HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-29T09:46:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Are the secrets of the Middle Ages' most mysterious manuscript hiding in plain sight?
items: Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant?
items: “Check your husband’s dunghill” – here’s why medieval society was obsessed with poo
items: The ancient Romans knew the power of entertainment as propaganda – here's the proof
items: This ordinary ancient Roman object is still used today – and has hardly changed
items: The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
items: Over 70 observers watched this Stuart queen give birth. Why did they still doubt the baby was real?
items: In post-medieval Scotland, two specific crimes reveal the challenges faced by ordinary women
items: He was ancient Rome’s mightiest figure – and rumours said he had a secret affair with Julius Caesar
items: Buckingham Palace was the height of royal power – so why did Queen Victoria and Albert hate it?

Are the secrets of the Middle Ages' most mysterious manuscript hiding in plain sight?
type: item
date: 2026-03-29T09:45:30.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: This manuscript’s contents are a centuries-old mystery that still eludes scholars today. But is it really as cryptic as it seems, or are its answers hiding in plain sight?
encoded: At first glance, the Voynich manuscript doesn’t look like much. It’s an old book, about the size of a modern paperback, with colourful illustrations of plants and animals surrounding cursive handwritten script. But on closer inspection, there’s something strange about the plants and animals depicted in the pages. They don’t resemble anything real. And the script isn’t in any recognisable language. Called the ‘world's most mysterious manuscript,’ the Voynich manuscript has been eluding experts' attempts to decode or explain it for hundreds of years. What could it possibly mean? A medieval compendium on herbs, healing, and the stars? “We now know through radiocarbon dating that the Voynich manuscript was created during the early 15th century,” says author and journalist Garry J Shaw, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. Specifically, the evidence suggests the manuscript was made between 1404 and 1438. As to where it was made, that’s less clear, though there are hints. “There are clues in the style of the illustrations – and little hints like the merlins and the fortifications of a little castle – that suggest Northern Italy as the location it was created,” he adds. Other than that, nothing is known about why the Voynich manuscript was made, who made it, or what purpose it serves. The ‘language’ it is written in isn’t any known language, so scholars have divided the book into sections based on the illustrations. “The first section is dedicated to plants,” Shaw says. “You'll see all these interesting plants, quite unusual ones, often with their roots included as well. There seems to be an emphasis on the roots, which may be a clue to what is going on here.” That part is known as the ‘herbal’ section. Read more | Unusual things found in medieval manuscripts After that come sections on astronomy or astrology with what look like zodiac signs and constellations; bathing, as shown by naked women in waters with unusual creatures around them; cosmology, with fold-out pages sh…

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Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant?
type: item
date: 2026-03-27T10:51:45.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Before he was the monarch with six wives – two of whom he had beheaded – Henry VIII was a Tudor adonis: attractive and active. What happened?
encoded: As a young man, Henry VIII loved jousting. He was very active, also spending his time wrestling, hunting, horse riding, and dancing. He was renowned for his stature and physical strength. But the king would never joust again after a serious accident in 1536. This accident didn’t only change Henry’s attitude toward jousting though – many historians suspect that it also changed his personality and brain function, leading him to become the despotic, aggressive leader that he is often remembered as today. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Robert Liddiard, professor of history at the University of East Anglia, says that while there are other reasons Henry VIII may have changed so dramatically after 1536, “nonetheless it might be that his inability to stay on a horse did have some wider ramifications for his later reign.” Henry’s jousting tournament in 1536 Henry had been injured in jousting tournaments before, but the match he rode in on the 24 January 1536 was to be his last. His opponent is unknown, but both were knocked off their horses and Henry’s rolled on top of him. This would cause injury to anyone, but Henry’s jousting horses were famed for being incredibly large and strong, and they wore hundreds of kilograms of armour, too, making it much worse. Henry was left unconscious for two hours after the accident and suffered a gory wound to his leg – both of which, historians think, had long-term impacts on his health. Read more | Warhorses were one of the most deadly weapons on a medieval battlefield. But why didn’t they run away? After the leg injury, Henry developed ulcers, and his “sorre legges” caused him problems for the rest of his life. “It opened up an existing wound on his leg that subsequently, it seems, never healed properly. It caused the king a lot of discomfort and it smelled bad,” Liddiard says. And, since modern research shows that being unconscious for longer than 15 minutes can lead to moderate brain damage, many historians suspect that the acci…

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“Check your husband’s dunghill” – here’s why medieval society was obsessed with poo
type: item
date: 2026-03-25T13:32:58.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In medieval societies, manure became a precious economic commodity. Here’s how – and why – it got put to use
encoded: When you think about the driving forces that contributed to progress in medieval Britain, you might think about the likes of mercantilism, war, and urbanisation. But there were other, less-obvious – and more grim – factors behind the development of the medieval economy too. Take poo, for example. “Manure underpinned the medieval economy,” says Dr Richard Jones, professor of landscape history at the University of Leicester, speaking on the Toilets Through Time series from the HistoryExtra podcast. Manure was key to the western medieval economy Most manure was made up of the excrement of animals, although Jones says that people “looked for fertilising material wherever they could find it.” Near the coast, for example, people might use sand and seaweed alongside farmyard manure. There was a “very long tradition which recognised the importance of returning nutrients to the soil,” Jones says, and manure helped farmers to keep their soil in as good a condition as possible to help “ensure good yields.” So, while manure was a waste product, it played an important role in the medieval economy, which revolved around growing crops and raising livestock. Read more | What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z Some historians argue that manure was part of the reason Europe “came to economic dominance in the medieval period,” Jones says. In Asia, there weren’t as many large mammals, such as cows, sheep, and pigs, that produced manure to fuel farming, Jones explains. But Europe “had a lot of large domestic animals, which provided power and provided protein, but above all they provided manure in large quantities.” Attitudes towards manure reflected the feudal system of the Middle Ages “It was fairly commonplace practice for peasants’ animals to be ‘folded’ [penned in] on the lord’s fields, enabling him to capture the fertilising power of the community's herds and flocks,” Jones says. Peasants farmed particular strips of land owned by lords and would graze their animals …

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The ancient Romans knew the power of entertainment as propaganda – here's the proof
type: item
date: 2026-03-14T10:35:05.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In ancient Rome, putting on theatrical plays was not just a form of entertainment – it became a powerful tool of propaganda
encoded: Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Antigone by Sophocles; Medea by Euripides. Each is a play from ancient Greece, still performed on stages across the world today. Roman plays, on the other hand, are much less common. “We might think of theatre today as belonging to the cultural sphere, but in ancient Rome, it belonged to an incredibly political sphere,” says Dr Jessica Clarke, a research associate at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London and the author of A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Entertainment is never neutral,” she says, but in ancient Rome, the theatre was explicitly political. “In Rome they didn't have independent theatres, so they didn’t have shows put on outside of politically controlled events.” This fact, she says, means that plays from ancient Rome have failed to remain as relevant as their Greek equivalents. The history of ancient Roman theatre Roman theatre hadn’t always been so overtly political; early Roman theatre was a “hodgepodge” of traditions and practices from previous empires and different areas of modern-day Italy, Clarke says. The ancient historian Livy, who Clarke says is the main source of information we have on the origins of Roman theatre, draws a "very neat line from actors arriving from Etruria to Roman theatre," Clarke says. While Etruscan performances did influence what would become Roman theatre, there’s more likely a “complicated web” of things that became the Roman theatrical tradition, including Greek plays translated into Latin and farcical plays from Campania in southern Italy. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide In general, “Rome tended to absorb cultural influences, rather than inventing its own,” she adds – but it certainly gave theatre its own cultural significance. Theatrical shows would be put on at all kinds of events in Roman culture, including religious festivals, the triumphant returns of Roman generals…

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This ordinary ancient Roman object is still used today – and has hardly changed
type: item
date: 2026-02-25T16:27:50.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: From dealing with nits to learning the three Rs, ancient Roman childhood bore some striking similarities to the modern experience
encoded: Life for children in ancient Rome would have looked very different depending on where in the huge Roman empire you lived, what social class your family was from, and your gender. And while childhood in ancient Rome would have looked very different from the lives of children today, there were a few surprising similarities. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Bettany Hughes, a historian and author of the children’s book There Was a Roman in Your Garden, explains that “there are strange things that connect the experience of being a child in ancient Rome with the experience of being a child in the 21st century.” One overlap between childhood today and in ancient Rome is the fine-toothed nit comb, designed to remove head lice. “Nit combs are exactly the same design as they were in the ancient world – this was obviously the perfect design because it hasn't changed over the millennia,” Hughes says. But while the nit combs of today tend to be made of plastic, the ancient Romans used a different material for theirs: boxwood, a type of wood commonly used for small, carved items. “Boxwood has slight antibacterial properties, which was probably a really good thing [because] if you have nits, you scratch. Boxwood would hopefully prevent the spread of bacterial infection,” Hughes says. “The Romans were very smart, and [people in] the ancient world were much better at understanding nature and us being a part of nature than we are today,” Hughes says. Boxwood wasn’t the only plant that the Romans used for medicinal purposes. According to writings by Dioscorides, a Greek physician who was considered to be an authority on plants and plant medicine in the Roman period, oil made from walnuts was also used on children’s heads – albeit to help with alopecia or baldness, and to make the hair “pleasing.” He also recommended the “scrapings” from various gourds or squashes to help with sunstroke in children, and said that if children ate peonies, it could help to prevent kidney stones. Fam…

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The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
type: item
date: 2026-02-19T11:28:09.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: With conflicting advice and endless new trends, it can feel hard to keep up with the modern health and wellness space. But ideas about how to live a healthy life are nothing new. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks had their own list of requirements
encoded: Wellness might feel like a modern concept, attached to health-tracker apps, screen time, and green smoothies. But the concept of actively trying to lead a healthy life while keeping the body in a good state isn’t new. In fact, systems of preventative health stretch back more than 2,000 years to the medical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world. Speaking on the Life Lessons from History series from the HistoryExtra podcast, Sasha Handley, a professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester, says there used to be a “fantastic preventative healthcare culture” based on advice that dates back to ancient Greece. As she sets out, there was a list of six lifestyle factors and behaviours that physicians, medical practitioners, and ordinary people alike knew they had to take care of for their long-term health. These were the ‘six non-naturals’ and the ancient Greeks believed that “temperance of all of those six things was key to long-term good health, according to the wisdom of the time” says Handley. The term “non-naturals” described factors external to the body that could be managed or regulated, as opposed to “naturals,” which were the body’s innate characteristics So what were these six factors, and how much do they align with modern thinking? Fresh air The first non-natural to look after was fresh air – that is, “getting enough of it and making sure that you were not taking in fetid or corrupt air,” Handley says. The Greeks thought that ‘bad air’ could cause disease and advocated for good airflow within houses to lessen exposure to stagnant air. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide Today, we know there is no singular concept of ‘bad air’. But there are pollutants in the air that can be hazardous to people, and we do know that some diseases are airborne. Food and drink It was considered important that a person was “eating and drinking the right kinds of things for [their] bodily constitution, but also …

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Over 70 observers watched this Stuart queen give birth. Why did they still doubt the baby was real?
type: item
date: 2026-01-17T11:00:51.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: The struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism came to a head in England when Maria of Modena gave birth to an heir with a claim to two crowns
encoded: On 10 June 1688, Maria of Modena, queen to King James II of England and VII of Scotland, gave birth to a son who was heir to both kingdoms. More than 70 observers watched it happen. But while that baby – James Francis Edward Stuart, would grow to adulthood – he would never wear either crown. Instead, scurrilous questions about the birth itself played a pivotal role in the eventual toppling of James’s rule in England. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Breeze Barrington, a cultural historian specialising in women’s history and the 17th century, explained why Maria of Modena’s labour was so closely witnessed and how it became key in ending her husband’s reign. The pressure was on Maria to produce an heir The most important job of a queen was to produce heirs. But there was extra political and religious pressure for Maria to give birth. Maria and James were Catholic, and they needed to produce a Catholic heir if they wanted to keep the ruling of England out of Protestant hands. Otherwise, the throne would go to Mary, James’ oldest legitimate child from his previous marriage, who had been brought up Protestant. Protestant factions at the English court, and in government, hoped that Maria wouldn’t have any sons who could prevent Mary from claiming the throne. “There was constant worry about England going back to Catholicism if there was a Catholic heir,” Barrington says. Read more | Your guide to the Glorious Revolution Maria had been pregnant many times before 1688, but many of those had ended in miscarriage or stillbirth; the few that survived died in infancy. “Maria was really concerned that she needed to have a son in order to secure the line of succession, so she went to Bath to take the waters in the hope that it would help her to become pregnant,” Barrington says. The reproductive health of the queen was in the interest of the nation, and so even Maria’s attempts to improve her fertility were of public concern. Members of the public went to watch her sitting in…

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In post-medieval Scotland, two specific crimes reveal the challenges faced by ordinary women
type: item
date: 2026-01-15T12:25:50.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: What do the crimes that women were charged with in a post-medieval Scotland reveal about the lives they lived?
encoded: In the court records of post-medieval Scotland, women appear for a strikingly limited range of crimes. While men were prosecuted for theft, violence and disorder, women were charged with offences that spoke directly to their bodies and behaviour. As Dr Allan Kennedy, a historian of early modern Scottish history, explains on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, “understanding what kinds of crimes are committed and how they are responded to gives you a really good understanding of the ordering assumptions of any given society”. In early modern Scotland, those assumptions produced a sharp gender divide in the law. “There’s a very strong split between what women were being prosecuted for and what men were being prosecuted for” in Scottish courts, Kennedy says. Women were accused overwhelmingly of two crimes: witchcraft and infanticide. Both were profoundly gendered offences, shaped by contemporary anxieties about women’s morality and place within the social order. And, both crimes expose the pressures faced by ordinary women in Scotland as the country stepped into the early modern era, and the reign of the Stuarts. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-463928361-1-1ef1f6e-e1768479587395.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="Painted in 1621 by Daniel Mytens, this portrait shows James VI and I (1566–1625), a monarch deeply preoccupied with the threat of witchcraft. Convinced that witches were agents of the Devil, James personally oversaw trials in Scotland and authored 'Daemonologie' (1597), a treatise that fuelled persecution across Britain." title="James I, King of England and Scotland, 1621. Artist: Daniel Mytens" /> Witchcraft in early modern Scotaland One of the most common crime committed by women in 1600s Scotland was witchcraft. Between 1560 and 1706, approximately 6,000 people were tried for the crime in Scotland – three times the number tried in England, even though Scotland’s population was a quarter of the s…

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He was ancient Rome’s mightiest figure – and rumours said he had a secret affair with Julius Caesar
type: item
date: 2026-01-13T15:51:16.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Did Octavian, later known as the Roman emperor Augustus, have an affair with Julius Caesar? That’s precisely what Mark Antony’s propaganda wanted you to think
encoded: Politicians’ intimate lives have been used against them as far back as antiquity. In the first century BC, in the midst of a power struggle between Julius Caesar’s potential successors, the suggestion of a salacious scandal was wielded as a potent weapon. Caesar had unexpectedly named his 18-year-old great-nephew Octavian as his heir in his will – much to the chagrin of the older, more experienced, and much more powerful Mark Antony. And, as Octavian and Antony men fought for public approval and political power, theories about why Caesar had chosen Octavian ahead of all others were spread with great interest. One was the “slanderous” rumour, says Edward J Watts – professor of history at the University of California, San Dieg, who was speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, that suggested Caesar and Octavian had been in a sexual relationship. The rumour was started by Mark Antony. Although it’s not true, it illustrates the length to which he was willing to go to discredit his rival, as well as contemporary attitudes towards homosexuality. How Octavian being named heir sparked a slanderous Roman rumour “When Caesar is assassinated, everybody in Rome assumes that his heir is going to be Mark Antony,” says Watts. “So, when they open the will, they're shocked that Octavian – this kid that nobody's aware of – has been named the heir of Caesar. “Caesar had been preparing him and giving him training in Roman politics, probably because he recognised how naturally talented Octavian was. Read more | Step inside a Roman home, and you might be surprised by what you find “We don't have any idea about when or what it was that tipped Caesar off to the fact that his nephew would be a world class historical figure of incredible significance. But something did.” Octavian would later go on to become Augustus, the founder of the Roman empire, one of the most powerful Roman emperors in history, and the namesake of the month of August. While Caesar likely wasn’t expecting Octavian to take h…

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Buckingham Palace was the height of royal power – so why did Queen Victoria and Albert hate it?
type: item
date: 2026-01-10T10:45:27.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had to battle to turn Buckingham Palace into the iconic royal residency that it serves as today
encoded: For most young married couples, moving into a new house represents an exciting new start. But for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, their newlywed bliss was marred by their cold, smelly, disorganised new home: Buckingham Palace. Today Buckingham Palace is synonymous with the British monarchy, but this was not always the case. “It’s only in the 20th century [that we get] Buckingham Palace as we know it today,” says Kate Williams, speaking on an episode of her HistoryExtra Academy series: Royal Residences: Secrets and Scandals. Victoria and Albert were the first monarchs to use it as their primary residence, and it took substantial work to turn it into a home fit for a queen. Before Victoria, Buckingham Palace wasn’t an official royal residence Buckingham House first passed into the royal family’s ownership in 1761. It was originally intended only to be a retreat for Queen Victoria’s grandmother, Queen Charlotte, who loved the house and raised 14 of her 15 children there, including Victoria’s father. It officially became known as a palace from the 1790s, but St James’ Palace continued to be the main royal residence. The royal family steadily began to spend more and more time at Buckingham Palace, though it would never become the official residence of George IV and William IV – Victoria’s uncles – either. In fact, William IV thought of it as “something of a white elephant” that he was “stuck with”, Williams says. He tried to pass it on by offering it as a new Parliament building when the Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, but MPs rejected it as too dingy. Nevertheless, work was slowly being done on the palace to expand and renovate it. The main phase of this work was finally finished in May 1837. By this time, St James’s Palace had become increasingly less desirable. The area around the main residence had been built up, so there was less privacy available for royals living there, and its Tudor architecture and fire damage meant it was no longer a comfortable pl…

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