HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-01-23T11:09:00.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: How to build a radical: what the Gunpowder Plot can teach us about extremism today
items: Queen Victoria's unhappy childhood: life under the 'Kensington System'
items: The love-hate relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his creator: "Conan Doyle felt upstaged by Holmes"
items: Lucy Worsley on Agatha Christie: "She’s a genius, she’s an artist, she’s a creative"
items: Author, adventurer, archaeologist: Agatha Christie’s action-packed life
items: The survivor, the "incurable" and the scapegoat: Lucy Worsley on the extraordinary lives of three ordinary women
items: How to survive in the Georgian court
items: Lucy Worsley on Blitz Spirit: the courageous stories of six Londoners
items: Lucy Worsley on royal history's biggest fibs
items: Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would"

How to build a radical: what the Gunpowder Plot can teach us about extremism today
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T11:09:00.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Catholic
subject: Stuart kings and queens
description: The experiences that shaped Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot co-conspirators into violent extremists seem all too familiar today. Lucy Worsley tells a story of religious clashes, state-sanctioned torture and comrades-in-arms willing to die for the cause
encoded: Towards the end of 1605, a man was being interrogated in a smallish building deep within the fortress of the Tower of London. It was here, in the most secure place in Britain, that the state dealt with its enemies. This particular enemy of the state was named Guy Fawkes. The records of that interrogation are today among the treasures of the National Archives, and going there to film them for the new series of Lucy Worsley Investigates was an unbelievable thrill. It’s evident that a secretary recorded Fawkes’s words, and that the conspirator was asked to sign his name to verify that the record was accurate. On one page, his signature is clear and confident: Guido Fawkes. Two days later, though, his name is no more than the faintest of scrawls. Historians generally agree that this difference is because, in the time between scribbling the two signatures, he’d been tortured and had lost the use of his hands. A few weeks later, he would also lose his life. Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot conspirators It’s quite extraordinary to think that, 400 years later, this tale of violence has morphed into an annual occasion for family-friendly fun. The reason for lighting bonfires and fireworks on the fifth of November is now largely forgotten. Technically, we’re celebrating the foiling of a plot against King James VI & I, planned by Catholic extremists whom many would call terrorists. Read more | Remember remember the 5th of November: why Bonfire Night is a 400-year-old political hot potato If you step off a London Underground train at Charing Cross, you can admire an enormous tiled image of the gunpowder plotters that takes up the whole height of the platform wall. Seen by thousands of commuters, tourists and schoolkids on a London day out, the image of the conspirators – with their tall hats, flowing locks and furtive body language – makes them look like a rather stylish rock band. But with violence and religious extremism wreaking havoc round the globe today, it seems timely …

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Queen Victoria's unhappy childhood: life under the 'Kensington System'
type: item
date: 2023-12-27T10:35:51.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Evergreen
subject: Royal children
description: What was Queen Victoria like as a child? And did she have a normal childhood? Here, historian Lucy Worsley explores the monarch’s youth at Kensington Palace – where she lived under the rules of the 'Kensington System' – and finds that it might not have been as unhappy as Victoria herself would have had us believe
encoded: On 24 May 1819, a baby girl was born at Kensington Palace. It was then the least fashionable of the royal palaces, hidden away behind the lime trees of its wide green gardens to the west of London. The arrival of Alexandrina Victoria, as she was christened, did cause some excitement. A long line of carriages calling for news about the health of the mother, the Duchess of Kent, reached all the way to Hyde Park Corner. But at that point the new baby, King George III’s latest granddaughter, was fairly low down the royal pecking order. As the years of her childhood passed, however, and as her elder cousins failed to thrive and died, Alexandrina Victoria grew in importance. It gradually emerged that the little girl growing up quietly behind closed doors at Kensington Palace would one day reign over the whole of the British Isles, including Ireland. And, in due course, a quarter of the globe’s landmass. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/05/GettyImages-513688265-347013e-e1703672371102.jpg" width="621" height="406" alt="The young Victoria with her mother, Victoire, Duchess of Kent, in an 1821 portrait by William Beechey. "My greatest of fears was that I loved her too much," said Victoire. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)" title="The young Victoria with her mother, Victoire, Duchess of Kent, in an 1821 portrait by William Beechey. "My greatest of fears was that I loved her too much," said Victoire. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)" /> The death of Queen Victoria's father Just as Queen Victoria’s path to the throne was not obvious at the time of her birth, her education and training for the position seem at first sight to have been quite shockingly inadequate. One of the problems was the early loss of her father, the Duke of Kent. He had terrible debts, caused partly by an expensive refurbishment of his apartment at Kensington. In the winter of 1819–20, he tried to save money by taking his beloved wife and baby daughter to…

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The love-hate relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his creator: "Conan Doyle felt upstaged by Holmes"
type: item
date: 2023-12-12T17:33:50.000Z
creator: Jonathan Wright
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: Historian Lucy Worsley talks to Jonathan Wright about her new BBC Two series exploring the story of Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle
encoded: Look at a photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) and you seem to be looking at a stolid gentleman. He was, after all, a physician whose peak years straddled the Victorian and Edwardian eras. But read his Sherlock Holmes stories and a different picture emerges, of a man with a vivid, ingenious and macabre imagination. Discussing her new series for BBC Two – Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley On The Case Of Conan Doyle – historian Lucy Worsley tells us about Conan Doyle’s contradictions – and about her affection for his most famous creation. “I hope that if people watch our show, they might be inspired to pick up a book of Sherlock Holmes stories, to turn the pages, and to be transported back to the foggy London of the 1890s with a new sense of its social context and what it all means,” she says. “Literature is a fabulous means of time travel!” When did you first encounter Sherlock Holmes? I have had a lifelong, huge and weird crush on Sherlock Holmes. I remember sneaking The Hound Of The Baskervilles into my school bag because I wanted to finish it illicitly. I’m drawn to him for various reasons that don’t reflect particularly well on me, I think – he’s a loner, he’s obsessed with his work and he’s quite selfish. But when he’s on a case he cares passionately, which redeems him. And also I think that if the lovely Dr Watson loves Mr Holmes, and he very clearly does, then Holmes must at heart be a loveable person. How did Arthur Conan Doyle come up with Sherlock Holmes? Arthur Conan Doyle studied medicine, where all kinds of interesting scientific advances were being made in the later 19th century. In particular, Conan Doyle studied with the famous Dr Joseph Bell [1837–1911, a surgeon who lectured at the University of Edinburgh], who could work out what was wrong with people by minutely analysing every detail of their body and symptoms. You can see Holmes doing the same thing, with his clients and with suspects. He has an almost superhuman power of understanding …

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Lucy Worsley on Agatha Christie: "She’s a genius, she’s an artist, she’s a creative"
type: item
date: 2022-09-12T11:58:19.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Lucy Worsley speaks to Rhiannon Davies about her new biography of the doyen of detective novels, Agatha Christie, and what her life and work reveals about the 20th century
encoded: Rhiannon Davies: Why have you decided to write about Agatha Christie for your new book? Lucy Worsley: I have a bit of an obsession with detective fiction, and I’m also really interested in female writers, so I thought it would be fascinating to view Agatha Christie’s life through the eyes of a historian. And it was such a long life: she was born in 1890 and died in 1976. To me, her books aren’t just entertainment – they’re a record of the social history of the 20th century. So she’s a genius, she’s an artist, she’s a creative – but she’s also a representative woman of her time. A lot of the things that happened to other women in the 20th century happened to her. How did her background inform her life and writing? She was born into a family with money, and I think that’s so important in understanding a lot of the things that happened to her later. Her father was American – so that gave her an international perspective on life right from the start. One of the things people get wrong about Agatha Christie is thinking she’s quintessentially English; in reality, she was from a family of globetrotters. They lived in Torquay, on the south coast of Devon, and Agatha had a very comfortable life in a Victorian villa. They had lots of money and a beautiful garden where, she tells us, she used to play with her imaginary friends. So she was making up stories from an early age. What was expected of a woman of her social class at that time? Get married. She described the philosophy of the people she knew in her childhood as waiting for "the man" who was going to come along and change your life. She had an older sister, Madge, who was sent to boarding school and given some of the values of what was called the "New Woman". This was a middle-class view of femininity: you should be educated, and break barriers, and go out into the world. Clearly, though, her parents didn’t agree. They brought Madge home and put her on the marriage market. She got married – very successfully – to the h…

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Author, adventurer, archaeologist: Agatha Christie’s action-packed life
type: item
date: 2022-09-09T10:26:36.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Agatha Christie is known as the queen of detective fiction. But, as Lucy Worsley reveals, her life contained almost as much drama and mystery as her novels
encoded: Agatha Christie is known as the queen of crime fiction. But, as Lucy Worsley reveals, her life contained almost as much drama and mystery as her novels. Speaking to Rhiannon Davies, she reveals how Agatha Christie was a thoroughly modern woman for her time, and explains how her 80 books reflect the tumultuous transformations Britain went through during her lifetime. Lucy Worsley is the author of Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman (Hodder & Stoughton, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones Read next | Lucy Worsley on Agatha Christie: "She’s a genius, she’s an artist, she’s a creative"

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The survivor, the "incurable" and the scapegoat: Lucy Worsley on the extraordinary lives of three ordinary women
type: item
date: 2022-06-13T15:11:36.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: History is too often presented as tales of “great men” – yet the experiences of ordinary women speak eloquently about the reality of lives past. Lucy Worsley introduces three outwardly unremarkable people caught up in pivotal events...
encoded: Life after the Black Death: how plague opened up new horizons for a Suffolk widow “Why should people study the Black Death?” I asked historian John Hatcher. “Because,” he laughed, “it’ll make you feel better about coronavirus. ”When the bubonic plague swept through England in 1348–49, it wiped out something like half of the population. Giovanni Boccaccio’s classic account of plague symptoms describes how first “swellings in the groin or under the armpits, some egg-shaped, others the size of an apple” would appear. Victims then “began to find dark blotches on their arms and thighs. These were signs that someone would die.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/07/Black-Death-bed-a44ec68.jpg" width="680" height="452" alt="Miniature depicting a couple suffering from the Black Death, the bubonic plague that swept Europe in the Middle Ages. (VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="Miniature depicting a couple suffering from the Black Death, the bubonic plague that swept Europe in the Middle Ages. (VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> The rich were more likely to survive, hiding away on country estates where the risk of infection was lower. Priests, however, had terrible survival rates because, as they heard the confessions of the dying, they were in the direct line of fire. Read more | How the years after the Black Death became a 'golden age' for medieval women Professor Hatcher has studied the Black Death’s rampage through one particular Suffolk village, Walsham le Willows, and led me to the story of one particular woman, Olivia Cranmer, which had rather a surprising ending. In the Suffolk Archives in Bury St Edmunds, the records of the court of Walsham le Willows survive in an astonishing state of preservation. They allow us to track the effects of the pandemic on Olivia’s family, whose name still survives in the part of the village called Cranmer Green. The Cranmers were serfs, with the right to cultivate assigned land. In re…

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How to survive in the Georgian court
type: item
date: 2022-03-24T05:05:00.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Lucy Worsley dons her best jewels and high-heeled shoes to give us a practical guide to etiquette in the snake pit that was the Georgian royal court
encoded: The Great drawing room, crammed full of courtiers, lies at the heart of the Georgian royal palace. Here the king mingles most evenings with his guests, signalling welcome with a nod, and displeasure with a turned back. The winners and losers of the Georgian era – which runs from 1714–1830 with the reigns of Kings George I, through George II and George III, to George IV – can calculate precisely how high they have climbed (or fallen) by the warmth of their reception at court. Although parliament’s power is rapidly growing, ambitious and talented people still flock to court in search of perks and prestige. High-heeled and elegant shoes crush into the palace floorboards the reputations of those who have fallen from favour, while those whose status is on the rise stand firmly in possession of their few square inches of space. Bridgerton: everything you need to know Step into the ballrooms of Regency England, and catch up on the real history that underpins seasons 1 and 2 of Bridgerton, from the real royals to the palaces and promenades | Read more <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/BRIDGERTON_204_Unit_04659R-57b98a4-e1683126162801.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="Bridgerton. Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma, Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton" title="Bridgerton. Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma, Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton in an episode of Bridgerton. The series draws many elements from real Regency-era history" /> So the elegant state apartments of a royal palace are also a battlefield. This is a world of politicking and skulduggery, wigs and beauty-spots, where fans whistle open like flick-knives. Intrigue hisses through the crowd, and court factions are also known as ‘fuctions’. Successful courtiers have level heads and cold hearts. They understand all the nuances of court etiquette, and know how to manipulate them to their advantage.It’s vital, therefore, to learn the rules of the game. What should you wear at court? …

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Lucy Worsley on Blitz Spirit: the courageous stories of six Londoners
type: item
date: 2021-02-05T15:40:14.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical people
description: Lucy Worsley tells the stories of six people who endured the London Blitz, and finds that it was a time of courage and resilience, doubt and despair
encoded: Listen to this article: What does “Blitz Spirit” really mean? It’s a concept that’s frequently invoked in times of crisis: a curiously British commitment to keeping calm and carrying on. Eighty years on from the Blitz, though, it’s worth remembering that the eight months of intense bombing between September 1940 and May 1941 did not comprise just one single, homogeneous experience for the people living in London and the many other British cities affected. Those eight months were indeed a time of remarkable resilience, and of terrible suffering. Yet our clichéd images of the Blitz – jolly singalongs in the air raid shelters, milkmen continuing to deliver as usual to bombed-out houses – don’t tell the whole story. It seems timely, while we’re facing a national crisis of our own, to drill down deeper into the nature of the “Blitz Spirit” – and one way to do that is to look in detail at the personal recollections of Londoners who were there, living and dying beneath the bombs. The government issued propaganda declaring that “London Can Take it” – but would these ordinary people have agreed? The dangers of the Blitz spirit A closer look shows us that Londoners experienced a whole spectrum of doubt and despair as well as the courage and resilience about which we more often hear. And it’s hard to generalise: every person had their own unique experience of the Blitz, as the recollections of these six individuals reveal. NAME: Robert Barltrop AGE IN 1940: 17 JOB: Porter at Sainsbury's The day of 7 September 1940 had been a normal one for Robert, preparing chickens at the Sainsbury’s in east London where he worked. But that afternoon he took up his lookout post on the roof of the building to see the very first raid of the Blitz coming in from the east. The German planes “were flying across my line of vision”, he recalled. “I had a perfect view… they were heading straight for London, and it was going to be the docks that were going to get it… I began to hear thumps, and those …

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Lucy Worsley on royal history's biggest fibs
type: item
date: 2020-11-05T19:50:58.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: How much of what we think we know about history’s big events are actually true? Ahead of a new series of Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley on BBC Two, BBC History Revealed editor Charlotte Hodgman spoke to Lucy about historical misconceptions, the French Revolution and the battle of Waterloo...
encoded: Q: What drew you to investigating some of the misconceptions and inaccuracies of royal history? A: I’ve made some other programmes along the lines of ‘history’s biggest fibs’, and what I like about the subject is that it’s not just about what happened; it’s about the skills a historian needs to assess the evidence and establish the truth of what actually happened – if that is ever possible. So it’s not just about the past; but the practice of history as well. Revolutions against monarchies have historically provided some intense storytelling, fake news, and, well, just plain fibbing, and that’s because the way you win a revolution is to tell the best story. So revolutions seem to be the essence of this idea of royal history’s biggest fibs. Q: One event you reassess is the French Revolution, specifically the role of Marie Antoinette. What did you discover? A: Marie Antoinette is one of those people about whom British people feel a sense of sympathy, but who is still widely hated by the French, and that’s because they’ve been taught to do so by the French revolutionaries. Yet from our perspective, you can see that, as a female and a foreigner, Marie Antoinette was a fantastic scapegoat for all the troubles the French monarchy was going through. Did Marie Antoinette really say “let them eat cake”? Q: Why did the French people focus on Marie Antoinette rather than the king himself? A: It was partly because, in the 18th century, it was difficult to reconcile your belief in the divine authority of your king with the knowledge that actually he’s not that good at his job. And this is an issue that goes back centuries: you don’t blame your king, you blame his ‘evil councillors’. In the case of Marie Antoinette, she had to face the added negativity of being from Austria, an ancient enemy of France. But there was also someone missing from court during Marie Antoinette’s reign, and that was a royal mistress. Louis XVI didn’t have one. So a lot of the negativity that would usual…

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Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would"
type: item
date: 2019-01-17T11:15:28.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Slavery
subject: US presidents
description: To generations of Americans, Abraham Lincoln is the Great Emancipator, the man who ended slavery. But, argues Lucy Worsley, scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find that the president’s motives weren’t as unblemished as many people believe
encoded: The Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC is very familiar to British eyes – not least because American action movies often seem to show it and the other monuments of the capital’s National Mall under attack from terrorists, criminals or even aliens. A spectacular assault on the landmarks of Washington DC is Hollywood shorthand for expressing the idea that America and its values are under threat. But visit the memorial on any summer’s day, and you’ll find it a peaceful place, crowded with schoolchildren paying a first visit to their nation’s capital, and learning from their teachers the basic story of America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. He’s one of the towering figures in the story that Americans tell about themselves in order to explain – in the absence of a long shared history or natural borders – what holds their nation together. Read more: Q&A: Could modern medicine have saved Abraham Lincoln? Lincoln's funniest jokes What the schoolkids very often learn is that Abraham Lincoln is the ‘Great Emancipator’, the man who ended slavery, thereby ending the Civil War of 1861–65 between America’s north, and the breakaway states of its south. And he’s been hero-worshipped by many subsequent Americans for these achievements. “He moved a nation,” said America’s 44th president, Barack Obama, “and helped free a people.” Meanwhile, its 45th once promised to be “more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office”, with just one exception: that of the “late, great Abraham Lincoln”. The Great Emancipator’s memorial is itself a sort of physical embodiment of the post-Civil War, reunited Union. Its builders were careful to use stone from both the southern states that had formed their own Confederacy, and the northern states who remained within the Union. Around the top are the names of individual states, including the Union states that had abolished slavery before the Civil War began, and the Confederate states in which slavery remained legal. But the memorial mi…

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