HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-21T12:49:36.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
items: The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen
items: In pictures: Queen Elizabeth II on tour
items: 8 weird stories from the Space Age: from hungry tortoises to gorilla suits
items: Nato is in crisis. Can history predict what happens next?
items: Lonely hearts and holiday flings: a brief history of dating
items: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is much more historically accurate than you think – here's why
items: Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates?
items: “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp”
items: 9 things you might not know about Sherlock Holmes

What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
type: item
date: 2026-04-20T00:30:58.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: The Crown
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Throughout her long reign, the late Elizabeth II juggled being a mother and grandmother with royal duty. But with careful judgment, hard work and a mischievous sense of humour, she forged a dynasty and inspired a nation
encoded: They might not be the first monikers to spring to mind when thinking of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch who was renowned for her sense of duty and her dignified demeanour, but “Gary” and “Cabbage” are two of the nicknames bestowed upon her by her family. “Gary” was how Prince William knew his grandmother as a youngster, apparently confusing the word with “Granny”, while the Queen’s great-grandchildren Prince George and Princess Charlotte know the Queen affectionately as “Gan-Gan”. As for “Cabbage”, this was the fond nickname used by her husband Prince Philip – which might come from the French term of endearment, “mon petit chou”, translated to “my little cabbage”. Was Elizabeth II a mother when she came to the throne? As matriarch of “The Firm” (the insider name for the royal family) and the oldest monarch in British history, it’s perhaps easy to forget that Elizabeth assumed the throne in 1952 at the age of just 25, the mother of two young children. Thrust into royal duties, she faced the immediate challenge of balancing the work of monarchy with the demands of motherhood, a battle which was present throughout her reign. Read more | A brief guide to the British royal family, by The Crown historian Robert Lacey Just 18 months after her accession in 1952, Elizabeth II was called upon to tour 13 countries, including Australia, over six months, without Charles, age five, and Anne, age three. The young children were famously greeted with handshakes upon the return of their parents, and though she dispensed with some of the more formal royal traditions – the children were not required to bow or curtsey to their mother – their childhoods were marked by absence. The prince and princess were largely raised in their younger years by governesses and other household staff, in the same way that Elizabeth and Margaret had been by “Crawfie”, in keeping with the manner of many upper-class families of the time. The children were required to understand that travel and time were part o…

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The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen
type: item
date: 2026-04-20T00:10:58.000Z
creator: Professor Kate Williams
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British queens
subject: The Crown
subject: TV interest
description: At the time of her birth, Elizabeth II was a princess who was never expected to succeed the throne. So how did she become queen? From her unconventional childhood to the crisis that made her a monarch, Kate Williams charts Elizabeth II's life within the royal family before she was crowned...
encoded: In April 1926, Britain was on the brink of the General Strike called by the TUC. There had been an economic perfect storm: the postwar crash in coal prices, combined with the government putting Britain on the gold standard, had put mining under pressure. After a government commission recommended reducing miners’ wages, the stage was set for an all-out strike of miners and other workers covered by the TUC, including railway and transport workers. But despite being in a crisis, the home secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks could not be excused from witnessing the legitimacy of a royal baby. The Duke and Duchess of York – George V’s second son, Bertie and his wife, the former Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon – were expecting their first child. Although the baby was not a direct heir to the throne, Sir William still had to travel to 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair, a home owned by Bowes-Lyons, where the child was due to be born. Read more | Queen Elizabeth II: 50+ facts about her life and reign The little girl was born by caesarean section at 2.40am on 21 April. “We have long wanted a child to make our happiness complete,” wrote the duke. The child was “a little darling with a lovely complexion”, decreed Queen Mary. “I do hope that you and papa are as delighted as we are to have a granddaughter, or would you sooner have had another grandson?” wrote the duke to his father, George V. The baby was officially third in line to the throne, but since she was the child of George V’s second son – and female – she was destined to be pushed down the succession by sons born to her uncle, the Prince of Wales, and her father. She was called Elizabeth Alexandra Mary after her mother, great-grandmother and grandmother – after consorts, not queens regnant. The princess was destined for a good marriage and little more. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1404441219-533f6bb-e1776639421178.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A baby Queen Elizabeth II is…

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In pictures: Queen Elizabeth II on tour
type: item
date: 2026-04-19T23:00:11.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Queen Victoria may have ruled over 70 territories, but she never left Europe. In contrast, her great great granddaughter – the late Queen Elizabeth II – became the most well-travelled monarch in British history. Here we highlight some of the 265 official overseas visits of her globe-trotting reign
encoded: Canada and the United States, 1951 As her father King George VI’s health declined, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh took his place on a royal tour of Canada and Washington DC. In the United States, they were warmly received by President Harry S Truman, while enthusiastic crowds greeted her motorcade. Australia, 1954 In 1954, the recently crowned Queen Elizabeth II made royal history by becoming the first reigning British monarch to visit Australia. She travelled to nearly 70 cities and towns in 58 days – the first of 16 tours she would undertake Down Under. Malta, 1954 On her way back from Australia, the Queen travelled to Malta with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, where – among various other royal duties – she watched the Duke of Edinburgh play in a navy versus army polo match. It was a poignant return to the island where she had lived as a newlywed between 1949 and 1951, and where she is said to have cherished the freedom of a relatively normal private life before her accession. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/08/GettyImages-52858019-19a9edc-e1776726404875.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II, dressed in a light-coloured coat and hat, stands in an open-top vehicle as she passes through cheering crowds waving Union Jack flags, with uniformed guards walking alongside during a royal visit to Malta." title="Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, are greeted by a flag-waving crowd during a royal visit to Malta, May 1954. The couple had previously lived on the Mediterranean island between 1949 and 1951 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> India, 1961 At the Ramlila Ground outside Old Delhi, upwards of 250,000 people gathered to hear the Queen speak. Although free from crown rule for more than a decade, India’s ties with Britain remained strong and there was a fervent response to the visit, with vast crowds greeting her throughout her six-week tour (which also took in Pakistan). The warm …

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8 weird stories from the Space Age: from hungry tortoises to gorilla suits
type: item
date: 2026-04-01T18:03:43.000Z
creator: Jonathan Wright
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Discover / Apple News
subject: Space
description: As the Artemis II mission prepares to send humans around the moon, Jonathan Wright explores the stranger side of space history – from UFO sightings to Cold War curiosities and beyond
encoded: Exploring space is a serious business. To use the term employed by Tom Wolfe in his 1979 book about the first US test pilots to enter astronaut training, you need the “right stuff” to sit atop an enormous firework leaving the protection of our atmosphere. But space travel is also a human endeavour. In the heavens as on Earth, that means it throws up stories that can be bizarre, funny or melancholy. As Nasa prepares to send astronauts back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time since 1972, here are eight strange-but-true tales from the ongoing history of the Space Age. 1. Ballistic legacy At the end of the Second World War, the USSR and the US competed to snaffle up as much German rocketry expertise and kit as possible. So it was that, despite his Nazi past, V-2 co-designer Wernher von Braun became chief architect of the Apollo programme’s Saturn V rocket. Less well remembered is the role of the V-2 itself in space exploration. In 1945, US Army Special Mission V-2 recovered parts and equipment needed to make the missiles from an underground factory in eastern Germany. Subsequently, much of the haul was taken to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, where initial work resulted in the assembly of 25 rockets. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/1aGettyImages-544605263-d284276-e1775049918462.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A mid-20th-century photograph of a suited man seated at a desk, holding a pen and looking towards the camera. In front of him are several model rockets and a black rotary telephone. Behind him, a large illustration shows a spacecraft flying past the moon." title="Wernher von Braun - director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center" /> The first flights from the US followed in the spring of 1946. By October, the grandly named Upper Atmosphere Research Panel was expert enough in launching missiles to use one to capture the first photograph of the Earth from space. A terror weapon had found a mo…

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Nato is in crisis. Can history predict what happens next?
type: item
date: 2026-03-22T11:30:56.000Z
creator: Sam Edwards
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: As tensions build between the US and its long-term allies, historian Sam Edwards examines how the international military organisation has withstood moments of turbulence in the past – and whether we can glean any lessons for the future
encoded: “If there's no response – or if it's a negative response – I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.” So said US President Donald Trump in March 2026, after asking European allies for their help in securing the Strait of Hormuz. This primary export route for most of the world's largest oil and gas fields had lately been declared closed by Iran as a response to US-Israeli military operations. However, the response to the president’s call to aid to his European allies has, so far, been distinctly muted. No doubt this is in part because much of Europe is still reeling from the events at the start of the year. Back in January, the American-led alliance was thrown into disarray by the president’s desire to assert control over Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of Nato member Denmark. At the height of the crisis, with Trump adamant that the US “needed” Greenland “very badly”, the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen went so far as to say that "if the United States chooses to attack another Nato country militarily, then everything stops. That includes Nato, and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War." Now, amid renewed transatlantic tensions stemming from the US–Israeli war with Iran, those key questions provoked by the recent Greenland debacle have resurfaced again: is Nato in crisis, and can it endure? Read more | Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it? On the latter, history does at least provide some reassurance. In fact, surviving crises is something of a Nato speciality. Nato’s troubled origins The alliance initially coalesced in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a period characterised by growing concern in the west about the expanding influence and power of the Soviet Union. In March 1946, Winston Churchill warned that an “Iron Curtain” had descended “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic”. A year later, in an effort to “contain” the threa…

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Lonely hearts and holiday flings: a brief history of dating
type: item
date: 2026-02-13T15:39:00.000Z
creator: Nichi Hodgson
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Valentine's Day
description: From calling cards and corsets to 'the pill' and the sexual revolution, we have always found inventive ways to find and further love. Nichi Hodgson, author of The Curious History of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder, takes us on a whistle-stop tour of courtship through history
encoded: When I first began writing about the history of dating, what struck me most was how similar the problems of today are to the 1930s, the 1840s, and even the 1780s. From worrying about a partner’s financial standing, or whether someone was going to stick around long enough for you to have children with them, to persuading your parents they are indeed a good fit, the means by which we go about finding love may have changed, but not the hopes, dreams and anxieties we’ve had about discovering it. In the Georgian era, for example, the advice was clear: looks matter but value them at the peril of your long-term happiness: “She, who, intoxicated with flattery, protracts the triumphs of her beauty in youth, may live to lament the barren spoils of it in age.” Indeed, throughout history, grooming and dressing as well as you possibly can has always been a better strategy than ruminating on what you don’t have. Victorian women wore dresses cut just above the nipples, with pearl necklaces draped lasciviously in their décolletage, while some Edwardian men favoured wearing corsets and delighted in the sensation of tight lacing. When the mini skirt was invented in the early 1960s, some men even tried it out, including 16-year-old trainee brick layer Tony Liggard whom the Daily Mail reported was convinced it would catch on among men. It didn’t – but long hair, floral patterns, make-up and jewellery all eventually did. So much for the myth that male grooming is a recent phenomenon! <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/2GettyImages-559574483-24ee5fb-e1770990862524.jpg" width="1499" height="1000" alt="A Victorian advertisement showing black and white sketches of men wearing corsets. Across the top is an address and an advert for Madame Dowding" title="Some Victorian and Edwardian men experimented with wearing corsets, as this 1899 advertisement reveals (Image by Getty Images)" /> Once you were suitably styled, you needed to get a date’s attention.…

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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is much more historically accurate than you think – here's why
type: item
date: 2026-02-02T17:41:15.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Dr Hugh Doherty worked as the historical consultant on HBO’s new Game of Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Speaking to HistoryExtra, he sets out how the series got closer to reality than many historical dramas
encoded: Some works of fiction feel startlingly close to reality. Perhaps surprisingly, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – HBO’s latest Game of Thrones spin-off series – might be one such example. “I was astonished. I had never seen anything like it,” says Dr Hugh Doherty, the show’s historical consultant, in an interview with HistoryExtra. Doherty is a medievalist and lecturer in medieval history at the University of East Anglia. He has worked as a historical consultant on – among other projects – Netflix’s robust historical drama The King, a loose adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henriad starring Timothée Chalamet as Hal (seen more recently in Marty Supreme). Based on author George RR Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the adventures of the titular knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his strange squire, Egg. Unlike Thrones and its other spin-off, House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms largely eschews its fantasy trappings to instead zero in on the trials of a lowly, aspiring knight wandering the fictional land of Westeros in search of prestige. It’s a less ‘epic’ story in its scope and scale – without a dragon or White Walker to be seen. It focusses on a smaller stage, rooted in hard landscapes and their even harder inhabitants. However, much like its progenitor series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is defiantly enmeshed in medieval history. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series took significant inspiration from the late medieval Wars of the Roses of the 15th century, a series of real conflicts saw England ripped apart by the distended ambitions of dynasties that grappled for the crown. The real history that inspired A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Being a prequel to Game of Thrones, it makes sense that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms draws from slightly earlier inspirations. That’s where Doherty came in. He was tasked with ensuring that the series’ depiction of the daily cut-and-thrust of chivalric knighthood, and ma…

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Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates?
type: item
date: 2025-11-19T13:00:01.000Z
creator: Dr Rob Blackmore
subject: General History
subject: Magazine
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
description: From 1066 to 1918, our obsession with battles, elections and even voyages of discovery risks distorting a true understanding of the past
encoded: In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the witty 1930 book 1066 and All That. “History is not what you thought,” its preface suggested. “It is what you can remember.” Accordingly, as per its subtitle, it offered a “Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.” Conspicuously, though, “two out of the four dates originally included were eliminated at the last moment” because “they are not memorable.” Though evidently both humorists, the book’s authors – Punch writers WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman – were making a serious point. History has long been thought to be concerned with preserving the past. The 12th-century historian and Byzantine princess Anna Komnene observed how “time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity”. Her solution was the study of history, which “forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time”. This is a powerful idea – one that perhaps moved King Charles I, moments before his execution in January 1649, to utter a last single word to William Juxon, the former bishop of London, instructing him: “Remember.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1066-and-all-that-later-edition-CMYKWeb-Ready-dfb5326.jpg" width="2295" height="1530" alt="The cover of a book, with the title 1066 And All That across the top, and two men standing side by side in green and pink clothing" title="The 1930 book 1066 and All That wittily parodied the conventional approach to teaching history in schools at that time (Image by Amazon)" /> But do our efforts to remember really require us to do something so trivial as memorising dates? More radically, do the historical events these dates mark even matter? The Oxford Eng…

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“We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp”
type: item
date: 2025-11-15T22:00:52.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Trends-News
description: Turi King and Alex J Kay have married genetics with history to study a sample of DNA from Adolf Hitler – and, as they reveal, their research has thrown up some extraordinary insights into the Nazi dictator’s private life
encoded: Few historical figures have been discussed and debated as much as Adolf Hitler. We have a wealth of primary source material available to us about his life, including his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, personal correspondence, political directives and military orders, recordings and transcripts of his countless speeches, eyewitness accounts, photographs and film footage. Now, 80 years after his death, Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, a groundbreaking documentary produced by Blink Films and currently airing on Channel 4, has unlocked a new source by presenting the results of a world-first analysis of a sample of Hitler’s DNA. The DNA was taken from the blood on a small piece of fabric cut from the sofa on which Hitler died after shooting himself in his Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945 We have the privilege of being part of this documentary – both as lead investigators and in our separate roles as senior historical consultant (Alex) and the person leading the genetic analysis (Turi). The background to the documentary was a multi-stage process, each step a powerful marrying of genetics with history. It probably goes without saying that the first step was to confirm that the blood sample was actually that of Hitler. With this in mind, it’s important to remember that, as in any forensic case, DNA evidence cannot be taken in isolation. It has to be combined with other types of evidence, in this case reaching back into the past for information first about Hitler’s suicide and then about how the piece of fabric came to be available for DNA testing. The Führer’s family tree So, what does the history tell us? With the Red Army closing in, Hitler killed himself in his Berlin bunker on the afternoon of 30 April 1945. In the days following his death, the Soviets controlled access, and few people were allowed in. Among those who were permitted to enter was Lieutenant Colonel Roswell P Rosengren, public information officer for General Dwight D Eisenhower, the supreme Al…

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9 things you might not know about Sherlock Holmes
type: item
date: 2025-09-04T08:35:03.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: TV interest
description: The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, has for more than 130 years been a star of stage and screen, played by actors including Benedict Cumberbatch and Ian McKellen and serialised in countless books. But how much do you know about this famous crime-buster, who made his first appearance in 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual? Here, author Martin Davies shares 11 lesser-known facts about Sherlock Holmes...
encoded: 1. The first actor to play Sherlock Holmes was American… The first actor to take on the role of Sherlock Holmes in any official capacity was the American William Gillette. His 1899 stage play was adapted from a script by Arthur Conan Doyle himself. Opening six years after the author had attempted to kill off his creation at the Reichenbach Falls, the play was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic: between 1899 and 1932, Gillette performed the role more than 1,000 times. Gillette is also credited with introducing the curved briar pipe that was to become synonymous with the great detective – possibly because a straight pipe obscured the actor’s face when he delivered his lines. On the podcast | Sherlock Holmes: the real history that inspired the detective stories On first meeting Sherlock Holmes’ creator, Gillette is said to have appeared in character, complete with deerstalker, and after examining Conan Doyle most minutely, to have opined: “Unquestionably an author!” 2. … who introduced a love interest Gillette was also one of the first to annoy the purists by introducing a love interest for Holmes. When he telegraphed Conan Doyle with the question “May I marry him?” the author is said to have replied: “You may marry him, or murder or do what you like with him!” It’s impossible to count the number of writers who, since then, have taken Doyle at his word. Read more | Real-life Sherlocks: the detectives of Scotland Yard and their curious cases 3. He defied death Holmes, having survived the Reichenbach Falls, refused to die with his creator. By the time of Conan Doyle’s death on 7 July 1930, Holmes was already a star of stage and screen. His film debut, Sherlock Holmes Baffled, came as early as 1900. Just a few seconds long, the film used stop-motion camerawork to show Holmes attempting to grapple with a burglar who repeatedly disappears, then reappears in a different part of the room. 4. A 1940s duo cemented Holmes and Watson's on screen personas One of the olde…

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