 to 1290 – the year when all Jews were expelled from England by order of Edward I. A commemorative plaque was unveiled at the site in 2024. Read more | The history of York: a northern powerhouse of many names Today, Coney Street is a busy commercial thoroughfare – as it was in the Middle Ages, when it was home to a clothier, a leatherworker, a vintner, a goldsmith, a baker and an apothecary, along with important members of the medieval Jewish community. The 2023 research found that a branch of Boots stands on the site occupied by one Leo Episcopus; his son-in-law, Aaron, lived nearby at the spot where Next is today. Both inhabited homes built by Christian landlords and leased to Jews, who lived alongside prominent Christian citizens. Leo and Aaron served as chief representatives of the entire Jewish community in England. In the 1230s and 1240s, Aaron was considered to be the richest man in the country. Charters from the Durham Cathedral archive show how Aaron co-operated with senior clergy of York Minster in purchasing the large stone building that became the city’s Guildhall. It also seems likely that Aaron worked with Minster authorities on the ‘Five Sisters’ window – previously known as the Jewish window – in return for land on which to extend the Jewish cemetery. For so long, the Jewish history of York has been overshadowed by the horrors of what took place at Clifford’s Tower in 1190. Remembrance of this tragedy continues to evolve today: there are plans to redevelop the area around the tower, and proposals include a more formal memorial to the massacre. Each spring, daffodils bloom on the mound – flowers of a six-pointed narcissus variety whose shape echoes the Star of David, creating an annual reminder of the massacre. Read more | The assassins' reign of terror: how these 12th-century killers spread fear in the Middle East It’s right that we mark such a horrifying event – but also that we remember the Jewish community which, in the decades that followed, lived largely harmoniously alongside Christian neighbours in one of the most high-status streets in York. York’s Jewish history is complex – but the university’s research suggests strongly that, during the 13th century, Jews and Christians worked together for the common good, developing civic and religious sites that remain important in the city today. Serendipitously, the university’s findings were revealed just as York appointed its first resident rabbi since the expulsion of 1290 – the latest positive milestone in the city’s long Jewish history. This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Inside Britain's first refugee camp: a 300-year history of immigration
"This was the site for what may have been Britain’s first refugee camp", writes Kavita Puri
Blackheath in south-east London has a rich history. It was a rallying point for both the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and the Kentish rebellion of 1450. Monarchs through the ages have passed through. But what is less known is that it was also the site for what may have been Britain’s first refugee camp. In 1709, army tents were temporarily erected in Blackheath to give shelter to some of the estimated 13,000 German refugees who had arrived in Britain from the Palatinate, which is the modern-day Rhineland. There were also camps in Camberwell, Clerkenwell and Greenwich. Initially, the refugees were supported with charitable donations. Many arriving were poor and they spoke a different language, but they were viewed as Protestants fleeing persecution from oppressive Catholic regimes. English parishes raised around £20,000 to support the Palatine refugees. The Rhineland had suffered significantly during years of warfare. Most recently, it had been invaded by King Louis XIV of France in 1707. However, when the Palatine arrivals came to England, there was not a particular ongoing dispute making them flee. As part of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, the state was tolerant of Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. The ruling ‘Elector’ was Catholic, yet both Catholics and Protestants used the most important church in the city of Heidelberg, the Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), as a place of worship. Read more | Your guide to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 When the British government took a census of the people arriving from Germany, the authorities realised that about a third were Catholic. The reasons they were coming, it turned out, were complex. Many of the refugees had indeed been affected by religious persecution. But others were travelling in search of economic opportunities. They were escaping bad harvests, high food prices, poor prospects. And there were those who wanted to journey on, to America. Britain in 1709 was also facing its own economic difficulties. The country’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession had disrupted trade and pushed up prices. The numbers of people relying on charity through the Poor Law had increased. There were concerns that the Palatines were draining the economy, taking jobs away from the English poor. And although the newcomers were largely Protestants, they were not members of the Church of England and so could pose a threat to the nation’s security. Tradesmen and the labouring poor were especially suspicious. Politicians amplified a sense of fear that also found expression in pamphlets and newspapers. A report in The Daily Courant in August 1709 said: “They have not left their native land because their prince’s government is more intolerable than others… No, ’tis because their country is so unhappily situate, that it has felt the invenom’d rage of the enemy, and been expos’d to the calamities of war, more than any other.” Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue" In the end, many of the Palatines were eventually resettled across the Atlantic. They joined other German speakers to become the largest single group, aside from enslaved Africans, to enter the American colonies between 1680 and 1780. Around 3,000 Palatines were shipped to Ireland. Some made their way back to their homes in the Rhineland, preferring to be there than left begging on the streets in England. A few towns, such as Liverpool and Perth, had agreed to take in some settlers. Others found new homes in parts of rural Lancashire, but most local corporations refused to take in any newcomers. And yet for all the suspicion directed at the Palatines, there were those who tried to emphasise the advantages in offering them a home. A publication of 1710, The State of the Palatines for Fifty Years Past to this Present Time, said: “In the whole they appear to be an innocent, laborious, peaceable, healthy and ingenious people; and may be rather reckon’d a blessing than a burden to any nation.” Debates around immigration in the 18th century, it seems, weren’t so different to today. This column was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
"I can lose myself for hours in a hypnotic trance": why we should all spend more time in archives
"Every one of us has an archive of our life, which is part of a bigger history", writes Kavita Puri
Having spent so much time in newsrooms and edit suites making television and radio documentaries, I have come to archives late on in my life. These are the precious places that hold records, whether that’s a digital file, an audio recording, or perhaps a paper diary, all of which can take you instantly back in time and place. I can lose myself for hours in some hypnotic trance as I stumble across a sentiment, a betrayal, a confession. All the while, I’m piecing together from these different voices a part of history. There are the official records and the private. And in both it can feel as if you are trespassing, as you turn a page that was perhaps once held by its author. In his beautiful book An Archive (Ivory Press, 2025) the British artist, potter and author Edmund de Waal writes: “Archives are purposeful and they are random. They record the personal and the institutional, plural and singular histories. They are passed on, inherited, stolen, plundered and lost. They are destroyed by accident and by design. They record rewritings, rethinking and retellings. They hold stories so they don’t disappear. They preserve information in the hope of a future.” Read more | “A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history Archives are, as he suggests, many things. They also reflect choices made about what and who we think should be recorded, and of what we remember. They can be self-consciously curated, but they may also not look in the direction we are expecting. Walking around de Waal’s vast studio in south London, I saw the rows of shelves that hold all the pots he has ever made (and are not currently out on loan to museums). He pointed at different ones, and was instantly able to explain when he’d made it and how he’d felt at that precise moment in time. Standing in that room, I realised the objects in that space were not only a record of his work, but were also an emotional map of his life. Archives are not just for historians writing books, and they aren’t (always) dusty rooms in a basement. They can also be objects like de Waal’s pots. The past lives all around us, not only in documents, but in material and physical ways, as well as in homes and public spaces. And it is not always about the great and good, but can be personal too. An archive might comprise the books we read, the letters we write, even the emails we send. Every one of us has an archive of our life, which is part of a bigger history. Most of us will not end up in a history book, museum or library, with the contents of our lives pored over in the future. But our own personal archive is meaningful nevertheless, and is something to be valued. Sometimes an archive takes on its own life. I was recently at the exhibition Lorca and the Archive: Memory in Motion at the Centre of Federico Garcia Lorca in Granada. It tells the story of the Spanish poet, who was murdered during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. After his death, his personal archive was hidden for years from the Nationalists. His family feared it would be destroyed for political reasons and so much of it was smuggled out of the country, but decades later it was returned to Spain and carefully preserved. To this day, Lorca’s body has never been found. But the archive of his work – his intimate feelings, his political recordings – was saved and lives on. Read more | Agony and adventure: the hidden histories inside women's diaries Ultimately, archives offer us clues to another time, which like a detective in the present we can try and piece together. We shall never all agree on that version of the past, and so history is perpetually revised. Cataloguing what has been before us will always be incomplete. Items are lost, and there are silences and absences that may be unrecovered. Ultimately, as de Waal says: “Archives are absolutely unfinished. That is the point.” This column was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
The Bengal Famine was one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies – so why is there no memorial to it?
Kavita Puri on the first event commemorating the 1943 Bengal Famine
In a museum in Manchester, on an autumn evening just a few weeks ago, history was made. I joined a group of people who had gathered to pay their respects to casualties of a long-overlooked episode of the Second World War. Curators, students, interested locals and descendants of those involved milled around, drinking chai, looking at pictures in a temporary exhibition. Organisers believe this was the first event to commemorate the estimated 3 million victims of the 1943 Bengal Famine. Those who died were Indians, but they were also British subjects. It’s one of the largest losses of civilian life among the Allies – yet there isn’t a memorial, a museum or even a plaque to them anywhere in the world. So that night – organised by the University of Manchester, Manchester Museum and the Imperial War Museum North, and inspired by my BBC podcast Three Million – marked a very special moment. Read more | The 1943 Bengal famine: "People began collapsing in the streets and dying on the pavements" The exhibition featured portraits of some of the survivors I had interviewed in the Bengal countryside. There was Jamuna Purkayeth, who had travelled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) as a little girl with her father in search of charity. When I spoke to her, she told me that she believed that if she had stayed in her village she would have died of hunger. Also on display were extracts of letters to and from Indian soldiers stationed in the Middle East, censored by colonial authorities for mentioning the extent of the food crisis. Now those letters – uncensored – were presented in a public space. There were also Japanese propaganda pamphlets encouraging the Indian population to rise up against the British. In one cartoon, the wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, is pictured feasting on a sumptuous roast chicken, while underneath the dining table are emaciated, dead Bengalis. The message is clear: Japan will feed you, but the British won’t. Also on display were evocative photographs of Sunil Janah, who documented the human cost of the famine in the communist newspaper People’s War. Among the speakers that evening was the narrative director from the Imperial War Museum, who talked of the silences in that museum’s war archive, and discussed what can be done to remedy the situation. Another was an eyewitness to the famine, Partha Mitter. He told how, as a little boy, he would look through the iron gates of his grand house and see starving mothers clutching their babies, begging for phan dao, water in which rice had been cooked. They never asked for the rice – Bengal’s staple food – because that would be too much to hope for. Read more | Who was to blame for the Irish famine? Eighty years since the end of the Second World War, it’s about time that these 3 million lives are remembered. They cannot be a mere footnote in history. They are part of Britain’s wartime story, and its colonial legacy, that has become contentious – but this night showed that it need not be so. History is never static. Time allows people to speak, and ask, and collectively to acknowledge and remember. Forgetting need not be permanent. There will be a time to ask some difficult questions – about how this was allowed to happen, and who was responsible – but this night was dedicated to those who died. There is a dignity in remembering them – a dignity they were not afforded in life. Who knows whether this will become an annual event, or if a more permanent memorial to the victims will be established. But something is changing – and I learned this night that history can be redemptive. Everyone who gathered felt it, and it was an unexpectedly uplifting experience. This column was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
He shot down 3 planes in 4 minutes: meet the WW2 pilot you won't have heard about
"Everyone cried unashamedly at the news of this young pilot’s death", writes Kavita Puri
If you stroll across the green swathe of the Maidan in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) – past the monumental marble Victoria Memorial built to honour that Empress of India – and keep heading south, the city noise fades, and so too does the bustle. Off Debendra Lal Khan Road by the Tolly Canal, and opposite the zoological garden, are the gates of Bhowanipore Cemetery. Walk through them and you enter a world of order and peace. At the back, beyond lines of graves from the 19th and 20th century, are the headstones of young, mainly British men who fought in both world wars and died here. Many perished from diseases such as malaria and smallpox; some were killed in accidents, and one was apparently murdered while off duty. Also here are the graves of 14 Scottish soldiers from the Black Watch battalion who died in the cyclone of 16 October 1942 in Midnapore, west of Kolkata, as well as troops from a merchant ship hit by the Japanese in the Second World War. Read more | Before the atomic bombs, the USA hit Japan with one of the most overlooked (but deadly) campaigns in WW2 On one headstone is etched the name of a man I had heard about from elderly Indians and British people who had lived in the city during the war. Arthur Maurice Owers Pring – known to everyone simply as Pring – was a pilot in the Royal Air Force. He was killed at the age of just 22 while defending Calcutta from an aerial bombing attack by Japanese forces. This dark chapter opened on 20 December 1942, when Japanese fighter planes filled the skies. Navigating by moonlight, a force of eight Imperial Japanese Army Air Service medium bombers, code-named ‘Sally’ by the Allies, scattered their weapons around the city. The oil plant at Budge Budge, on the Hooghly river south-west of the city, was one of the places hit. Raids continued the following night, and on 23, 24 and 28 December – the most devastating assault coming on Christmas Eve. The city was largely undefended militarily. A detachment of Beaufighters from RAF 89 Squadron in Egypt was diverted to Calcutta, arriving on 12 January 1943. Two days later, a new squadron was raised: No. 176. Its motto was Nocte Custodimus – “We keep the night watch.” The young men who made up that new squadron were already veterans. One of them, Flying Officer Arthur Maurice Pring, had successfully taken out enemy planes at night over Egypt and Sicily. He had just been initiated into his new squadron when the moon returned – and so did the Japanese bombers. By 9.45pm he was in the air east of the city, and successfully destroyed three ‘Sallys’ in just four minutes. Read more | The untold story of India’s WW2 prisoners of war This was the first time Japanese planes were intercepted over Calcutta. When I interviewed 93-year-old Sri Sen, who was a teenager at the time, his eyes lit up as he recalled the incident. Even today, people who remember that time mention Pring by name, and remember his heroics. Pring’s photograph was in the newspapers, and was used on recruitment posters, above the slogan: “A cool nerve, a clear brain, and unlimited ‘guts’, that’s what it takes to make an ace pilot like Pring.” He was feted in military and civil circles around the city, as well as by locals. When the Japanese returned on 5 December 1943, they came at noon. Among those flyers sent up to intercept them was Pring. He was hit, and his plane went up in flames. There was no sign of a parachute. His body was eventually found, and he was laid to rest on 12 December 1943 in Bhowanipore Cemetery. It was a moment that provoked profound emotion in the city: Ron Walker, at the time a young boy whose father was in the Calcutta Police, recalled how everyone “cried unashamedly” at Pring’s death. Still today, that one young man who died in the Second World War is remembered by those who lived in Calcutta back then, his grave cared for in a quiet corner of the city, a long way from home. This column was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
"Imagine starting a life with so little": the stories of South Asians in Britain
Kavita Puri on the importance of the stories of South Asians in Britain
I remember looking in the BBC archives for stories of the first arrivals of South Asians in the postwar years, and being surprised at how little programming had been made documenting the experiences of my parents’ generation. That was well over 10 years ago now. From then on, I began to record testimonies of people who came to the UK from South Asia after the Second World War for my Radio 4 series Three Pounds in My Pocket. The title of that programme was inspired by the fact that, for years after the war, strict currency controls dictated that those arriving from India could not bring more than £3 into the UK. Imagine starting a new life in a new country with so little. Over time, I went on to record accounts from the descendants of that three-pound generation, hearing about their struggles and achievements. Many of the people I first interviewed – including my father – are no longer with us. I feel so grateful that I was able to capture their stories: memories of what these former subjects of the Raj had imagined Britain to be, what it was actually like when they arrived, how they were received and, so many decades on, where they now felt ‘home’ was. Read more | “The nation is a very novel idea, and imposing it on millions of people is hard work” | Joya Chatterji on south Asia in the 20th century Asians comprise the largest minority ethnic group in Britain today, yet it’s always struck me how little the history of South Asians in Britain is known – among South Asians themselves as well as across the country as a whole. It’s noticeable that in 2025 there is still no central British South Asian cultural archive, and that South Asian Heritage Month is only in its sixth year. South Asians have had a presence in Britain for centuries, as Rozina Visram’s seminal 2002 book Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History discusses. The first such settlers came as sailors and servants, brought by the East India Company. In time, students, ayahs (nursemaids), princes and professionals arrived. In 1892, Dadabhai Naoroji was elected as Liberal member of parliament for Finsbury Central, becoming the first MP of South Asian heritage. He supported free education, votes for women and home rule for Ireland, and campaigned for representation for Indians in the government of India. Large-scale immigration from the subcontinent started after the 1948 Nationality Act was passed. It conferred on subjects of British colonies and the Commonwealth the right to settle in the UK. But the South Asian experience has not been as well documented as that of those coming from the Caribbean. Dr Florian Stadtler, co-author of Asian Britain: A Photographic History (2013), believes one of the reasons is because “there was no Windrush moment”. But it could also be because the term ‘South Asian’ encompasses so many people from different places on the Indian subcontinent, with their own distinct regional histories, languages, cultures. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many south Asian diasporic families don’t know of their First World War links" An important new digital hub has just launched. South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories (southasianbritain.org) aims to explore the complexity of this longer story. It discusses themes ranging from family and politics to multiple migrations and resistance, as well as education and intellectual life. There are some wonderful oral testimonies. Bari Chohan, for example, explains how some of his family came to Britain in the 1870s, setting up homeopathic clinics across the country. His great-uncle married a nurse, and they were one of the first mixed-race couples in north-east England. His father, who was in England at the outbreak of the Second World War, fought with the British Army. There’s so much history in that one family’s story. Understanding and acknowledging this long presence of South Asians in Britain is important. As identity in politics comes to the fore once again, and questions are asked about who is British and who belongs here, these stories take on a greater significance. South Asians have lived in, contributed to, fought and died for Britain. It’s time this is more widely recognised. This column was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: the enduring appeal of archaeological sites
"Nothing beats feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering the past", writes Kavita Puri
It was late morning, but already hot enough to warrant wearing a sun hat and sticking to the shade. I was in a quiet part of Andalucía, looking at an archaeological treasure that I visit regularly. However, this time there was more activity than usual. There were scores of people digging, others with notepads, some wearing gloves – all situated in different parts of the site. It was July and students had come from across Europe to take part in excavations. A 35-minute drive from Granada in southern Spain, the hill town of Tózar is located close to La Ruta del Califato (the Route of the Caliphate). Here, the local council recently purchased the archaeological area from a private owner. Investigations started on the land in 2012 when a Mozarabic cemetery was found. Eighty tombs of Christians who lived under Muslim rule in al-Andalus (the Iberian peninsula) were carved into the rock on the highland projecting into the surrounding landscapes. The site was believed to have been used as a cemetery between the ninth and 12th centuries. If you walk below, archaeologists have found another burial chamber, known as Dólmen Pileta de la Zorra, dating from sometime between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. There are also remnants of ancient agricultural terraces and irrigation systems. Further below is a Mozarabic village. I chatted to the lead archaeologist who told me they recently found a small refuse dump, which she excitedly said revealed what people had eaten, the utensils they used, the tools they worked with. Clues of life. And then she led me to what was once a dwelling. In the ground were three small rectangular holes. Two weeks ago, they discovered the remains of a child in one. She says they think these were graves for babies who had died before they had been baptised, which meant they were buried in the home, rather than in the cemetery above. As she spoke, enthused by the find, she described the moment of discovery, and what it could reveal about the practices and beliefs of the past. It raised so many questions from our group: would it not have been hard for the mother to live so close to her deceased child? Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history And not far away are trenches and fortifications used during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Tózar was on the Nationalist side, supporting General Franco. It was a frontline town, where the population would have been constantly aware of the presence of Republican soldiers from nearby Moclín. In one small place is so much history. Yet very few people know much about it, as it is way off the tourist trail. In the years that I have been visiting, it is now better maintained and looked after, with signs explaining the finds. The University of Granada is now one of several institutions funding the summer dig, and there seems to be renewed interest in the area and in its historical importance. With advances in digital archaeology such as three-dimensional modelling, the use of databases and virtual reality to aid analysis as well as interpretation, it is an exciting time to be an archaeologist. Applying information technology has, for example, helped in the reconstruction of the Palmyra Arch at the Temple of Baalshamin in Syria. It is also playing a critical role at the site of Herculaneum in Italy, which was preserved in volcanic ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago. Through the virtual unwrapping of its carbonised scrolls, scholars have been able to work out texts without damaging the delicate artefacts. But as my adventures in Spain remind me, nothing beats the thrill of feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering a remnant from the past – that magical encounter between now and then. This column was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri on VJ Day: "We don't talk about the war in Asia – which was a messy, complicated conflict"
On the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, broadcaster Kavita Puri – presenter of a new BBC Radio 4 series on the Second World War in Asia – considers why this was the conflict’s forgotten theatre
Matt Elton: Your new series, exploring fighting on the Asian front during the Second World War, is called The History Podcast: The Second Map. Why did you choose that name? Kavita Puri: It came to me after I met a man called Peter Knight, who is now 98. At the time of the Japanese attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor [on 7 December 1941], he was a 14-year-old boy living in a terraced house in Bromley, a south-eastern London suburb. He had been following the war in Europe using a map posted on the wall alongside his dresser. After Pearl Harbor, he put up another map on the other side of the dresser – a map of Asia and the Pacific. He would sit down every evening with his mum and grandparents to listen to the BBC bulletin, hearing about places for the first time, and about this other war on the Asian front, in British colonies. And he would trace what was happening on that second map. So he was now updating two maps in tandem: one covering the war in Europe against the Nazis, and the second encompassing the war against Japan in Asia. Why has the war against Nazi Germany come to dominate how we view this conflict, at least partly to the exclusion of the conflict in Asia? I think it’s understandable: that war was close by and involved places whose names were more familiar to people in Britain. And it affected people here more directly: Peter Knight had experienced the Blitz, for example. So the European war was close to home, whereas this other war was far away. It was also a messy, complicated war – and not just because it was fought in jungle terrain, and soldiers were dying of malaria and other diseases as well as in combat. It wasn’t a neat good-v-bad situation, like the war against the Nazis. The war with Japan was essentially about two empires competing with each other, so it’s a much harder story to explain. It also involved a lot of troops from the colonies, as well as from Australia. So again, it’s a story about our empire. Historians such as Rana Mitter, who helped me with the making of this series, argue that actually we should see the origins of the Second World War not in the German invasion of Poland in 1939, but much earlier in the early 1930s, with Japanese activities in China. Another aspect of that war on the ‘second map’ that we still don’t talk about much was the fact that the Chinese also fought with the Allies against Japan in some of the major battles. So do you think we struggle to see the Asian war as also being a story about the British empire? Yes – and I do think that part of the reason we don’t talk about the war in Asia is because many places that were attacked had been part of the British empire for more than a century, and the losses were humiliating. Winston Churchill said as much when Singapore fell in February 1942, describing it as one of the worst military defeats in British history. A lot of the soldiers who fought and won back places such as Burma [now Myanmar] were soldiers from the empire – and sentiments are complicated by the fact that India then won its independence in 1947. In the series, you make the point that the evacuation of Burma isn’t well known. Could you talk us through what happened there? Many people think of the war in Asia and the Pacific in terms of two incidents involving the US: Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki three days later. They don’t really know much about what happened in between. Particularly, one element that’s not often discussed is that British colonies, including Malaya and Singapore, were attacked at almost exactly the same time as Pearl Harbor. Read more | VJ Day: turning the tide in the east Again and again in the oral testimonies, I heard how the British saw themselves as racially superior. I think it was hard for them to understand how their colonies could be overrun by people that they considered inferior. Yet as well as possessing superior tanks and aircraft, the Japanese also used bicycles: they were nimble and they moved very, very quickly. Not only was the loss of Malaya and Singapore humiliating, but it resulted in the capture of around 130,000 British and Indian troops and other colonial and Commonwealth soldiers as prisoners of war. Then Japan set its sights on Burma. Rangoon [now Yangon] fell in March 1942, and the rest of the country was lost as early as May. The result was that soldiers had to trek across vast stretches of terrain in a devastating retreat. General William Slim, who later commanded the Fourteenth Army in Burma, described men who were just completely exhausted. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/TOPFOTO-0035936webready-3a6fee8.jpg" width="1500" height="1151" alt="A black and white photograph showing a small group of people walking across a barren landscape, carrying their belongings on their heads" title="Refugees – many of whom had to flee barefoot carrying anything they could – cross into British lines during the Japanese invasion of Burma (Image by TopFoto)" /> It wasn’t just soldiers retreating, but also colonial civilians – Europeans and Indians, about a million of whom had been working in Burma. Along with some Burmese who were afraid of Japanese reprisals, they headed for India. But the evacuation was quite racialised. White British and European people were given priority and assistance. If you were Indian or Burmese, particularly if you didn’t have means, you were on your own. And that journey was so difficult: it involved walking barefoot with whatever you could carry across very challenging terrain, much of it jungle. You had very little food. You might encounter crocodiles or elephants. An estimated 600,000 refugees were on the move but, though it was such a major event, there was so much going on – not only in that region but in the wider war – that this story has often been obscured in popular memory. It was really quite difficult for me to find testimonies of people who had made that journey. Why have stories of this event not been told before? Partly because most refugees arrived in Bengal, where a terrible famine was developing. If you were an Indian or Burmese person, you were just one of many trying to survive. In addition, that was a tumultuous time in India. There was the famine, the Quit India movement, and the Great Calcutta Killings [deadly riots in 1946], then the violence in the run-up to partition – when, again, millions were on the move, a million people died and two new countries were created. So the story has been obscured in India, even though many Indian nationalists were infuriated at the racialised nature of the evacuation from Burma. It became one of the causes underpinning the Quit India campaign. In Britain, too, it’s a very difficult part of our war story to recall: not just the retreat and defeat, but also the racialised aspect undermining the moral underpinnings of empire. In the series, you speak to relatives of people held in prisoner-of-war camps, including civilians. Can you tell us about the experiences of Shelagh Brown? Shelagh was 25 when the Japanese took Singapore, where she’d been born and had lived all her life. And hers had been a grand life, like lots of colonial families. Before the invasion, Singapore had been largely untouched by the war, unlike Britain. But it was bombed just a couple of hours after Pearl Harbor, and life changed very quickly for her. Even at that point, though, she didn’t think she would have to leave. It was only when British soldiers began to cross the causeway, retreating from Malaya, that her family realised things were really serious and tried to evacuate Shelagh and her mother. They got on a small boat, hoping to get to Australia, but were bombed from the air. Shelagh was adrift at sea for 19 hours before Japanese forces caught her and she was interned for the rest of the war. In fact, it wasn’t until six weeks after the war had ended that news reached the internment camp. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/TOPFOTO-0917695webready-2c046ed.jpg" width="1500" height="1091" alt="A black and white photograph of women sitting around a table, picking" title="Smiles belie the cruel reality of the Kampong Makassar internment camp in the Dutch East Indies. Survivors who experienced trauma often didn’t talk about it after the war. But also, says Kavita Puri, “people didn’t ask” (Image by TopFoto)" /> She died some time ago, but her daughter shared some cassette tapes (never broadcast before) on which Shelagh told her story of survival while being moved from camp to camp. It’s difficult to listen to, particularly because Shelagh’s mother died in the camps, but it’s also remarkable – particularly in how the women kept up their spirits. Shelagh had been in a choir, and her father had been the choir master. So the women formed a vocal orchestra, which was really moving: she said that the notes they were singing were the only free things they had. The Japanese guards would stand outside and listen, and were moved by what they heard. Another way that she dealt with the situation was that she somehow got hold of little bits of paper on which she wrote lavish recipes in minute detail, like cakes with 12 eggs. The funny thing is that her daughter said Shelagh had never cooked before in her life, because she had servants in Singapore. But because they were really malnourished, it was just a way to deal with their hunger. So it’s an emotionally complicated story. And the stories of women like her haven’t really been well remembered. Can you tell us about the experiences of Ursula Graham Bower? Ursula’s incredible story is told in an interview with her that we found in the archives. A young woman from north London, at the start of the war she was in her mid-twenties, working as an anthropologist in the tribal regions of north-east India near the border with Burma. She was living with a group called the Nagas when Pearl Harbor was bombed, after which she was recruited to work with Naga people gathering intelligence, monitoring what was happening across the border. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many south Asian diasporic families don’t know of their First World War links" When the Japanese tried to invade India at Imphal and Kohima in 1944, she found herself on the front line. She cabled headquarters to request weapons – and a box arrived containing grenades and guns – and she used them fearlessly. She was a remarkably brave woman – but so were the Naga people who fought alongside her. Military historian Peter Johnston says that the Fourteenth Army was possibly the greatest that Britain ever put into the field. Why don’t we hear more about the story of this ‘Forgotten Army’? The Fourteenth Army was formed after the defeats of Singapore and Malaya. It mostly comprised colonial soldiers – predominantly Indians, but also soldiers from west and east Africa as well. By the end of the conflict, it numbered around a million troops. By then, the British had learned lessons about how to lead these soldiers, who were treated much better than colonial troops had been previously. The extraordinary battles that they fought in such challenging terrain, and the conditions that they endured, are remarkable. Even at the time, people such as Lord Mountbatten and even the army’s commander, General Slim, joked that it was a forgotten army, fighting a far-away war. Partly, that’s because the Burma campaign and the battles at Imphal and Kohima were fought around the time of the Normandy landings, which of course dominated the headlines. I think there is probably a racialised aspect to it, too. The majority of soldiers in the Fourteenth Army were colonial subjects. Equally, I spoke to children of some of the soldiers in the Fourteenth Army, and they didn’t talk about it much, either. After independence, people in India and Pakistan found it hard to remember their soldiers who had fought with the British – that was not the story they wanted to tell about the Second World War. Another factor is that the collection of oral histories hasn’t been done much in India or Pakistan. The Imperial War Museum has been trying to gather oral testimonies, but it’s very late now – most of the people involved have died. There are some really important stories that we will never capture now. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/TOPFOTO-1060579webready-f742b9a.jpg" width="1500" height="1931" alt="A photo of a man dressed in a khaki military uniform and hat, with a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. In the background, the sky is blue and a blurry group of people" title="General Slim joked that he was leading “a forgotten army fighting a far-away war” (Image by TopFoto)" /> Was there a turning point when people in Britain started to find out about these wartime experiences? I’m not sure that ever happened. When I tell people that I’m working on a series about VJ Day, most people ask: what’s that? Or: is that the American War? Yet there are thousands of homes in Britain where a family member was part of this story but didn’t talk about it. I was interviewing one 98-year-old veteran, when he said to me: “I’ve got a suitcase in my study. Why don’t you go and have a look?” His daughter said: “I didn’t know about this suitcase.” I don’t know if that generation didn’t talk about it because they saw difficult things, or if they just thought, well, everyone has a war story, what’s the point of talking about mine? Or perhaps because people wanted to hear about the war in Europe. Shelagh Brown’s daughter told me that she was the only one she knew in Chichester who put out a flag for the 75th anniversary of VJ Day – no one else knew why. I think broadly people don’t know about the war in Asia, what it was about, why it was a British war, and how our country was connected to it. Yet many south Asians in postwar Britain had their own connections to that war, too, as well as British families. One thing I’ve realised making these programmes is that each generation asks different questions about the Second World War. But it’s a race against time to capture these memories – and, it pains me to say, it’s almost too late now. How is the war remembered in Japan? Are these kinds of conversations happening there at all? It was very important for me to include Japanese voices in the series. I found recorded testimony from a young kamikaze pilot in his early twenties. He was just a kid who was told that he had to undertake this mission. He wanted to do good things for his country, but he also wanted to live. He wanted to get married, have a normal life. But, interestingly, Japan doesn’t really remember the Asian war, focusing instead on the war in the Pacific. They see the conflict particularly through the prism of America, because the US rehabilitated Japan very, very quickly after the war. During the Tokyo War Crimes Trials [1946–48], Emperor Hirohito was not part of proceedings, and he built the pacifist constitution in the postwar years. An expert I spoke to for the series observed that it took decades for the Japanese people to talk about the atrocities that their forces committed, and that talking about war memory has become very politicised. But he does say that the new generation is looking at it in a different way. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/Bridgeman244259webready-47b2ee0.jpg" width="1500" height="1154" alt="A black and white photograph shows a group of British Indian Army soldiers huddled together, preparing weapons" title="British Indian Army soldiers during the battle of Kohima, 1944. This was one of the great Allied victories of the war, but it is not widely known today (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Now that few from the generation who lived through those events are still alive, maybe the Japanese today are freer to talk about things they weren’t able to before. For example, when their soldiers came back, they were traumatised and humiliated. They were told not to talk about it. And the children of those families are now opening up about the levels of domestic violence inflicted by some of those men. It can free you up to talk and ask some really difficult questions about your country and the people who led it at the time. So many of those who took part in the war in Asia found it difficult to talk about these events – as you say in the series, it’s almost like a confession for them. Is that one reason why it remains obscure in the countries involved? It was hard to talk about for lots of reasons, not least the traumatic nature of the events. Whether you were a PoW or a civilian, or witnessed action in battle, it was difficult. So people who came back home didn’t talk – but, also, people didn’t ask. I’ve spoken to family members who were explicitly told not to ask. Read more | "The war without an end": what happened in Europe after VE Day? When one PoW, Maurice Naylor, returned home to Manchester, his family were advised not to talk to him about his experiences – that it would be too much for him. His daughter found some sketches that he’d made. She asked her mother: what is this? And her mother said: don’t ask your father – he was in a PoW camp, and he has nightmares. She thought it had been a Nazi concentration camp, because that was the only kind she knew about. She didn’t even know that there were Japanese PoW camps. So one generation was told not to ask. But I would also say that not only do you need a public space for people to speak, but people also have to know what to ask. If your children are not learning about it in school, and if collectively we don’t know about that history, we won’t know the questions to pose. And now, because people didn’t ask, there is often a sense of regret. That’s what I meant by confession. They know something happened. They know a relative saw something, and it was probably not a good thing. I think there is a guilt in not having asked – and now not being able to ask. Were there other factors that added to the complications of remembering this story? Perhaps one reason is the simplified narrative we tell ourselves about our war: we fought the Nazis, and they were bad; we were good, and we were heroic. And that’s not wrong – but there was also this other war that we fought, and we need to understand that – not least because it touched many thousands of families in Britain. This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
Kavita Puri on explorations of the migrant experience
If you gaze up at the skyline in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, you might spot a new addition. Made from stainless-steel panels and shaped like a rollercoaster, the Tornado sits on top of the city’s newly opened Fenix, a museum that tells the story of human migration. Visitors climb to the distinctive Tornado up a sweeping staircase at the museum’s entrance, along a meandering route that represents the many different journeys people take to reach their destinations. On arriving at the viewing platform, you can take in a panoramic view of the city and its waterways where millions of Europeans once boarded ships in Europe’s largest port, many of them leaving for a new life in the US. Today, Rotterdam is home to more than 170 nationalities. It’s an interesting choice to open a museum to migration at a time when the subject has become so toxic, not least in the Netherlands. Designed by the Chinese firm MAD Architects, the museum displays have exhibits including thousands of suitcases, images of refugees, and a life-sized city bus. Perhaps reasoned discussions about migration can be inspired by art. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history This is not the first European museum dedicated to migration: they exist in many countries, including Germany, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Poland and France. So it is surprising that the UK does not have a permanent migration museum, only one that has spent years in makeshift venues. After all, millions of people have left Britain over the centuries, not least during the building of its empire, while inward migration – particularly during the postwar years – has shaped our language, culture, cuisine and art. Until recently, you could visit the Migration Museum in its temporary home in Lewisham Shopping Centre, housed in a former H&M store between Foot Locker and TK Maxx. Outside the entrance stood a sculpture entitled Wall, comprising two panels from the Berlin Wall painted by artists. During its five years in Lewisham, the museum displayed significant exhibitions including Taking Care of Business: Migrant Entrepreneurs and the Making of Modern Britain. In listening booths (repurposed H&M changing rooms), visitors could hear oral histories recounted by local businesspeople, including one Italian who ran a delicatessen and described how different Lewisham was from Puglia. More well-known voices including Lord Bilimoria who, frustrated by the lagers on offer at Indian restaurants, created his own hugely successful beer, Cobra. There was also an impressive installation replicating a Chinese takeaway. Read more | How has migration changed the world? Lewisham has a hugely diverse population, and in 1977 saw members of the far-right National Front clash with anti-racist protesters on its streets. It’s fitting, then, that the Migration Museum was embedded in the heart of that community – a place where anyone could feel comfortable, especially those who may never have crossed the threshold of a museum before. It has now closed, though, and the mall is being redeveloped. A permanent Migration Museum is planned for a new site in the City of London, which has been donated by a British Sikh entrepreneur. It’s due to open in 2028. The new space will span three floors, covering nearly 3,000 square metres. Members of the curatorial team are currently discussing how they might approach the project, including how they can co-curate with local communities. Subjects for temporary exhibitions might include local migrant stories from around the City, climate refugees, the role of humour in the migrant experience, and how protest has driven change. The story of migration in these islands is a long one, written by those who left and those who came. Britain today has been shaped by movements of people in both directions. A museum that tells this long and rich history – a shared story, one of interconnectedness – is long overdue. It does not need to be divisive, but can be a reflection and recognition of who we are today. This column was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine