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How are popes elected? Here's what happens after a pope dies
What comes after a pope dies? Step through the doors of Vatican into the conclave – the secretive, ritualistic and sometimes scandalous process that turns a cardinal into the next pontiff
From the death (or more rarely, resignation) of a pope to the famous white smoke drifting out of a Sistine Chapel chimney, the centuries-old process of electing a new pope is defined by ritual and ceremony, but also secrecy. Taking place behind closed doors, it falls to an assembly of cardinals – a conclave – to vote for the new head of the Catholic Church. What happens when a pope dies? The death of a pope has to be confirmed by a medic, but it is only official once a particular action is taken by the camerlengo – the cardinal who oversees the running of the Vatican’s property and revenue. The camerlengo calls out the pope’s baptismal name three times and only when he receives no response can he declare the death. Traditionally, the camerlengo have also tapped the pontiff’s head with a silver hammer. He then notifies both senior church officials and the general public. The pope’s apartment will be locked – according to a historic practice that prevented looting – and preparations are made for the symbolic destruction of the pope’s ring and seal, signalling the end of his authority. The pope must be buried between four and six days after the death, while the official period of mourning is observed for nine days. Not long after that, the cardinals gather for the conclave. How is a new pope chosen? The conclave explained A conclave is the gathering of cardinals summoned to the Vatican to elect a new pope. Not all members of the College of Cardinals, the most senior clergy of the Catholic Church below the papacy itself, are eligible to participate due to age restrictions. The word derives from the Latin for ‘with a key’, referring to how the cardinals are literally shut away from the wider world while they vote. Conclaves nearly always take place in the event of a pope’s death. Since Gregory XII in 1415, there has only been one papal resignation: Benedict XVI, who, in 2013, left the Holy See citing his advanced age. Read more | Holy smoke, antipopes and power struggles: a guide to popes and the papacy Why are the cardinals shut off from the world? The conclave is held in the highest secrecy, well away from public glare and with the cardinals isolated from any potential external influence. Even the two non-cardinal masters of ceremonies must leave before voting commences. For the entire duration of the conclave, the assembled cardinals must remain in a sealed-off section of the Vatican. They have no access to televisions, radios, newspapers or mobile phones, and must take – along with members of Vatican staff – an oath of secrecy, on threat of excommunication. The process was brought to life in the 2024 film Conclave, helmed by All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger and starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, and based on the bestselling novel by Robert Harris. It follows the workings of a fictional conclave – one filled with scandal and even-deeper secrets – but still helps us to see behind the doors of this peculiar and sometimes controversial procedure. Who votes for a new pope? Not all cardinals are permitted to participate in a conclave. In November 2024, there were more than 230 members of the College of Cardinals around the world, but the maximum number of who can vote is 120. This goes back to 1975, when Paul VI changed the rules so that no cardinal over the age of 80 could be in a conclave. The College of Cardinals have held the responsibility of electing a new pope since 1059, when the process was reformed by Nicholas II. Prior to that, the pope, officially known as the Bishop of Rome, was most likely elected by local clergy and churchgoers, and often under the influence of the Roman emperors and then Holy Roman emperors. Who can be elected as pope? In theory, any baptised male Catholic can become pope. In practice, however, the College of Cardinals always makes their choice from within their own number. The last head of the Catholic Church who was not previously a cardinal was Urban VI, who was elected in 1378. Read more | Has there ever been a married pope? Where are most popes from? Of the 266 popes there have been to date, 217 were born in Italy. The remaining pontiffs have come from 14 other countries, mostly France (16). The only Englishman to head the Catholic Church was Adrian IV, who held the office from 1154-1159. How do cardinals elect a pope? Once gathered from all around the world, the cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel. This is the venue for the conclave. Nine cardinals are randomly selected for particular roles during the election: three ‘scrutineers’ count, check and announce the votes; three ‘infirmarii’ deliver the ballots of any cardinals whose ill health prevents them attending a round of voting; and three ‘revisers’ double-check the work of the scrutineers. A round of voting, or scrutiny, consists of two masters of ceremony distributing paper ballots. They and the other handful of non-cardinals permitted in the Sistine Chapel must then exit. Each cardinal writes the name of their preferred candidate on their ballot, disguising their handwriting, and folds the paper twice, before walking to the chapel’s altar, placing it on a paten (a plate used during the Mass) and sliding it into a chalice. As they do so, they declare, “I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one before God I think should be elected”. The collated ballots are examined one by one by the scrutineers, one whom reads the name on each ballot out loud and another pierces them with a needle to attach them onto a single thread. They are counted to see if any candidate has received the required two-thirds share of the vote. If no one achieves this majority, further rounds of voting will continue until there is a new pope. After a single vote on the first day, there can be four ballots per day. It is forbidden for a cardinal to openly campaign, but discussions in between rounds can assist particular candidates in building support. Finally, the ballots from a failed scrutiny are burned, giving off black smoke to let those outside the Sistine Chapel know that the conclave continues. How long does a conclave take? A conclave will last as long as necessary to secure the election of a new pope. During the last century, the quickest came in 1939 when Pius XII was elected in the third ballot (although the fact that the College of Cardinals only consisted of 62 eligible voters presumably helped the swiftness of the process). The longest conclave in history was held in 1268; or, at least, it began in 1268. Political infighting meant there was no result for nearly three years. During that time, three cardinals died and frustrations reached such a level that the local magistrate removed the roof where the conclave was being held and limited the cardinals to bread and water to force them to agree on a decision. How is a new pope announced? Smoke emanating from the Sistine Chapel chimney is still the first way that announcements from the conclave are made. While black smoke means a failed vote, white smoke means there is a new pope. The different colours are achieved by burning certain chemical mixtures. This is followed by the ringing of the bells of St Peter’s Basilica. Meanwhile, the candidate with the two-thirds majority must formally accept the result of the election. They will then select their papal name, before preparations are made for them to appear on the St Peter’s Basilica balcony for his first blessing. When conclaves go wrong The 13th-century conclave that lasted nearly three years was far from the only time that a papal election did not go to plan. The election of 1378 was accompanied by rioting in Rome from those calling for the new pope to be Italian. They were concerned that most of the cardinals were French. Although Urban VI was elected, there was a split in the Church – the Western Schism – which saw two popes: one in Rome and the other in Avignon. Further civil discord erupted during the conclave of 1559, with protests against one of the strongest candidates after it was revealed he had fathered a son. The election took almost four months before Pius IV became the new pope. That was despite the fact that he had children of his own; he successfully kept their existence a secret.
The balloon-riding Victorians who courted disaster: the true story behind The Aeronauts
In 1862, at a time when interest in ballooning was still at its height, two Victorian men began a flight to make a series of scientific readings. Their hope was to better understand the weather, but, as Nige Tassell explores, their adventurous and record-breaking ascent almost ended in disaster – a story that inspired the 2019 Eddie Redmayne adventure, The Aeronauts…
The sight of a hot air balloon was a popular Victorian spectacle, so the quiet scenes on 5 September 1862 would have made for a curious sight. On the outskirts of the Black Country town of Wolverhampton, two men climbed into the basket of a large balloon, but this was not to be a flight for public entertainment or simple pleasure. Armed with scientific instruments and packing a cargo of six pigeons, the men had loftier intentions. Who was James Glaisher? The more senior of the two was the fabulously bewhiskered scientist James Glaisher, the superintendent of the Magnetic and Meteorological Department at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, who would go on to be a founder member of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. His co-pilot was Henry Coxwell, a highly experienced balloonist. The day’s flight was one of many the men had made together – part of a series of 28 balloon ascents commissioned by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Who was Amelia Wren? Glaisher and Coxwell's 1862 flight was the subject of the 2019 film The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne as James Glaisher. Henry Coxwell was replaced by the fictional Amelia Wren (played by Felicity Jones) who did not exist. Her story was an amalgamation of other female aviators of the day, such as Sophie Blanchard, the first female professional balloonist. What were Glaisher and Coxwell trying to achieve? Glaisher and Coxwell’s mission was to measure the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere to better understand how this governed the weather – perhaps the scientist saw himself as a latter-day Christopher Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan, keen to explore what he called the “aerial ocean”, which offered him “a boundless sea of enquiry”. The weather that September day proved to be kinder than on earlier attempts, especially two months earlier when the pair’s flight plans had been scuppered by unusually high winds for July. At three minutes past 1pm, they released the tethers of their balloon, named Mars, and the upward voyage began. Glaisher was delighted that, on this windless afternoon, they rose “with the ease of an ascending vapour”. The balloon climbed two miles in just 19 minutes, aided by the potent gas supply ‘brewed’ by the manager of the nearby Wolverhampton Gas Works. Once airborne, Glaisher the scientist set about his work. One experiment was to observe how high altitude affected the pigeons he had brought along, so as the balloon reached three miles high, he scooped up a bird and threw it over the side. Glaisher watched as it “dropped like a piece of paper”. A second pigeon, released at the four-mile mark, “flew vigorously round and round, apparently taking a dip each time” then a third was forced to take to the air between four and five miles, but “fell downwards as a stone”. Glaisher didn’t heed these warnings. How did disaster nearly strike Glaisher's balloon flight? As the balloon continued to rise and the temperatures fell, Glaisher began to feel the effects of the thin air himself. His sight became fuzzy, his limbs grew heavy and immovable, and he could not even call out to Coxwell for help. Soon, Glaisher had passed out, his head hanging over the basket. “In an instant, darkness came over me,” his memoirs reported. “I believed I would experience nothing more as death would come unless we speedily descended.” No descent was imminent. Coxwell realised he would have to make the dangerous climb out of the basket and into the balloon’s rigging in order to free the valve line, which had become entangled. It was a crucial piece of equipment as it released gas from the canopy, which in turn allowed the balloon to descend. Coxwell’s first attempt to untangle the valve line ended with an ungraceful tumble back into the basket while experiencing temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius. The balloon continued to rise. When he tried again, he had no feeling in his fingers due to the cold. Desperately, he clamped his teeth around the rope and forcefully tugged. The balloon’s ascent slowed and within a few seconds, the descent began. With the immediate danger now past, Coxwell’s attention could now turn to Glaisher. He initially thought his partner to be resting due to his semi-recumbent position but, after realising the severity of the situation, Coxwell anxiously tried to rouse the unconscious man. “Never shall I forget those painful moments of doubt and suspense as to Mr Glaisher’s state when no response came to my questions,” he later wrote. “I began to fear he would never take any more readings.” His efforts, though, were met with success. “I have been insensible,” declared Glaisher, with typically Victorian understatement, on regaining consciousness. “You have,” confirmed a relieved Coxwell. “And I too very nearly.” Glaisher’s recovery was swift – reporting that “no inconvenience followed my insensibility” – and the first thing he did was to pick up his pencil to continue his readings. Successful scientific endeavour was paramount and certainly not to be dented by the mere trifle of a near-death experience. That was, at least, until he noticed that Coxwell had not gone unaffected. His co-pilot’s hands were black from frostbite so Glaisher immediately sought a remedy, rubbing brandy into the hands until circulation was restored. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/09/GettyImages90744254-a2bce8a-e1725442252912.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A drawing of James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell's balloon ascent on 5 September 1862, which achieved a record altitude of at least 29,000 feet (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" title="A drawing of James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell's balloon ascent on 5 September 1862, which achieved a record altitude of at least 29,000 feet (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" /> The last reading Glaisher made before falling unconscious had been at 29,000ft. Although his calculations that the balloon carried on above 36,000ft are almost certainly flawed (both men would surely have perished at that height), the confirmed height was still higher than anyone else had managed before. As they headed back to terra firma, Glaisher released a fourth pigeon, but it simply hitched a ride atop the balloon. The pair landed in a farmer’s field in Shropshire, 20 miles from the launch site. Since, as Glaisher subsequently moaned, “no conveyance of any kind could be obtained”, he was forced to walk seven miles to the market town of Ludlow to find help. Coxwell stayed behind to look after the balloon as, after a previous landing in the area, the aeronauts had encountered hostility from locals annoyed at potential damage to crops. Was Glaisher and Coxwell's flight a success? Despite the high drama on board, the flight had been an unqualified success – and not only for the altitude reached. The readings from the ascent provided the first direct indication of the existence of the stratosphere, and, as Glaisher’s great-grandson John L Hunt has noted, the events of the day “was one of the first practical examples of the effect of the lack of oxygen on the human body”. Glaisher, as the scientist and project leader, is rightly celebrated for the achievement, but there is a danger of downplaying Coxwell’s contribution. After all, he was the man who ensured the balloon didn’t disappear into the atmosphere and who revived his colleague. Read more | When was the first crossing of the English Channel by air? In the days after they reached for the skies, the duo’s travails were chronicled and lauded by the press. The ascent was the lead story in The Times and Punch magazine celebrated the feat in verse: ‘Tis true that these two men did go Six miles towards the sky; But as for Icarus, we know That story’s all my eye. Then what’s the use to hear about Old heroes’ fabled acts When now they’re beaten out and out By wonders that are facts. And what of the two remaining pigeons? Both landed with the balloon – one dead, but the other, after a short recovery, escaped to the sanctuary of the Shropshire countryside. It would never fly so high again. And neither would Glaisher and Coxwell. Key moments in the rise of the balloon 4 June 1783 Paper manufacturers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier demonstrate the first hot air balloon in France. It stayed aloft for 10 minutes. 21 November 1783 After several tests, the first manned and untethered flight takes place with Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes aboard a Montgolfier balloon. 1 December 1783 A reported 400,000 spectators see the manned gas balloon lift off in Paris. Powered by hydrogen gas, it stays in the air for around two hours and covers a distance of more than 20 miles before landing at Nesles-la-Vallée. 4 June 1784 A young opera singer named Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered balloon. She sings duets with the pilot while aboard La Gustave, christened in honour of Gustav III of Sweden, who was watching the flight. 7 January 1785 French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries fly from Dover, England, to Guînes, France – completing the first aerial crossing of the English Channel. They nearly crash during the two-and-a half-hour voyage. 1798 Jeanne-Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to pilot a balloon solo. The following year, she replicates her husband’s pioneering parachuting achievement by jumping from an altitude of 900 metres. 6 July 1819 Having been flying balloons for 14 years, French aeronaut Sophie Blanchard – the first female professional balloonist and husband to Channel-hopping Jean-Pierre – dies when her hydrogen-filled balloon catches fire. As well as long-distance and high-altitude flights, Blanchard specialised in night-time spectacles during which she would set off fireworks. 7 November 1836 A long-distance record that will last until the 20th century is set when British balloonist Charles Green and two others fly from Vauxhall Gardens in London to the Duchy of Nassau (now in Germany). The 480-mile trip takes 18 hours – although they had prepared for it to take two weeks. 1861-65 During the American Civil War, both the Union and Confederate armies use gas balloons to carry out aerial reconnaissance missions. It is not the first time balloons are used in warfare, though. In 1849, the Austrians sent hundreds of unmanned balloons over Venice armed with bombs in a prototype air raid. 27 May 1931 Sat in a pressurised aluminium capsule attached to a large hydrogen balloon, Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer reach 15,781 metres (nearly 10 miles), becoming the first to enter the Earth’s stratosphere. 4 May 1961 The Strato-Lab V high-altitude hydrogen-filled balloon ascends to a record breaking height of 34,668 metres (more than 21.5 miles), piloted by Americans Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather. The nearly 10-hour flight is successful, with the men wearing the US Navy’s Mark IV full-pressure suit, but ends in tragedy when Prather drowns after the balloon ditches in the sea at the end of the descent. Ross, who had spent more than 100 hours in balloon flight during his career, does not fly again. 11 September 2016 Bill Costen, the first African-American commercial hot-air balloon pilot in the United States, receives a lifetime achievement award from the Balloon Federation of America. The former American Footballer began his ballooning career more than 40 years previously, in 1975. This article was first published in the December 2019 issue of BBC History Revealed
Are you a medieval worshipper looking to demonstrate the strength of your devotion? A pilgrimage could be the answer – and we have the ultimate guide to planning your trip
Where to go There are many reasons for going on pilgrimage. You may wish to undertake the journey to show your religious devotion. You may be doing penance for sins you’ve committed. You may wish to be cured of a serious medical condition or illness, or to gain a cure for someone else. You may wish to make a political protest: to visit the tombs of Simon de Montfort or King Henry VI, because you supported their causes. Or you may just be in need of a holiday and a little adventure. But pilgrimages cost time and money. Most people cannot spend long away from their work, their children or their farm animals. Going a great distance means either walking, which is wearying; travelling in a carrier’s cart for which you have to pay; or riding a horse, which you must own or hire. Then how are you to find food or a bed? You can beg, which is hazardous, or you may be able to stay in a monastery, but often the only alternatives will be inns or private houses charging money. This means that, for most people, pilgrimage is a local matter. You go out for the day, often with friends and neighbours, to visit a nearby abbey, church or chapel. You take a picnic and get home by nightfall. Long pilgrimages to the most famous shrines are chiefly made by the wealthy, who can afford to take time off and have money to spend, or by very devout poor people who support themselves as best they can along the way. Local pilgrimage places are innumerable. Many churches have images of Christ or the Virgin Mary, which are reckoned to be especially holy and where your prayer may be answered. Small chapels are also popular, usually on their festival day once a year, especially ones in romantic places such as hilltops, woods or caves. If you have the means to travel further, there is also a wide choice of places to go. Canterbury Cathedral, with the shrine of Thomas Becket, canonised in 1173, is the most famous and busiest shrine of all, attracting pilgrims from all over Britain and from the Continent. Other notable churches to visit are Walsingham in Norfolk, which has a copy of the Virgin Mary’s house at Nazareth and is a shrine in her honour, and Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire, which possesses some of the blood of Christ in a crystal phial. Of course, anyone lucky enough to live close to these places can easily visit them in a single day. When to go Scheduling your pilgrimage properly will be crucial to your enjoyment of the whole experience. The best time to go is from after Easter until the autumn. This is when the weather is better, the roads are drier and (except at harvest times) there is less work to do on the land. But you do not have to make a pilgrimage the whole point of your travel. If you are going on business, even to a market in a nearby town, or if you are a wealthy member of the aristocracy, moving from manor to manor or to London, this will allow you to call in at churches with an image or a shrine, on the way or at your destination. A pilgrimage can be part of a journey for other reasons. What to bring For your time on the road, you may dress in normal clothes suitable for travelling (Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims were dressed in this way). Some pilgrims, chiefly men, wear a special outfit, but this is not compulsory. It consists of a wooden staff for support (and for warding off hostile dogs), a wide-brimmed hat to protect you from sun and rain, and a bag in which to carry your provisions. Make sure that you also bring or buy an offering to the image or shrine. Candles, coins and jewellery are all acceptable. At the major pilgrimage places, you may purchase a wax image to hang up at the shrine as a sign that you are asking for help, or to give thanks for help you have already received. These can include little human figures, parts of the body such as hearts, limbs and fingers, or images of animals or hawks. How to travel and where to stay It is more pleasant to travel in company than alone. On a short pilgrimage you may go as a church group, and on a longer one, you are likely to find other people on the roads whom you can join. Indeed, Chaucer describes pilgrims from different parts of England – including Devon, Norfolk and Oxford – meeting in Southwark, across the Thames from London, and forming a party to go to Canterbury. You will mostly travel by the ordinary roads rather than by special pilgrim ways. The main roads have inns and shops to buy food, and they are safer as long as you go in a group. You can stay briefly in a monastic almonry, where you may be able to secure basic food and lodging. Monasteries, by the later Middle Ages, however, are tending to build inns for this purpose, and these inns will probably charge for staying, as other inns do. Private houses are likely to take in travellers, but there too some payment will be expected. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/07/GettyImages-464473545-813a3f2.jpg" width="4946" height="3803" alt="Three medieval pilgrim badges. Metal badges, such as these would have been worn as a cherished souvenir of a pilgrim’s travels (Getty Images)" title="Three medieval pilgrim badges. Metal badges, such as these would have been worn as a cherished souvenir of a pilgrim’s travels (Getty Images)" /> When you get there The best time to arrive is the early morning, so that you can attend mass in the church. After that, you will visit the main image or shrine that you have come to see, and there you will make your offering, and pray for your needs. The church may have other relics to show you: when the scholar Erasmus visits Walsingham in 1512, he is shown a bone of Saint Peter and some of the breast milk of the Virgin Mary. But relics are more likely to be brought out for wealthy pilgrims who can be expected to make generous offerings. After visiting the shrine, you may wish to buy a souvenir in the form of a lead or pewter badge to wear on your hat. At Canterbury you can also purchase a small lead phial of water that has been in contact with a drop of the blood of Saint Thomas. This may be taken home and kept for veneration, or for drinking during a serious illness. Four other places to go on pilgrimage Don’t fancy Canterbury? Here are some more holy sites for your consideration... Durham Cathedral The relics of Saint Cuthbert ended up here in AD 995, having not had a permanent home after the Vikings’ sacking of Lindisfarne more than two centuries earlier. The relics were the primary reason for pilgrims to visit Durham, especially after they were placed in the new cathedral in the early 12th century. The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham Located in the Norfolk village of Walsingham, this popular shrine was established in 1061 by a noblewoman who had a vision of the Virgin Mary asking her to build a replica of the house at Nazareth in which she brought up Jesus. St Albans Cathedral The shrine to Saint Alban, a Christian martyr who died at the hands of the Romans (possibly around AD 304), was visited by pilgrims from the fifth century onwards. The Venerable Bede would later describe it as a place where “there ceases not to this day the miraculous cures of many sick persons, and the frequent working of wonders”. St Michael's Mount The saint’s chief shrine in Britain attracted some pilgrims from far away (it seems to have been regarded as Land’s End is today), but it was especially popular as a local place of pilgrimage for Cornish people, most of whom could visit on a short journey. Expect some disapproval Not everyone will approve of you going on pilgrimage. Some images are claimed to have powers that the Church does not endorse, and a few bishops have expressly forbade people from venerating them. A series of writers have also criticised pilgrimage. They include Chaucer’s contemporary, William Langland (the author of the poem Piers Plowman); the followers of John Wycliffe (died 1384), known as the Lollards; and Erasmus in the early 16th century. These men question the superstitions associated with some pilgrim places, and think that human life is the only pilgrimage that God asks us to follow. Instead, people should stay at home, work, go to their local church, and give money to the poor rather than shrines and images. If you ignore these views and still wish to go, just make sure that you do so before 1538, because in that year Henry VIII will ban the practice altogether!
Ancient Roman slavery: what was life like as an enslaved person?
HistoryExtra Academy Roman Britain course
Whether you worked in the mines or as a concubine, slavery in ancient Rome was a repressive and cruel practice. Here we explore the dangerous world of forced labour...
The Roman empire was hugely dependent on forced labour. It was a key foundation on which ancient Rome’s power, wealth and influence was built. What jobs did Roman enslaved people do? A great many Roman enslaved people were set to work in menial and manual jobs – including agriculture, mining and construction. As historian Philip Matyszak explains, these types of jobs could be particularly brutal. “Being sent to the mines was a drawn-out death sentence,” he says “They worked in very dangerous, very unhealthy conditions lit by oil lamps, constantly breathing in fumes. They worked in a state of acute misery.” Unfortunately, those working above ground in agriculture fared little better. “They were treated by the farmers as part of the livestock; offered as much compassion as was given to the cattle, the sheep and the goats.” Some of those enslaved, however, undertook work in what would now be considered white-collar jobs, such as teaching or accounting. For instance, middle-class Roman families, in their admiration of Greek culture, would often seek out educated slaves from Greece as home tutors for their children. Enslaved people from lands deemed to be of lesser cultural worth, such as Britain or Germany, were generally less attractive when it came to work that carried with it a level of responsibility. What jobs did enslaved people do in ancient Rome? Here are three examples... Agricultural slaves Agricultural slaves toiled in the fields and endured terrible conditions. As well as being worked to the bone and malnourished, they were also commonly chained up and forced to sleep in ergastula (prison barracks). Praegustator (food taster) Roman feasts boasted flowing wine, sumptuous dishes – and the threat of poison. In the imperial household, a praegustator would sample all the delicacies before they touched the emperor’s lips, to make sure they weren’t poisoned. Nomenclator (name caller) At parties, feasts and political functions, a nomenclator’s job was to tell their master the name of whomever they met, so they would be saved the embarassment of not recognising who they were speaking to. Who could be forced into Roman slavery? That educated people could be put into slavery illustrates the idea that a large swathe of the population could be susceptible to a life – or a good few years, at least – in servitude. “Anyone could be a slave,” says Matyszak. Read more | Roman Britain “It was one of those misfortunes that could happen, like getting a terrible illness. You could decide to go off and visit a temple in Greece, get caught by pirates on the way and end up in the olive fields in north Africa. It was something that could happen to a lot of people.” How did Roman people become enslaved? Piracy was just one way in which people became ensnared in slavery. Any child born to an enslaved mother would automatically become enslaved themselves – regardless of the social standing of their father. There were also plenty of instances of free children being sold into slavery in order to improve a family’s financial circumstances or settle a debt. Read more | The Invisible Romans: how the brutal lives of the enslaved shaped an empire Many enslaved people hailed from the territories into which the Roman republic had expanded: a large proportion of these were former enemy soldiers, spared execution in return for spending the rest of their days in forced labour. According to Matyszak, it would be fair to suggest that certain military campaigns were effectively recruitment drives: “Some of the Republican wars in Greece almost translate as huge slave-raiding expeditions. The sack of Epirus, in 167 BC, for instance, ended with some 150,000 people enslaved.” With the vast majority of Rome’s geographical expansion occurring during the days of the republic, the early era of the subsequent Roman empire – the relatively stable period known as Pax Romana – saw this supply line very much dwindle. Accordingly, legislation was introduced to further limit the ability of a slave to find freedom. Were Roman enslaved people seen as property? Under Roman law, enslaved people were considered property. As with personal possessions, the wealthier you were, the more enslaved people you owned and the higher your social standing. The most prosperous households owned slaves for every imaginable purpose, purchased at the slave markets found in almost all Roman towns. Whether a slave was needed for cooking, for childcare or as a concubine, during the late Roman republic at least, supply was high and trade was brisk. Read more | How Roman enslaved people could buy their freedom Devoid of legal rights, certainly during the republic, slaves were subjected to whatever punishment their owners meted out. Disobedience was met with brutal treatment that was often violent – and potentially fatal. For instance, in the event of a slave murdering his master, the punishment had dire consequences for the late owner’s other slaves, all of whom faced execution too. Certain slaves – particularly those working in more prestigious roles – could develop a close relationship with their owner, which sometimes resulted in the slave being freed. This was the experience of Tiro, who worked as Cicero’s secretary for many years. The goodwill of slave owners was rare, though. Many slaves who were freed only did so by saving up any modest income – such as money given to them by their master for small personal expenses – and buying their way out of servitude. Was Spartacus an enslaved person? While escaping from forced work was almost exclusively an individual pursuit, there are examples of slaves rising up against the system, either against their own master or in organised rebellions. The most famous rebellion was led by the Thracian gladiator Spartacus in 73 BC in one of the Servile Wars. It’s believed that Spartacus was killed in battle, while the surviving 6,000 slaves who had followed him were crucified, their bodies gruesomely strung up along a road called the Appian Way. The normal balance of power had been restored. Very little is known for certain about Spartacus, but the records do show that he was sold into slavery to a gladiatorial school in Capua, 16 miles north of Naples. He may have come from Thrace and could have fought in the Roman army – it’s believed that the name Spartacus may have been given to him once he was enslaved. Spartacus escaped captivity in 73 BC, along with 70 other enslaved people. Together, they made their stand on Mount Vesuvius, defeating the forces sent to deal with them. This victory inspired other runaway slaves flocked to their side – it’s estimated that Spartacus’s army numbered 100,000 at its peak. Read more | Who were the gladiators of ancient Rome? Initially Rome didn’t take what it saw as a minor revolt seriously, but after a number of victories, General Marcus Licinius Crassus was sent to put an end to what would become known as the Third Servile War. By 71 BC, Crassus had defeated the slave army and 6,000 surviving rebels were crucified. Spartacus is believed to have been killed in battle, but his body has never been found. Although Spartacus was ultimately unsuccessful, his attempt to rid the republic of slavery went on to inspire reams of books, films and television shows, as well as others hoping to instigate revolutions. Nige Tassell is a freelance journalist specialising in history This content first appeared in the September 2020 issue of BBC History Revealed Caesar: Death of a Dictator Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since. Listen to all episodes now Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy Roman Britain course Video lecture: The Humble and the Proud – watching time 18 mins Roman Britain: what six objects can reveal about life for women at Hadrian's Wall – reading time 9 mins Black Britannia: the African people who lived in Roman Britain – reading time 5 mins How ethnically diverse was Roman Britain? – reading time 3 mins
Did Coco Chanel collaborate with the Nazis during WW2?
Coco Chanel is one of the most famous fashion designers of the 20th century, known for her haute couture and legendary fragrances. Her life during the Second World War, however, has led to much intrigue – for very different reasons. Nige Tassell explores the real-life figure featured in Apple TV+’s The New Look…
Coco Chanel is one of the most famous fashion designers of the 20th century, and was a rival of another fashion titan – Christian Dior. She's become known for her haute couture and legendary fragrances, particularly Chanel No. 5. Chanel's life during the Second World War is depicted in Apple TV+’s series The New Look, released on 14 February. Set against the backdrop of occupied France, it explores the darker side to Chanel – including her collaboration with the Nazis. Coco Chanel's early life Born Gabrielle Boheur Chanel in western France in 1883, Coco Chanel would become one of the most famous fashion designers of the 20th century. Having grown up in straitened circumstances (her father was an itinerant peddler of clothes, her mother was a laundrywoman), she acquired the nickname ‘Coco’ during her time as a café singer in Paris in her twenties, her signature song being Has anyone seen Coco? Also working as a seamstress by day, Chanel became the mistress of Étienne Balsan, an heir to a textile empire and, accordingly, began to revolve around higher social circles. A subsequent affair with a wealthy Englisman, Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel’, brought his investment in her career as a designer – and the opening of her first shop in 1910. Her reputation swiftly grew and, for the next couple of decades, Chanel’s designs became known for their relaxed chic. In 1921, she also launched the legendary fragrance Chanel No 5. Did Coco Chanel really collaborate with Nazis? When war broke out in 1939, Chanel brought her highly successful business to a close, convinced that fashion was an uncommercial pursuit in time of war. Such was the extent of her empire that as many as 4,000 employees were suddenly out of work. Chanel later expressed her regret at closing down her fashion house. “How could I suppose there would still be people who would buy dresses?” she explained. “I was so stupid, such a dummy about life … Some people sold dresses all during the war.” After the Germans invaded France in the spring of 1940 and proceeded to occupy more than half of the country, including the capital, Chanel remained in Paris. She lived in the Hotel Ritz in the city, an establishment used as Nazi headquarters when they first invaded. Read more | How did the Nazi party rise to power in Germany in 1933? Described in French intelligence papers as a “vicious anti-Semite”, Chanel seemingly felt at home among these German officers. Indeed, she lobbied the Nazis to remove the Jewish directors of the highly profitable fragrance business Parfums Chanel: the Wertheimer family. Further illustrating her compliance with the German occupation of her homeland, to oust the Wertheimers, she enlisted the services of the lawyer René de Chambrun – the son-in-law of Pierre Laval, the prime minister of the puppet Vichy Government. Did Coco Chanel have a relationship with a Nazi known as ‘Spatz’? While living at the Hotel Ritz, Chanel began an affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, the press attaché at the German embassy in Paris. Known as ‘Spatz’ (meaning ‘sparrow’), von Dincklage was also a spy, and reportedly the conduit by which Chanel was recruited into the German intelligence services. Their relationship provided the title of Hal Vaughan’s 2011 biography of Chanel’s wartime years: Sleeping With The Enemy. Did Coco Chanel travel to Madrid under the command of the Nazis? In Sleeping With The Enemy Vaughan reveals, through the use of declassified papers, that Chanel had not only been issued with a spy number, but that she had also been given a codename (‘Westminster’). Further confirmation of her collaboration came in 2014 when more documents were declassified, which indicated that Chanel had been set to Madrid by the Nazis to meet with the British ambassador, and apparently act as a secret negotiator for peace in the case that an Allied victory looked inevitable. However, this mission – Operation Modellhut, or Operation Model Hat – ran into difficulties when Chanel’s close friend, Vera Bate Lombardi, who had also been recruited and accompanied Chanel to Madrid, denounced the designer as a Nazi spy to officials at the British embassy in the Spanish capital. Who was Vera Bate Lombardi? Referred to in the new Apple TV+ series The New Look as Elsa Lombardi, Vera Bate Lombardi was born Vera Arkwright. Very much part of the British elite, Vera Bate Lombardi was hired by Coco Chanel in 1920 as a PR executive for the House of Chanel. Their subsequent deep friendship brought Chanel into contact with the very highest echelons of British society, including an introduction to the future King Edward VIII. In 1943, Lombardi was arrested by the Italian police force, who suspected her of spying for Britain, though she was released without charge a week later. The following year, she accompanied Chanel to Madrid on what she believed was a business trip, but which was actually an espionage mission. While in the Spanish capital, Lombardi’s declaration to British officials that Chanel was a Nazi spy scuppered the operation. In 1948, Lombardi was dead. The real cause of death has never been announced. Was Coco Chanel arrested for her involvement with the Nazis? Although she underwent questioning before the Free French Purge Committee in the autumn of 1944, the lack of definitive evidence against Chanel in respect of her work with the Germans saw that no further action was taken. Strong suspicions abounded that powerful figures – including Winston Churchill, who was an old friend of Chanel’s – had intervened to secure her release. What was Coco Chanel’s life like after the war? Chanel reopened her fashion house in the mid-1950s, despite by that time being in her seventies. Other than a comparatively short time spent living in Switzerland, Chanel remained a resident of the Hotel Ritz in Paris until her death. Read more | The real Christian Dior: who was the man behind The New Look? How did Coco Chanel die? Coco Chanel died from a heart attack in her room in January 1971. She never had children, and her not-inconsiderable estate was inherited by her nephew André (whom she had cared for after the death of his mother), and her two great-nieces. Period drama podcast episodes Member exclusive | Browse our archive of podcasts that explore behind the scenes of the much-loved period dramas, from Bridgerton to Masters of the Air... Explore now <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" /> The first three episodes of The New Look are available to stream on Apple TV+ from 14 February, with new episodes airing weekly until 3 April.
The real history behind The Zone of Interest: Did Rudolf Höss really live next door to Auschwitz?
As Nazi-next-door thriller The Zone of Interest arrives in cinemas, we explore the life of Rudolf Höss – the Auschwitz commandant who set up a family home just beyond the walls of the infamous concentration camp
One of the chief perpetrators of the Holocaust, Rudolf Höss was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, inside which around one million Jews were murdered during Second World War. Höss is the subject of a new film written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest, in which his peculiar home life is examined. The Höss family lived in a luxurious villa directly next door to the gas chambers and crematoria of the camp. There, Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), constructed an apparent idyll for their children, despite the horrors taking place just beyond the garden wall. The film is derived from Martin Amis’s novel of the same name, though the plot is slightly different, telling the story of a Nazi officer who becomes infatuated with the wife of Auschwitz’s commandant; the commandant, Paul Doll – a fictionalised version of Rudolf Höss. View oEmbed on the source website Who was Rudolf Höss? Rudolf Höss was the commandant of Auschwitz between May 1940 and November 1943, and returned to the camp between May 1944 and January 1945 to supervise the extermination of Hungarian Jews. Read more | The liberation of Auschwitz, 75 years on: what happened and how do we remember the Holocaust? He was from a military family, and at the age 14 joined the German army to fight in the First World War. By the time he was 17, he was already a non-commissioned officer. He was awarded both the Iron Crescent and the Iron Cross. After evading capture at the end of the war, Höss joined a number of nationalist paramilitary groups. He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1922 and, two years later, was convicted of the murder of a local schoolteacher believed to be supplying intelligence to the French occupational authorities. Sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, he served four. Within a year of his release, he married Hedwig Hensel, with whom he started a family. On the podcast | Nazi Germany: everything you wanted to know Rudolf Höss in WW2 In 1934, Höss joined the SS and was swiftly appointed as block leader at the Dachau concentration camp, a facility designed to incarcerate Adolf Hitler’s political enemies. Four years later, and by now an SS captain, he moved to the Sachsenhausen camp. After the Second World War broke out, Höss was commissioned to establish a concentration camp in occupied western Poland. He recommended adapting a disused army barracks, which became Auschwitz. Under his direction, the camp rapidly expanded and many Russian and Polish prisoners-of-war would meet their premature deaths there, whether by execution or starvation. View Green Video on the source website Rudolf Höss and the Holocaust In June 1941, Höss received direct instructions from the chief architect of the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, to use Auschwitz as the main crucible of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ – the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population. Höss experimented with various methods of mass murder, particularly those involving gassing huge numbers of people. By the start of his return to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, nearly 10,000 Jews were being murdered at Auschwitz every day. The number who lost their lives there was around one million. Read more | A brief history of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne Frank died What was the Zone of Interest? By the end of 1940, to further distance and isolate the horrors of Auschwitz from public scrutiny, the SS commandeered all the land surrounding the camp to create a 40-square-kilometre exclusion zone, to be patrolled by both themselves and the Gestapo. This was the ‘Zone of Interest’ or Interessengebiet. The Höss family home sat inside this zone – largely in the shadow of the camp, in fact. A handsome villa with generous gardens and a swimming pool, it would provide the Hösses with a perversely ‘idyllic’ lifestyle, if the smoke from the crematoria chimneys, and the noise of frequently arriving trains full of the condemned, could be ignored. The children played happily with their pet dog in the garden, while Hedwig Höss dedicated herself to keeping the plants and bushes looking spruce. She kept herself spruce, too. As well as wearing fur coats confiscated from those heading to their deaths, she called upon the design and sewing skills of a couple of dozen female prisoners, as revealed in Lucy Adlington’s book The Dressmakers of Auschwitz. Read more | Sewing for the Nazis: who were the dressmakers of Auschwitz? Saved from the gas chambers, the group – known as the Upper Tailoring Studio – designed and produced high-end clothing for the wives of the camp’s officers and guards. Did Rudolf Höss's wife Hedwig know what happened in Auschwitz? Hedwig Höss apparently never visited the camp that was on her doorstep, nor did her husband tell her exactly what went on behind its high walls. But it is scarcely believable that, such were the vast numbers of daily arrivals at the camp by train, she would be unaware of the heinous acts being carried out under Höss’s instructions. Indeed, Höss himself said as much once he was captured after the war – that both Hedwig and their teenage son Klaus knew full well what was occurring just beyond their well-tended garden. “The smell of the burning bodies could leave no-one in any doubt.” What was Operation Höss? The reason for Höss’s return to Auschwitz in May 1944 was to oversee what became known as Operation Höss, where almost 400,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to the camp in a period shorter than two months. So vast were the numbers arriving that they exceeded the capacity of both the gas chambers and the multiple crematoria. Instead, they were led into fire pits, fatally shot and their bodies burnt. What happened to Rudolf Höss and his family after WW2? As the Third Reich fell, Höss went on the run and became a target for British army personnel hunting down escaped Nazis. In March 1946, these hunters tracked down Hedwig Höss and her children to the small town of Sankt Michaelisdonn in northern Germany, nearly 1,000 kilometres north-west of Auschwitz. Here, she had taken employment in a local sugar factory. Hedwig told the hunters that she last saw her husband in the April of the previous year and that he had subsequently died. Suspicious that they were being misled, the investigators subjected her to six days of interrogation, at which point she cracked and revealed the truth: her husband was alive and living in a remote farmhouse near the Danish border. The investigators swiftly made their way there, surrounding the farmhouse and taking Höss by surprise; he greeted them in his pyjamas. Initially claiming to be a farm worker called Franz Lang, Höss soon confessed to his actual identity. Höss was passed on to the unit responsible for investigating war crimes. He supplied a written confession while in custody: “I personally arranged, on orders received from Himmler in March 1941, the gassing of two million persons between June/July 1941 and the end of 1943, during which time I was commandant of Auschwitz.” He then offered testimony at the Nuremberg trials, implicating certain SS officers who had denied the heinous events at Auschwitz and other camps. He stood trial in Warsaw before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal and was sentenced to death three weeks later. Symbolically, Höss was hanged at the Auschwitz site, little more than a few dozen yards from his family’s former home. Hedwig Höss died while visiting her daughter in the United States, in Washington, DC in 1989 at the age of 81. Her son Klaus had also emigrated: he died in New South Wales three years before his mother as a result of chronic alcohol abuse. The Zone of Interest is in UK cinemas from 2 Febraury 2024
Alternate history: what if James II and VII had kept his throne?
Nige Tassell asks Professor Ted Vallance about the future of both monarchy and state religion had James II and VII not been usurped in 1688
In late 1688, King James II of England and Ireland, James VII of Scotland, saw his near-four-year reign drift to an end, after which he disappeared into exile. Replacing him on the throne were his son-in-law William III of Orange, the leader of the Dutch Republic, and William’s wife, James’s daughter Mary II. In England, the change in monarchs, known as the Glorious Revolution, was achieved with little bloodshed. James chose to disband his army, allowing William and his troops, having landed in Devon, to make their way to London relatively unimpeded. It might have been a largely peaceful surrender of power, but it was a significant one, too. William and Mary’s joint reign broke the notion of the divine right of kings by introducing a ‘contract’ between the monarchy and the people, as represented by Parliament. James, in contrast, had favoured a tighter concentration of power within one individual: himself. Had James repelled William and Mary’s invasion, what kind of monarchy might have developed under him? In context: the rule of James II and VII James II and VII may have ruled for fewer than four years, but his reign marked a turbulent time, both politically and religiously. Aiming to both curb the powers of Parliament and strengthen the hand of his fellow Catholics, he encountered significant opposition from politicians and clergymen alike. This tumult was resolved by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which saw James’s removal from the throne and his replacement by his daughter Mary and her husband, William III of Orange. England was once again under Protestant rule, and the notion of the divine right of kings was punctured forever. “First of all, we need to understand James’s aims for Parliament,” explains Professor Ted Vallance of the University of Roehampton and author of The Glorious Revolution: 1688 – Britain’s Fight For Liberty (Little, Brown, 2006). “He aimed to fashion a House of Commons that would vote for the repeal of the Penal Laws, which excluded Catholics from public life. In this respect, he sought to make Parliament more ‘manageable’, and to use his prerogative powers to dissolve it when it became troublesome.” Read more | How glorious was the Glorious Revolution? Professor Vallance certainly cautions against any notion that the king sought to remove the legislature wholesale. “Had James done away with Parliament entirely, it would have actually made it hard for him to govern,” he explains. “Parliament represented England’s governing classes – its most powerful figures and the individuals who ensured the smooth operation of local government. The rapid swings of political fortune over James’s reign were already creating a chaotic political situation at local level.” Risk of revolution If the situation had been allowed to persist, could this chaos have turned into some kind of popular revolution capable of registering a significant blow to the monarchy itself? “It’s doubtful that domestic resistance would have posed much of an immediate threat to his authority,” observes Professor Vallance. “The king had built up a sizeable army, which had already demonstrated that it could deal effectively with uprisings, as shown by the crushing defeat of Argyll’s and Monmouth’s rebellions in 1685.” If, in the event James ruled for longer, Parliament had been clipped and curbed, what about the country’s religious make-up? “Some contemporaries believed that James’s intention was to restore Roman Catholicism as the religion of the state,” says Professor Vallance. “The long-term impact of having a Catholic dynasty in a Protestant country would surely have given a boost to the Catholic community in England, at the same time weakening the connection between the church and the monarchy. Even if England had not officially become a Catholic nation, there is a strong possibility that it would have ceased to be an Anglican one.” On assuming power, William quickly established a ‘Grand Alliance’, including England and the Dutch Republic, to firm up support in the Nine Years’ War against Louis XIV’s France. Had James remained on the throne, what would have been the nature of English foreign policy, particularly in relation to the French against the Protestant Dutch? Fighting France “I think the response would have been very different,” says Professor Vallance, “but it would not necessarily have seen England side with the French. Louis’s ambitions seemed limitless, so Catholic as well as Protestant heads of state were wary of the threat that France posed to their own interests. England staying out of the conflict at the beginning is perhaps the most likely scenario.” And would the French have gained quick superiority over the Dutch without the latter receiving naval support from England? “What seems most likely is a shorter conflict, with a peace favouring the French.” Finally, had James been succeeded by his son James, Prince of Wales, the subsequent route of succession would have taken a different path, and the British throne would not have been occupied by such era-defining monarchs as George III, Victoria and Elizabeth II. “Perhaps we don’t need to get too caught up in the dazzling personalities of these royals,” concludes Professor Vallance. “The Glorious Revolution also bequeathed us George I and George II. The likely alternative outcome would have been the same old hereditary lottery, with some good monarchs and some bad.” More from our alternate history series What if... the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated? What if... Napoleon had defeated Russia? What if... George III had not 'lost' the colonies? What if... the Spanish Armada had landed in England? What if... Alexander the Great hadn't died so young? What if... Argentina had won the Falklands War? What if... Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s first son had lived? What if... Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor? This article was first published in the October 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
Bayard Rustin: the quiet force behind the March on Washington
A lifelong advocate of peaceful protest, Bayard Rustin would become one of the driving forces behind the US civil rights movement – though his sexuality forced him into the shadows. With the arrival of the Netflix film about his life, Nige Tassell explores the real Rustin
Who was Bayard Rustin? An advocate of pacifist agitation, Bayard Rustin was a pivotal figure within the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s. He was not only the leading force behind the highly significant March on Washington in 1963, but he was also a close adviser and confidante of Dr Martin Luther King until the latter’s assassination in Memphis in 1968. But Rustin remains a less-heralded figure of the civil rights movement, who faced both discrimination and opposition due to his status as an openly gay man. Despite working behind-the-scenes rather than in the limelight, his legacy is that of a lifelong commitment to pacifism and social justice. How did Bayard Rustin become involved in the civil rights movement? Born in 1912, the young Bayard Rustin was raised by his maternal grandparents in West Chester near Philadelphia. He had first-hand contact with some of the leading African-American activists of the day through his grandmother, Julia. Julia Rustin was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the organisation’s leaders, including such luminaries as WEB Du Bois, were frequent visitors to the family home. The influence of his grandmother and these senior NAACP figures on Rustin was instant and direct. During his teenage years, he campaigned against the injustice of local Jim Crow laws that stymied the rights and freedoms of West Chester’s African-American population. “He had a strong inner spirit,” one of his school friends once observed. “Some of us were ready to give up the fight and accept the status quo. But he never would.” His years of study at Wilberforce University, an African-American college in Ohio, ended before Rustin took his final exams – he was expelled for organising a strike. In 1936, he moved to Harlem to enroll at City College of New York. Again, though, activism usurped academia and Rustin became deeply involved in the Scottsboro Case – a campaign for the release of nine African-American men falsely jailed (and facing the death penalty) for the alleged rape of two white women on a train. The men faced multiple trials and retrials – even after one of the women confessed the crime to be a fabrication – and were eventually convicted and imprisoned for life. The case revealed to Rustin the true depth of white racism in 20th-century United States. Where to watch the Rustin movie Executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, Rustin is a biopic charting the most momentous years of Bayard's Rustin's life – his time as a close confident of Martin Luther King and architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But as the trailer reveals, civils rights was not the only battle that Rustin was fighting. As an openly gay man, he faced opposition from all quarters. Rustin is in cinemas now and will be available to stream on Netflix from 17 November View oEmbed on the source website What was Bayard Rustin’s involvement in the March on Washington? During the 1940s and 1950s, Rustin continued to organise a significant number of campaigns and protests. In 1956, he became a key member of Martin Luther King’s inner circle. This was thanks to the advice and guidance offered during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, the year-long, city-wide protest about segregation on public transport. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/11/GettyImages-94988758-173db3c-e1699026821750.jpg" width="2238" height="1488" alt="Bayard Rustin with Martin Luther King and other US civil rights leaders at teh" title="Bayard Rustin (right) became a confident of Martin Luther King. They's pictured here at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, alongside the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy (left) and Aaron E. Henry (second from right). (Photo by Getty)" /> Almost seven years later came the achievement for which Rustin is probably most remembered. Together with A. Philip Randolph, president of both the Negro American Labor Council and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Rustin organised one of the largest public protests in US history – the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On 28 August 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators took part in the march in the nation’s capital, to demand greater civil rights and social justice. Rustin and Randolph had been planning the event for more than 18 months, but recent events – including, that June, the murder of NAACP executive Medgar Evans on his driveway in Mississippi – ensured it took on further historical significance. President John F Kennedy’s civil rights legislation was slowly working its passage through Congress, but the march added extra ballast to the cause. Although derided by the more militant leader Malcolm X as “a picnic” and “a circus”, the march provided conspicuous evidence to white America of the effectiveness of peaceful protest. While the day is most remembered for Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, Randolph was also one of the event’s key speakers. Even Rustin took to the podium, reading aloud the marchers’ demands. US Civil Rights: Fighting for Freedom – A HistoryExtra podcast series Member exclusive | In mid-20th century America, hundreds of thousands of cvil rights activists squared up against racism – marching, campaigning, and even putting their lives at risk in the fight for racial equality. In this HistoryExtra podcast series, expert historians share some of the movement's most recognisable stories, as well as shining a light on some of its forgotten figures and exploring how its legacy continues to shape the world. Listen to all five episodes now How well did Bayard Rustin know Martin Luther King? While certain vociferous quarters of the civil rights movement called for violent tactics to advance the African-American cause – “by any means necessary” became a buzz phrase – Rustin’s Quaker heritage meant the adoption of a pacifist, non-violent approach was unstintingly his worldview. Take his organisation of the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947, when eight white and eight African-American men embarked on a two-week journey across the southern states to challenge segregation laws in what was a precursor of the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s. For Rustin, reconciliation outscored revenge. Before meeting Rustin in the mid-1950s, Martin Luther King hadn’t used the word ‘non-violent’ in his public pronouncements, but after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his book Stride Towards Freedom included a chapter entitled ‘Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’. Others in the movement were a little distrusting of Rustin, citing both his homosexuality and his prior membership of the American Communist Party (he had left in 1941). Martin Luther King held no such concerns. “We are thoroughly committed to the method of nonviolence in our struggle,” he once wrote to a colleague in the movement, “and we are convinced that Bayard’s expertness and commitment in this area will be of inestimable value.” What was Bayard Rustin’s life as a gay man like? During the 1940s, Rustin’s partner was Davis Platt, who later noted that he “never had any sense at all that Bayard felt any shame or guilt about his homosexuality”, an outlook that was “rare in those days”. Although honest and candid privately, Rustin didn’t go public about his personal life until 1953, when he was arrested for “sex perversion” with two men in a parked car in Pasadena, California, for which he served 60 days in jail. For the last ten years of his life, Rustin’s partner was the artist and photographer Walter Naegle. At that time, two men weren’t permitted to enter into any kind of official civil partnership and so, in 1982, Rustin legally adopted Naegle, then aged 32, as a way of protecting the younger man’s rights. “That was the only thing we could do to kind of legalise our relationship.” What happened to Bayard Rustin? As a gay man, Rustin was never going to be the poster boy for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, rather than at the lectern or the ballot box, he made his influence felt behind the scenes, both as a highly persuasive advisor and tireless organiser. During the 1970s, Rustin shifted politically towards neoconservatism, and throughout the 1980s, until his death in 1987, put gay rights at the centre of his activism. For him, African-Americans were no longer “the litmus paper” of social change: “gay people are the new barometer”. In 2013, Rustin was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. The citation declared that “as an openly gay African-American, Mr Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights”. Sixteen years after his death, the man in the shadows finally took centre stage.
Israel’s Iron Lady: the real story of Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur War
New film Golda delves into Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's handling of the 1973 Yom Kippur War
One of the signatories to the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence, Golda Meir would eventually become Israel’s first female prime minister. Born in Kiev, and later immigrating first to the US and then to Palestine, she was part of Israel’s founding generation. Her tenure as prime minister, from 1969 until 1974, was not without controversy – within three months she had claimed there was “no such thing as Palestinians”, later prompting a claim she was misquoted. But her time in office was most famously marked by the Yom Kippur War, the fallout of which would bring an end to her political career. Director Guy Nattiv’s film Golda, starring Helen Mirren as the chain-smoking prime minister, is a character biopic that homes in on those three weeks of the Yom Kippur War, the defining period of her premiership. View oEmbed on the source website Who was the real Golda Meir? Born Goldie Mabovitch in Kiev on 3 May 1898, Golda Meir was born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family, the second surviving child of Moshe Mabovitch and Blume Neiditch. In 1906, Moshe moved his family to Milwaukee, having spent the previous three years in the United States himself, working various jobs to raise enough money for the family to settle in the Midwest. The young Golda fitted in well into her new community and, in junior school, quickly developed a reputation for activism, co-founding the American Young Sisters Society to help her fellow students afford textbooks. She was just ten years old at the time. After her high school years in both Milwaukee and Denver, Meir attended a teaching college back in Wisconsin and was working in a Yiddish-speaking school by 1917, the same year that she became a naturalised US citizen and got married. When did Golda Meir return to Palestine? In 1921, Meir and her husband Morris Myerson migrated to Palestine, with her connection to Labour Zionism – the socialist variant of Zionism – very strong by this point. After time spent living and working on a kibbutz, a form of collective community, the couple moved to Jerusalem, where they raised two children. Beyond her family, politics was Meir’s main preoccupation, and she was on a clear upward trajectory. After serving as secretary of a working women’s council, she worked extensively for the Jewish Agency for Israel during the Second World War, an organisation promoting the immigration of Jews to Israel. Even a heart attack couldn’t slow Meir’s activities and, in May 1948, she was one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. How did Golda Meir become Israel’s first female prime minster? The following year, Meir was appointed as labour minister in the new government, a post she held for seven years before becoming foreign minister for the next decade. She resigned from the Israeli government in 1966, having been diagnosed with lymphoma. However, the sudden death of prime minister Levi Eshkol in February 1969 prompted an election for his successor as leader of the Israeli Labor Party. Nine days later, an internal ballot pushed Meir into the role, thrusting her back into the frontline of political life. She was 70 years old. Meir was Israel’s first – and, still, only – female prime minister. Seven months later, she won the general election in emphatic fashion. Popular with the Israeli people, her premiership wasn’t without controversy, most infamously when she declared that “there was no such thing as Palestinians”, one of the most public denials of the existence of Palestinian identity. What was the Yom Kippur War? The Yom Kippur War was a short-lived conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, which took place over a period of 19 days in October 1973. Israel had been occupying both Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and a significant proportion of Syria’s Golan Heights for the previous six years since the Six Day War of 1967. Attempts to broker a settlement, which would have included a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from both regions, never found sufficient common ground. With Meir’s government steadfastly refusing the proposals offered by the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the Arab coalition chose the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur on which to launch a counter-offensive, taking Meir and her ministers by surprise. After Israeli successes in the Six Day War, complacency had crept in, and the sudden attack caught its military commanders off guard. In the Sinai, the Egypt military successfully pushed Israeli forces back, although Syria’s recovery of the Golan Heights was soon reversed by a counterattack from Israel. What role did Golda Meir play in the Yom Kippur War? The end of the Yom Kippur War signalled the descent of Golda Meir’s political career, with the prime minister regularly blamed for Israel’s lack of preparedness when hostilities broke out. With their overtures for peace negotiations being consistently rebuffed by Meir, many believed that the Arab countries had little option other than to engage militarily. Even on the eve of the war, the Israeli intelligence corps didn’t wholeheartedly recognise the threat and, as de facto head of the military, Meir failed to have her troops fully prepared and put on standby. In fact, just a few hours before Egyptian forces moved into the Sinai, the Israeli minister of defence, Moshe Dayan, was still advising his prime minister that the threat of invasion remained comparatively low. The feeling – as ill-judged as it proved to be – was that Israel’s success in the Six Day War would have warned off its neighbours from taking up arms against them. But the Arab coalition did exactly that, and the inertia of Meir’s government ceded an advantage to Egypt in the Sinai which Israel couldn’t retrieve. The peace treaty that followed, the Camp David Accords of 1978, saw the entirety of the region returned to Egypt. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/10/GettyImages-1346066705-de0764f-e1696504953914.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan is interviewed on the battlefront during the Yom Kippur War" title="Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan at the battlefront during the Yom Kippur War (Photo by Harry Dempster/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Why did Golda Meir step down as prime minster? Once the guns of the Yom Kippur War had fallen silent, the recriminations within Israel gained pace, with Meir widely criticised for her country’s lack of preparation. Although the Israeli Labor Party won the elections held in December 1973, Meir couldn’t form a coalition to give her a workable majority. Four months later, she resigned as prime minister, replaced by Yitzhak Rabin. What happened to Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War? Having resigned as prime minister (“five years are sufficient,” Meir noted on her departure), a career devoted to public office was over. Her reputation was partially repaired by the findings of the Agranat Commission, which was set up to investigate Israel’s preparation for possible invasion. Meir was cleared of “direct responsibility”, as was – more remarkably – Moshe Dayan, the defence minister. Meir then embarked on writing her memoirs, entitled My Life, which rose sharply up the New York Times bestseller lists on its publication in 1975. How did Golda Meir die? One of Meir’s last public acts was addressing the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, when the Egyptian premier, Anwar Sadat, paid an historic visit there in November 1977. Her speech paid great tribute to the president, for his vision of stability in the Middle East and his recognition of Israel’s existence. “We must all realise that the path leading to peace may be a difficult one,” she told Sadat, “but not as difficult as that path that leads to war.” Little more than a year later, Golda Meir succumbed to lymphatic cancer. She was 80 years of age. The Iron Lady of Israeli politics was gone. Read next | Israel and the Palestinians: a history of conflict in 8 key episodes
Countdown to disaster: a timeline of the last hours of Pompeii
Pompeii was a bustling Roman city, home to thousands of people living in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Nige Tassell charts the terrifying events of AD 79 that saw Pompeii, and nearby Herculaneum, transformed into an ash-covered hellscape of destruction and death
Four days before the eruption 11:00 Minor earth tremors gently shake Pompeii, but not enough for any of its citizens to stop going about their day-to day business in this bustling, prosperous city. Minor earthquakes are common here in the region of Campania; the residents barely notice. The collective opinion is that there’s nothing untoward about this morning’s seismic activity. This is despite the enormous and devastating earthquake that hit Pompeii in living memory. In AD 62 (sometimes recorded as AD 63), the city was severely damaged and a tenth of its 20,000-strong population killed. Almost all of its adult population will have lost at least one loved one or friend in that giant quake, but an air of possible complacency pervades its rebuilt streets. The markets are busy, the trade is brisk. Everything appears to be normal. View oEmbed on the source website First day of the eruption 10:00 Those minor tremors are still being felt across Pompeii, and have been for the last four days. Yet its citizens still appear to be unconcerned. No one is heeding what will later be interpreted as warning signs. The markets are still busy, the trade is still brisk. It’s another typical morning without note. But then comes lunchtime... 13:00 Shortly after noon, as residents are stopping to refuel, Mount Vesuvius roars into life. Inside the mountain, the pressure caused by molten rock – the origin of the tremors felt over the past few days – has grown to such a point that there’s no way back. It has to escape, and so Vesuvius erupts for the first time in several centuries. A huge column of volcanic rock and ash is sent soaring as high as 10 miles into the air. What had been a typically cloudless summer’s day is very quickly extinguished by a cloud of volcanic debris, spreading swiftly to block out the early afternoon sun. It is the darkest of clouds for what will be the darkest of days for Pompeii and its residents. The explosion is unfathomably violent, unfathomably large. Each and every second, around 1.5 million tonnes of debris is being expelled from the depths of the mountain’s belly. At the same time, the vast – and growing – cloud is being pushed the short distance between Vesuvius and Pompeii by southeasterly winds. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/08/2E4PY1D-0016b6a-e1692092443558.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="A 19th-century painting by Eduardo Ettore Forti depicts street life in Pompeii before the eruption – with Vesuvius looming in the background (Photo by Jimlop collection/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A 19th-century painting by Eduardo Ettore Forti depicts street life in Pompeii before the eruption – with Vesuvius looming in the background (Photo by Jimlop collection/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Across the Bay of Naples, in the port of Misenum, a 17-year-old boy is watching the catastrophic events unfold. The nephew of Pliny the Elder – the naturalist, philosopher and author of the 37-volume Naturalis Historia – the teenager will later produce an eyewitness account of the tragic events, which will become the strongest written testimony of this fateful day. In Misenum, he watches the contents of the eruption fill the sky. He will note that, above the volcano, the cloud resembled an umbrella pine tree, “raised high on a kind of very tall trunk and spread out into branches”. Pliny the Younger is currently staying with his namesake uncle who, as the serving admiral of Rome’s navy, instinctively decides to set sail across the bay. Accompanied by several oar-driven warships, the intention is presumably to execute some kind of evacuation of Pompeii’s population. Even if he were able to land close to the city (which he is unable to do as debris falls from the sky into the sea, creating dangerous floating islands in the shallow water), such is the scale of the disaster that it would be the tiniest, most piecemeal operation. 16:00 The cloud has travelled the five miles towards Pompeii and is now raining tens of thousands of tonnes of pumice down onto its citizens. Some have tried to escape – whether into the countryside or by taking to the sea – but so rapid and so heavy is the deluge that there’s no real hope for the population who remain inside the city. They are trapped. Many seek shelter in their homes – hoping to be protected, hoping to survive – but the sheer weight of the accumulated pumice is causing entire houses to collapse. On the podcast | Sophie Hay answers the big questions on everything you wanted to know about Pompeii For those local residents fortunate to avoid a direct hit, their fate is already determined by another development. Very soon the city will be smothered by thick ash, concealing everything and everyone. Over the next 24 hours, the ash and debris will settle on the city as much as three metres deep. All the while, the eruption continues throughout the afternoon and evening, and into the night. At its peak, the surge from the massive volcano reaches as high as 20 miles into the sky. Second day of the eruption 01:00 After 12 hours of firing its huge plume of debris upwards, the gases inside Vesuvius begin to weaken, to lose their intensity. This is not necessarily good news. This is not the end of the disaster. The volcano still has plenty of its innards to expel. It will just do so less spectacularly now – less spectacular but even more deadly. Pyroclastic flows – super-heated clouds of ash, gases and volcanic debris – surge down its slopes, engulfing all in their path. Having been saved by the prevailing winds that has allowed it to largely avoid the airborne debris of the past 12 hours, the coastal city of Herculaneum, located to the west of Vesuvius, doesn’t manage to escape this time. Horror in Herculaneum Despite being situated closer to the crater of Vesuvius, the seaside resort of Herculaneum benefitted from the meteorological conditions of the first day of the eruption. The winds were blowing in a southeasterly direction, which, with the town being located west of the volcano, left it comparatively free of the ashfall. Only a light covering of ash fell on Herculaneum, rather than the heavier debris that brought destruction onto Pompeii, and thus many of its inhabitants were granted safe passage away from danger. However, come nighttime, the town did not escape Vesuvius’ wrath, with the volcano unleashing the first of several pyroclastic surges. At great speed, this torrent of hot ash poured across the land towards Herculaneum, with the short distance between volcano and town being covered in little more than a single minute. So intense was the heat that any remaining citizens were killed instantly. They, along with Herculaneum itself, were buried in the flow, waiting to be discovered by curious archaeologists more than 1,600 years later. 06:00 At daybreak, with the volume of ash falling on the city lessening, those Pompeiians who, by fortune or fate, have survived begin to take stock of what’s happened to their neighbourhoods, to their friends, to their families. It’s comparatively quiet now. They believe that the horrific events have dissipated, that Vesuvius has uttered its last roar. It’s now a grim search for the bodies of the casualties. On the beach at Stabiae, a port a few miles to the south of Pompeii, a notable casualty will be revealed the following morning. Having sheltered in the town for the first night of the eruption, the body of Pliny the Elder is discovered. One school of thought is that he has died by asphyxiation, caused by inhaling the volcanic ash. But the ashfall is less significant in Stabiae than elsewhere; it may be that he has suffered an asthma attack or cardiac arrest. 07:30 The willingness of those surviving Pompeiians to believe that Vesuvius has now fallen silent again proves to be misplaced. The volcano belches out its fourth pyroclastic surge, which charges towards the city at the scarcely believable speed of around 200 miles per hour. Across the Bay of Naples, the teenage Pliny – who will soon abandon Misenum with his mother – is observing from a distance. “It was daylight now elsewhere in the world,” he would later write, “but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night.” Did you know? It is estimated that around 10,000–15,000 people lived in Pompeii in AD 79. So far around 1,200 bodies have been excavated, and although others may still lay undiscovered, it seems as though most residents did escape in time. In among the darkness, he reports “zigzag flashes” and “variously shaped masses of flame”. As the surges power their way towards the sea, there’s the very likely possibility of a tsunami affecting the local waters. It’s an apocalyptic sight for the despondent teenager. “I derived some poor consolation in my mortal lot from the belief that the whole world was dying with me and I with it.” None of the residents who remain have any hope of surviving the heat and intensity of the flow, its temperature measuring several hundred degrees centigrade. Another pyroclastic surge soon follows and completely submerges the city, trapping Pompeii in situ. No more will Pompeiians go about their day-to-day business. No more will this city bustle. Its streets, its buildings, its people will now sleep forever. Nige Tassell is a journalist specialising in history This article was first published in the October 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed