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What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
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
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 of the monarch’s commitment to rule. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/11/GettyImages-1450650980-a8ef201-e1776646626706.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II holds baby Prince Edward on a balcony as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, stands beside her in military uniform, smiling." title="The Queen holds a very young Prince Edward in her arms as she stands on the balcony at Buckingham Palace with the Duke of Edinburgh, June 1964. Edward was the most recent child to be born to a reigning British monarch (Photo by Getty Images)" /> It was a decade after Anne that the Queen gave birth to her third child, Prince Andrew, in 1960. Prince Edward followed in 1964, making the two sons the first children to be born to a reigning monarch since Queen Victoria. Ten years after her accession, many noted a difference in the Queen’s relationship with her two younger sons. Royal historian Robert Lacey suggests the Queen became “warmer and flexible”, able to step back a little from her duties. What were Queen Elizabeth’s relationships with her children like? Both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip agreed that their children should not be hampered, as they saw it, by the social and educational constraints of homeschooling, which had previously been the norm for royals. Yet Charles’s education was far from straightforward. Prince Philip wished Charles to be sent to Gordonstoun school in Scotland, hoping to make his son in his own image. The Queen Mother (who favoured Eton, close to Charles’s Windsor home) wrote to the Queen in 1961, saying, “it is miles and miles away, he might as well be at school abroad. He would be terribly cut off and lonely up in the far north.” The Queen Mother’s fears for her sensitive grandson were not unfounded. Two years after the Queen’s “annus horribilis” of 1992 (which saw the marriages of three of her children break down amid tabloid scandal, as well as a fire at Windsor Castle) an authorised biography of Prince Charles dealt perhaps the harshest blow to the Queen’s reputation as a mother. Royal Women with Kate Williams Join Professor Kate Williams for a six-part HistoryExtra series uncovering the little-known stories behind some of history’s most famous queens. From Cleopatra to Elizabeth II, we’ll explore how royal women navigated power, politics, and expectation and how their legacies were shaped long after their deaths. Watch now The 1994 account, written by Jonathan Dimbleby, described the bullying and “crushing loneliness” Charles experienced at school, and a childhood characterised by long periods of his mother’s absence. Charles was said to feel “emotionally estranged” from his parents and yearning for affection that, in his view, they were “unable or unwilling to offer”. The book declared Charles’s bonds of affection to be much stronger with his nanny Mabel Anderson and detailed how the Queen would spend short windows of allotted time with her son in the morning before his daily walk and before bedtime. Historian Piers Brendon has suggested that in contrast to the “tremendously affectionate, and very welcoming and warm” Queen Mother, with whom Charles had a close relationship, Elizabeth II was “a very distant mother”. Read more | A brief history of royal mothers and childbirth Yet in a 2002 BBC documentary, Princess Anne said: “We understood what the limitations were in time and the responsibilities placed on her as monarch, in the things she had to do and the travels she had to make. “But I don’t believe that any of us, for a second, thought she didn’t care for us in exactly the same way as any other mother did. I just think it’s extraordinary that anybody could construe that that might not be true.” What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a grandmother? If the Queen’s reputation as a mother has been characterised as distant by some, there was a more palpable fondness for her eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. From the birth of her first grandchild – Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, born in 1977 – the Queen took on a new persona; the dutiful grandmother who inspired by example. “I’ve always been very close to my grandmother, and we speak often,” Peter Phillips told The Telegraph in 2016. “She has been an inspirational person throughout my life.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/11/GettyImages-1241123935-47c9c5f-e1776646682863.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a bright green coat and hat, smiles at her great-grandson Prince George during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations." title="The Queen shares a moment with Prince George of Cambridge during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022. George is now second in line to the throne following his great grandmother’s passing (Photo by Getty Images)" /> In 2018, Princess Beatrice told of how her grandmother “goes out into the community with a genuine curiosity as to how she can be a force for good in the world”. Though duty evidently came first, there was also an enduring sense of fun that she shared with those close to her. Many royal sources have recounted how the Queen was an excellent mimic, and particularly fond of impersonating former prime ministers and US presidents she had known through the years (some favourite impressions were reported to be René from TV show ’Allo ’Allo! and Labour politician Tony Benn). One royal aide, Angela Kelly, shared how the Queen has “a wicked [mischievous] of humour”. Read more | The 8 most famous royal weddings in British history The Queen proved herself an adept grandmother in the 21st-century online world too, no more evident than when she joined her grandson Prince Harry in 2016, recording a sassy comedy video message to US president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama in order to promote the Invictus Games. At Christmas, even as her descendants started their own families, the Queen remained at the centre of the royals’ festive celebrations, bringing together the whole family at her Sandringham residence. At 6pm sharp, the tradition was for adults to exchange cheap joke gifts and Prince Harry could clearly get away with a little extra cheekiness towards his grandmother. On one such occasion he gave the Queen a shower cap with the slogan: ‘Ain’t life a bitch’. Elizabeth II’s ancestor Queen Victoria was notoriously meddlesome in the marriages of her grandchildren – as ‘Grandmama Queen’ she felt uniquely placed to orchestrate the marriages of her 42 grandchildren, manoeuvring them into seats of European power. The Queen did hold the power to exercise control over her descendants’ marriages­ – though not all; since 2013, the Succession to the Crown Act has meant that only the first six royals in line to the throne require the monarch’s permission to validate their marriages. So in 2018, Princess Eugenie could marry without the Queen’s consent (though it’s unlikely that she wasn’t consulted), whereas Prince Harry still had to obtain the monarch’s permission. This the Queen duly bestowed, writing in her official capacity: “My lords, I declare My Consent to a Contract of Matrimony between My Most Dearly Beloved Grandson Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales and Rachel Meghan Markle.” It’s clear though that her grandchildren valued the Queen’s approval beyond an official seal. And it seems that a sure way to impress the monarch was by getting on with her beloved corgis. “For the last 33 years, I’ve been barked at,” Harry told the BBC ahead of his 2018 wedding. That apparently wasn’t the case for the Duchess of Sussex. “This one walks in,” the prince joked, indicating his bride-to-be, “Absolutely nothing. Just wagging tails.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/11/GettyImages-960056422-947df8c-e1776646732976.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Prince Harry and Meghan Markle smile during their wedding ceremony inside St George’s Chapel, Windsor, surrounded by guests." title="The Duchess of Sussex wore a tiara owned by Queen Elizabeth II’s grandmother, Queen Mary, during her wedding in May 2018 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The Queen also publicly showed her support and welcome to her grandsons’ wives by lending them two significant family heirlooms for their weddings. The Duchess of Sussex wore the Queen’s grandmother Queen Mary’s platinum and diamond bandeau tiara for her wedding in May 2018. The Duchess of Cambridge wore the Queen’s Cartier scroll tiara, purchased by the Queen’s father King George VI and given to Elizabeth on the princess’s 18th birthday. Long to reign over us More than seven decades after starting her own family, it’s clear that the late Queen imbued her dynasty with her own strong sense of duty and service. She served as the figurehead of the family, an inspiring example by which to measure their own public activities. Despite the familiarity, it’s also clear that the Queen was still able to keep her family on their toes. In 2018, Prince Harry gave the following advice to a group of visitors to Buckingham Palace: “If you suddenly bump into her in the hallway, don’t panic. I know you will. We all do.”
The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen
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...
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 held by her mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, while her father, the future King George VI, looks on in a black-and-white family portrait." title="The Duke and Duchess of York with the infant Princess Elizabeth, 1926. The Duke would later become George VI following the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII in 1936 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> On 3 May, the TUC called the General Strike. Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin called it the “road to anarchy”, but the government played hard, drafting in volunteers and calling forth the middle classes to step in. By 12 May it had been called off and the following year the government outlawed sympathetic strikes and strikes intended to coerce the government, making another general strike impossible and restoring the existing structures of power. Two weeks later, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was christened by the archbishop of York at Buckingham Palace. The young princess was a favourite with her grandparents and one of the few people in the family not afraid of the king, whom she called ‘Grandpa England’. In early 1927, her parents departed on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, leaving her with her nannies. When they returned, they took a new house, 145 Piccadilly, near Hyde Park. It had 25 bedrooms, a lift and a ballroom but, by royal standards, Elizabeth was growing up in a cosy, normal house and her playmates in the gardens were the daughters of businessmen and doctors, not fellow princesses. In 1930, Princess Margaret was born. This time the home secretary, John R Clynes, had to trek up to Glamis Castle, the ancestral home of the Duchess of York. “I am glad to say that she has large blue eyes and a will of iron, which is all the equipment a lady needs!” the duchess wrote. As they grew up, it became evident that the two little girls had very different personalities. Elizabeth was conscientious, dutiful and orderly – she couldn’t go to sleep without unsaddling and feeding all her nursery horses and lining them up neatly. Margaret was playful, determined and fond of pranks – she blamed any mistakes or spillages on her imaginary friend, Cousin Halifax. In 1933, when Elizabeth was seven, she received a new governess, Miss Marion Crawford. She had been recommended to the Duchess of York as a “country girl who was a good teacher, except when it came to mathematics”. Fortunately, the duchess was not looking for a challenging academic schedule. Both she and her husband had hated school (the duke had been ridiculed as a dunce). What the royal couple wanted for their daughters was a “really happy childhood, with lots of pleasant memories”, which meant minimal lessons. The king had only one request: ‘‘Teach Margaret and Lilibet a decent hand.” Miss Crawford’s regimen was gentle. Elizabeth received lessons from 9.30 until 11 in the morning and the rest of the day was devoted to outdoor games, dancing and singing, with a rest period for an hour and a half. Unlike her parents, Elizabeth had an aptitude for learning and enjoyed history and literature but she had little opportunity for sustained study. Queen Mary criticised their education and recalled that she had busied herself with homework in the holidays – but to no avail. In her free time, Elizabeth was fondest of dogs and horses. She declared she wanted to marry a farmer so she could have lots of “cows, horses and dogs”. George V died in January 1936, and the Prince of Wales assumed the throne as Edward VIII. As king he was more dependent on his lover, Wallis Simpson, than ever. But although the foreign press discussed his relationship with the American divorcee at length, the British newspapers stayed quiet. In late October, Wallis filed for divorce from her second husband and it was clear that the king meant to marry her. The government was as determined to stop him, for it was thought the people would not accept a divorced consort. The empire governments mostly refused the idea outright. “It was plain to everyone that there was a great shadow over the house,” wrote Miss Crawford. Read more | The death of King George V – what happened? On 10 December, 10-year-old Elizabeth was about to write up her notes from her swimming lesson when she heard chants of “God Save the King” outside. She asked a footman what had happened and he told her that her uncle had abdicated and her father was king. She ran up to tell her sister the news. “Does that mean you will have to be the next queen?” asked Margaret. “Yes, some day,” replied Elizabeth. “Poor you,” said Margaret. In the face of crisis and change, Elizabeth adopted a technique she would use throughout her life: she stuck to her routine, attempting to appear unruffled. She wrote up her swimming notes, and at the top of the page she wrote: “Abdication Day.” Royal Women with Kate Williams Join Professor Kate Williams for a six-part HistoryExtra series uncovering the little-known stories behind some of history’s most famous queens. From Cleopatra to Elizabeth II, we’ll explore how royal women navigated power, politics, and expectation and how their legacies were shaped long after their deaths. Watch now The jolly life of 145 Piccadilly was at an end. The family moved into Buckingham Palace and her father and mother – who had always been so present – became consumed by meetings, receptions and politics. The former king, now the Duke of Windsor, the Uncle David of whom the children had been so fond, was sent to Europe. Elizabeth attended her father’s coronation, accompanied by Queen Mary, writing that the abbey was covered in “a sort of haze of wonder as papa was crowned, at least I thought so”. Elizabeth was now heir to the throne. Queen Mary stepped up her campaign over education, and more history was introduced. In 1938, Elizabeth began receiving lessons from the vice provost of Eton, Henry Marten, on constitutional history. Marten’s teachings were important to Elizabeth’s perception of her role: he told her that monarchy was strengthened by adaptability and talked of the importance of broadcasting directly to her subjects. The palace and the government were concerned that the princess did not seem too isolated. The First Buckingham Girl Guide Pack was instituted, with 20 girls invited to the palace on Wednesday afternoons. They learned trekking in the palace grounds and practised signalling in the corridors. On 15 March 1939, German tanks entered Prague. The ‘peace’ created through appeasement by prime minister Neville Chamberlain was shattered. “Who can hope to appease a boa constrictor,” declared The Telegraph. The country moved towards war. In the summer of 1939, Elizabeth and her parents paid a visit to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where the king had studied. There she was introduced to Philip of Greece, 18 to her 13. The princess was fascinated by him. On 3 September 1939, Chamberlain announced on the BBC that Britain was now at war. The king broadcast later in the day, telling the people that this “grave hour” was “perhaps the most fateful in our history”. The princesses were staying at Birkhall, near Balmoral, on their annual summer holiday with Miss Crawford – and were soon joined by hundreds of evacuees from Glasgow. After Christmas at Sandringham, they went to Royal Lodge in Windsor, the pale pink walls painted green to fool enemy bombers. The queen refused to bow to pressure to send the children to Canada, out of the range of the enemy. Read more | Did appeasement cause the Second World War? In spring 1940, German troops invaded Denmark and Norway. Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister, declaring to the Commons that Britain must “wage war, by sea, land and air with all our might”. The dispossessed royals of Norway and Denmark arrived seeking safety in London. The princesses were sent to Windsor Castle, where they would remain for the rest of the war – along with the crown jewels, bundled up in paper in the underground vaults. The princesses were key to the propaganda strategy – the nation was told that they were in a secret location in the countryside, where they carried around their gas masks and grew their own carrots and potatoes in a vegetable patch. But the princesses were not exempt from the terrors of war – 300 bombs were dropped on Windsor Great Park over the course of the conflict. Often they were woken at night and sent into the underground vaults of the castle. Like Churchill, they slept in ‘siren suits’, zip-up all-in-one jumpsuits designed for warmth and practicality in bombing raids. The palace had repeatedly rejected requests for Elizabeth to speak on the radio. In 1940, with the Luftwaffe razing British cities to the ground, the king and queen changed their minds. In a time when US support for the war effort was critical, they agreed to allow the princess to broadcast on the BBC to the children of North America. On 13 October she gave her speech, expressing how she and her sister sympathised with those who had been evacuated, since “we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all”. The speech was a hit. “Princess yesterday huge success here,” reported a north American representative of the BBC. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1018089778-f154721-e1776639568862.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black-and-white image of a young Queen Elizabeth II seated at a desk reading from a script into a microphone, with Princess Margaret watching beside her." title="Princess Elizabeth (right) and Princess Margaret broadcast a morale-boosting speech for the “children of North America” in October 1940. The address was warmly received across the pond (Photo by Getty Images)" /> “This time we are all in the front line,” said the king in his Christmas message at the end of 1940. The bombing of British cities continued until April. Britain entered a sustained period of hardship. In 1941 it was the first country in the world to introduce conscription for single women. When Elizabeth turned 16, she begged her father to allow her to join the Labour Exchange. She was interviewed, but not placed – much to the relief of the king, who wished to protect his daughters. At the end of 1943, when Elizabeth was 17, Philip came to spend Christmas with the family. He was charmed by her admiration and what he described as the “simple pleasure” of family life, so unlike his own unhappy childhood. He returned to war enthusiastic about the idea of marrying the princess, and his cousin, George of Greece, made a suggestion to the king that the pair might wed. It was a misstep; the king was shocked and told George that Elizabeth was too young and Philip “had better not think any more about it at present”. The king didn’t wish to lose his daughter and the courtiers thought Philip “rough, ill mannered” (in the words of one). Worst of all was his background. As one courtier put it, “it was all bound up in one word: German”. The princess turned 18 in 1944 and began to assume royal duties. Her father insisted she be made a counsellor of state (usually only open to those who had reached 21) and she stood in for him when he was briefly in Italy, signing a reprieve on a murder case. She made her first public speech at a children’s hospital and launched HMS Vanguard in the autumn. But she wanted more – she desired to serve in the forces. In early 1945, the king relented and allowed her to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a trainee ambulance driver. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1475851901-3f9d0ec-e1776639728760.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A young Queen Elizabeth II in Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform stands beside a military ambulance marked with a Red Cross." title="Princess Elizabeth served as a trainee ambulance driver and mechanic during the Second World War. Photographs of the young royal doing her bit for the country became a vital propaganda tool for the British government (Photo by Getty Images)" /> At the base in Aldershot, she was initially kept away from the other trainees and taken to eat in the officers’ mess, before the papers found out and the regime was quickly adjusted. The princess later said that it was the only time in her life that she had been able to test herself against people her own age. For the government, her training was a propaganda coup. Photos were taken of her wielding her spanner or standing by vehicles and she was on the front of every Allied newspaper. On 30 April, Allied forces occupied the Reichstag. Hitler took his own life in his bunker and the troops surrendered. On 7 May, the BBC interrupted a piano recital to announce that the following day would be known as Victory in Europe Day. The war was over. On VE Day, the princesses appeared with their parents and Winston Churchill on the balcony of the palace to wave at the crowds, Elizabeth in uniform. That evening, Margaret suggested that they go out to see the crowds. The king and queen relented and the girls set off, accompanied by Marion Crawford and various officers, wandering as far as Park Lane before returning back through Green Park to shout “we want the king!” with the crowds. “All of us were swept along by tides of happiness and relief,” recalled Elizabeth. Read more | “We sang, we danced and we all held hands”: celebrating VE Day Once the euphoria had subsided, the aftermath of war seemed grey, miserable and full of privations. “Food, fuel and clothes are the main topics of conversation,” wrote the king. He was exhausted by the effort of war and found it hard to adjust to daily life. At the same time, the people were fascinated by the princess and increasingly preferred to see her opening hospitals, presenting prizes and giving speeches. She was overwhelmingly popular: dignified, a veteran of the war and full of the glamour of youth. Cambridge University suggested she might be the first woman ever to receive an honorary degree, but the palace refused the offer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-3354783-d77a9e1-e1776639818551.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip walk arm in arm outdoors, smiling at one another in a black-and-white photograph." title="Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip enjoy a walk during the first part of their honeymoon, which was spent at the Broadlands Estate, Hampshire, in November 1947. The couple would be married for 73 years (Photo by Getty Images)" /> In 1946, with the end of the war in Japan, Prince Philip returned to Britain and was sent to teach naval officers in Wales. He began to court Elizabeth in earnest, taking supper with her and Margaret in the nursery and taking the sisters out to restaurants or shows. Austerity Britain was delighted by the idea of a royal romance and the possibility of a wedding. The king and queen were dubious, but it was too late – Elizabeth was determined to marry Philip. In February 1947, the princess left the country for the first time for a tour to South Africa with her parents and sister. There, she celebrated her 21st birthday. She reviewed troops, attended a ball in her honour and gave her address to the empire. In it she pledged her future: “I declare before you that my whole life, whether it shall be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.” She had spent a long time in the nursery but now she was 21, on the brink of marriage – and in less than five years, she would become queen. This article was first published in BBC History Magazine’s ‘Queen Elizabeth: 90 Glorious Years’ bookazine
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
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 Indian welcome featured lavish banquets, elephant rides, horse racing and spectacular parades. Read more | 10 historical turning points for modern India New Zealand, 1970 An exhibition of Māori culture in Gisborne, North Island (see below), was one highlight at the beginning of what proved to be the Queen’s most-travelled decade. It was this tour that saw the first ever royal ‘walkabouts’, when the monarch broke away from formal arrangements to walk among the crowds, chatting and accepting bouquets. They subsequently became a fixture of almost all royal visits from that point onwards. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/08/GettyImages-53076812-5cbc28e-e1776726287833.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a pale peach coat and wide-brimmed hat, stands among a group of performers in traditional Māori dress, including patterned bodices and flax skirts, during a ceremonial welcome." title="The Queen visits a group of people wearing traditional Māori dress during her 1970 tour of New Zealand. The trip saw her conduct her first ‘walkabouts’, where she freely walked among the crowds to greet well-wishers (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Hong Kong, 1975 This was the first of just two visits made by the monarch to the British colony on the southern coast of China. In 1997, Prince Charles would later read a farewell speech on the Queen’s behalf, as sovereignty of Hong Kong was handed to China. South Pacific, 1982 Traditional canoes brought the Queen ashore from HMY Britannia to the remote Funafuti atoll of Tuvalu. Her island-­hopping itinerary also took in the other Commonwealth realms of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Nauru, Kiribati and Fiji. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/08/GettyImages-1306561593-050356f-e1776726618901.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a blue patterned dress, matching hat and white gloves, leans from an open vehicle to accept a ceremonial gift from a woman in traditional dress, with palm trees and onlookers in the background." title="The Queen accepts a gift during a trip to Fongafale, Tuvalu, 1982. The visit was part of a wider royal tour of Australia and the Pacific Islands (Photo by Getty Images)" /> France, 1992 Accompanied by President François Mitterrand, the Queen spoke French throughout her four-day tour of Paris, Blois and Bordeaux – although she remained diplomatically quiet on the arguments raging around the Maastricht Treaty and European unity. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/08/GettyImages-465168480-3d98aac-e1776726170462.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a peach-coloured coat and matching hat with pearl jewellery, stands beside French president François Mitterrand in a dark suit and tie during an official engagement." title="The Queen was greeted by President François Mitterrand during her brief tour of France in 1992. The trip was a highlight of a year she would describe as an annus horribilis (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Malaysia, 1998 Mass protests against the long-standing Barisan Nasional government coincided with the monarch’s arrival in Malaysia for the 1998 Commonwealth Games. The visit – including a “courtesy call” with the country’s prime minister – continued despite the angry clashes. Read more | In pictures: Queen Elizabeth II through the decades Canada, 2002 The Queen wrapped up her golden jubilee year with a visit to the newest territory in her realm, Nunavut. Carrying on a tradition of royal trips to Canada dating back to Prince William (later William IV) in the 18th century, she would end up visiting the country a total of 22 times. Royal Women with Kate Williams Join Professor Kate Williams for a six-part HistoryExtra series uncovering the little-known stories behind some of history’s most famous queens. From Cleopatra to Elizabeth II, we’ll explore how royal women navigated power, politics, and expectation and how their legacies were shaped long after their deaths. Watch now Nigeria, 2003 In her first visit since 1956 (four years before the country attained independence from Britain), and amid concerns of a possible al-Qaeda attack, the Queen’s contact with ordinary Nigerians was limited to meeting actors at a mock-up market created for a BBC soap opera. United States, 2007 In 2007, the Queen paid her final state visit to the US. Highlights included a trip to Nasa’s Goddard Space Center in Maryland, where astronauts Sunita Williams, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov spoke to the monarch on a live link from the International Space Station. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/08/GettyImages-1232593154-a2cddc4-e1776726107150.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="In May 2007, the Queen – pictured here with British-American astronaut Michael Foale – spoke to crew members aboard the International Space Station while visiting the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland (Photo by Getty Images)" title="In May 2007, the Queen – pictured here with British-American astronaut Michael Foale – spoke to crew members aboard the International Space Station while visiting the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Uganda, 2007 Amid security fears, the Queen visited Uganda for the first time since the days of colonial rule. Independent since 1962, the country was nonetheless rapturous in its welcome, with half a million people thronging the roadsides as the monarch visited a centre for Aids orphans and opened the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Read more | How did the world change during Queen Elizabeth II’s reign? Slovakia, 2008 In 2008, the Queen and Prince Philip were escorted on a two-day tour of Slovakia by President Ivan Gašparovič. It was the first ever royal visit to the country, which split from the former Czechoslovakia in 1993. At a banquet in her honour, the Queen spoke of Slovakia’s troubled past: “Caught behind a line dividing east from west for so long, Slovakia has now asserted its place in a common European home in less turbulent times.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/08/GettyImages-83418132-6870dfc-e1776726041139.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a cream coat with fur trim and a matching hat, walks along a red carpet holding a bouquet of flowers alongside Slovak president Ivan Gašparovič, as crowds of children wave Union Jack flags on either side." title="The Queen and President Ivan Gašparovič greet well-wishers in Bratislava during the monarch’s two-day tour of Slovakia in October 2008 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Germany, 2015 The Queen’s 2015 tour of Germany was an emotional affair. As well as laying a wreath at Berlin’s Neue Wache memorial, she visited Bergen-Belsen, the former Nazi concentration camp where approximately 50,000 prisoners died. Speaking at an official state dinner attended by British prime minister David Cameron and German chancellor Angela Merkel, she reflected: “In our lives, we have seen the worst but also the best of our continent.” After 2015, the Queen did not travel abroad, leaving such visits to her children and grandchildren. Her final overseas trip came in November of that year, when she and Prince Philip travelled to Malta ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. An older version of this article was published in BBC History Magazine’s ‘Queen Elizabeth: 90 Glorious Years’ bookazine
8 weird stories from the Space Age: from hungry tortoises to gorilla suits
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
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 more noble purpose. 2. The dog who died In the early years of spaceflight, it was far too dangerous to send humans into the great beyond. Instead, scientists sent animals. As early as 1946, the Americans blasted fruit flies into space. Monkeys and mice followed in their wake. But perhaps the most famous creature to leave Earth was Laika (‘Barker’). A stray mongrel, she was taken off the streets of Moscow by biologists working for the city’s Aviation Institute – the idea being to find animals that were friendly yet also tough, streetwise. And female, so they wouldn’t need to cock their legs to pee. On 3 November 1957, Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth. Listen now | Animals in space: the creatures who paved the way for human travel beyond Earth Sadly, at a time when re-entry technology had yet to be developed, she died of hyperthermia. But her journey aboard Sputnik 2, nicknamed ‘Muttnik’ by the US press, captured the public’s imagination. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2GettyImages-515031406-bdd929d-e1775048742214.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph of a small dog seated inside a cramped, capsule-like apparatus. The dog is strapped into a harness, with its head and front paws visible through an open front panel. The surrounding structure appears metallic and enclosed, with wires, bolts and curved casing." title="Laika, Russian Astro Dog" /> 3. Space pup détente Unlike the ill-fated Laika, Belka (‘Squirrel’) and Strelka (‘Little Arrow’) survived spaceflight. In August 1960, aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2, the two dogs circled the Earth for 27 hours in the company of 40 mice, a couple of rats, a grey rabbit and some flies. The serious point of the exercise was to understand how time in zero gravity would affect the creatures. Strelka had six puppies. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev sent one of the puppies, Pushinka, ‘Fluffy’, to President John F Kennedy. Once the FBI had checked out Pushinka for surveillance bugs, she joined the First Family. Less suspicious was the Kennedys’ pet dog Charlie, who fathered four ‘pupniks’ in June 1963. Although JFK wrote to Khrushchev to thank him for the gift, he was allergic to Pushinka, who made him sneeze and brought him out in a rash. 4. Aliens ahoy? Considering the rigorous psychological evaluations required to become an astronaut, it’s unsurprising that few spacefarers have reported seeing UFOs – when they have sighted odd objects, they have offered rational explanations for what they saw. The template for this approach was set by astronaut Jim McDivitt. Read now | How UFOs conquered the world – without firing a shot Aboard Gemini IV in 1965, he reported spotting an object that was “like a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it”. He never saw this as an example of an alien visitation. Rather, he thought he was probably looking at a piece of ice or insulation that had broken off his craft. That hasn’t stopped more lurid stories of UFO sightings spreading, including one involving Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 and fake “secret moon transcripts”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/62HJCPDX-9d175f4-e1775049594902.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colour photograph showing two astronauts seated side by side inside a spacecraft cockpit. Both wear white space suits and large, clear-visor helmets, with one astronaut in the foreground looking down and the other slightly behind, facing forward. The interior is tightly packed with metal panels, wiring and controls, conveying the confined, technical environment of an early space mission." title="Astronauts Edward H. White II (left) and James A. McDivitt inside the Gemini IV spacecraft wait for liftoff. The objective of the Gemini IV mission was to evaluate and test the effects of four days in space on the crew, equipment and control systems. Pilo" /> 5. The tortoises who survived The Nasa astronauts heading for the moon in April will be following not just their predecessors aboard Apollo missions, but those who journeyed on the Soviet Union’s Zond 5 spacecraft. This left the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 15 September 1968. Its payload included fruit fly eggs, plants and two tortoises, the first creatures to fly beyond Earth orbit and circle the moon. They returned on 21 September 1968. Despite splashing down in the Indian Ocean rather than landing back in Kazakhstan as planned, the tortoises lived through the experience, albeit they had lost 10 per cent of their bodyweight and were subsequently dissected. The mission was also notable in providing high-quality photographs of the Earth from 90,000km out in space. 6. Posthumous Explorer The death of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1991 robbed the world of the Space Age’s greatest optimist, a man whose work suggested humanity’s future would be spent zipping around the cosmos. And, in the case of James T Kirk, fighting aliens, bickering with his crewmates and kissing any willing women in his vicinity. Boldly going where few have gone before, Roddenberry requested his remains be sent into space. In 1992, his wish was partially honoured when astronaut James Weatherbee carried a portion of Roddenberry’s ashes with him aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Although the remains were brought back to Earth, this is widely thought to have been the first space ‘burial’. Founded in 1994, Houston-based “memorial spaceflight” specialists Celestis have turned off-Earth undertaking into a business by buying ‘secondary payload’ slots on launch vehicles. They have twice taken small portions of Roddenberry’s ashes aloft, most recently in January 2024 when Roddenberry and his wife, actor Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, were among those fired into deep space as part of the maiden mission of the Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle – marketed as the Enterprise Flight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/102WD95N4-c2109b7-e1775049710517.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A night-time photograph of a rocket launching from a pad, brightly illuminated as flames and exhaust billow beneath it. Tall gantry structures and towers frame the rocket, while thick clouds of smoke spread across the ground. The surrounding area is dark, with the launch creating a dramatic contrast against the night sky." title="A portion of Gene Roddenberry's cremated remains were fired into space as part of the inaugural Vulcan Centaur launch in January 2024 (Photo by Alamy)" /> 7. Sitting in a tin can, far above the sky At midnight on 31 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to be a sovereign state. This put cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev in a tricky situation. The country that had put him aboard the Mir space station no longer existed and nobody seemed in any massive hurry to bring him home. Another issue was Russia’s dire financial situation. While other countries paid for places on missions to and from the station, Krikalev stayed in situ. Plus, had he left, the station would likely have had to be abandoned because it would have been without a flight engineer. Read now | The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the moon Ten months after he had departed terra firma, a man dubbed “The Last Soviet Citizen” at last went home. His mission had lasted twice as long as planned. But he doesn’t hold the record for the longest single stay in space. This belongs to Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days aboard Mir in 1994–95. Returning to Earth, he said he wanted to prove humans could cope with travelling to Mars. 8. Silly ape In 2016, future senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly sent a gorilla suit to his identical twin brother, Scott. An unusual gift, especially as Scott was at this point resident on the International Space Station and the suit was smuggled aboard via a SpaceX cargo mission. The result of this tomfoolery was a viral video showing Scott, dressed as an ape, chasing around British astronaut Tim Peake. The Kellys built on a rich tradition of taking contraband into space that dated back to March 1965, when Gemini III astronaut John Young carried a corned beef sandwich into orbit. According to Young, it seemed like “a fun idea at the time”. Nasa bigwigs, worried about crumbs damaging delicate equipment, were not amused. Lead image by Nasa/Ben Smegelsky
Nato is in crisis. Can history predict what happens next?
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
“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 threat of Soviet expansion, President Harry Truman proclaimed the ‘Truman Doctrine’ asserting that the US would provide aid to democratic nations under threat from communist forces. East-West tensions ramped up still further during the Berlin Blockade of 1948–49, after which 12 nations decided to establish a formal military alliance. The result was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which commits its signatories to the principle of collective defence. It wasn’t long, though, before internal tensions began to emerge. Nato from Suez to Iraq Among the first major challenges to internal Nato cohesion arose during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Built by the French, the Suez Canal – linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean through Egypt – was a key strategic pipeline for trade, not unlike the Strait of Hormuz today. It was of particular importance to both the French and British empires because it drastically shortened the shipping route from Europe to Asia. Aware of its strategic significance and keen to remove European influence and control, the nationalist Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered that the canal zone be nationalised. In response, the British and French (with Israeli support) launched a military operation to seize the canal – an action that caused consternation in Washington. Angered by the lack of prior consultation, President Dwight D Eisenhower ultimately forced an Anglo-French withdrawal by threatening dire economic consequences. Humiliated, the British prime minister Anthony Eden later resigned, while the French concluded that the Americans could not really be trusted. This was an “out of area” crisis because it occurred well away from the North Atlantic, but it still placed a significant strain on the Nato alliance. Further internal Nato strains appeared in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a nuclear standoff which pitted the US against the Soviet Union, with the former attempting to strongarm the latter into withdrawing its nuclear weapons from the communist Caribbean state. Read more | Have nuclear weapons helped to maintain global peace? This time, the roles were reversed and it was the Europeans who were angered by an apparent lack of consultation – an issue of real concern given how dangerously close the world came to potential Armageddon. The Cuban Missile Crisis: World on the Brink Member exclusive | In this HistoryExtra podcast series, we explore the roots of the Cold War standoff and meet the key players in the confrontation. We track the pivotal 13 days at its centre, and the Cold War alliances that saw diplomatic tensions escalate to breaking point Listen to all episodes now Similar European frustrations with US leadership later led to the alliance’s most significant crisis of the Cold War era. In 1966, unhappy with what he perceived as American influence in French foreign policy and the risk of being dragging into US-led conflict, President Charles de Gaulle removed the French military from Nato’s integrated military command. Rubbing salt in the wound, he also demanded that all US troops leave French soil. Read more | Who owns Greenland? Why the island's history is more complicated than you think Elsewhere, even the often-proclaimed US–UK ‘special relationship’, for so long a cornerstone of Nato, came under strain during the 1960s, largely because of the war in Vietnam. Harold Wilson’s government refused repeated American requests to send troops to south-east Asia in support of the US, which jaundiced President Johnson’s view of the British as an ally. However, despite their undoubted impact, none of these various Cold War crises led to Nato’s demise. The alliance survived and, indeed, played a key role during the heightened east–west rivalry of the 1980s. Internal tensions re-emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the principal enemy now gone, the alliance found itself in uncharted waters. One consequence of this was transatlantic differences of opinion regarding Nato’s role and purpose. This later came to a head during the Global War on Terrorism, as it was labelled by the US. Following a significant show of unity after 9/11 – which saw Nato invoke Article 5 (the mutual defence clause) for the first and only time in its history– a key point of divergence subsequently emerged around the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The UK and Poland lent Washington support, including troops, but the French and Germans vocally opposed the action. As a result, one commentator declared that the debate on Iraq had “provoked one of the worst transatlantic crises – and one of the worst intra-European crises – of the entire post-Second World War period”. How Nato has endured Over its lifetime, Nato – which now comprises 32 members – has seen plenty of internal disagreement and, on occasion, full-blown crisis. But no dispute has so far fatally compromised the alliance. This is because, fundamentally, Nato members do seem aligned on two key ideas. First, the peace and prosperity of Europe and of the north Atlantic region is of the utmost importance. And second, Nato remains the best mechanism through which to defend the interests and security of all of its members – including its most powerful, the US. This is why the Trump administration stepped back from the brink after staking verbal claims Greenland. Read more | Nato, Russia, and the history of the post-WW2 tensions As in earlier instances of internal tension, transatlantic trust has certainly been damaged. Real ideological distance remains between the current US administration and many European allies. But the alliance endures because, beyond the disagreements, common interests remain strong. And as the history of Nato suggests, it’s often in those very moments of crisis that this inescapable fact returns to the fore. As Churchill famously observed in the 1940s, “there is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.”
Lonely hearts and holiday flings: a brief history of dating
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
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. The Georgians were mad for ‘lonely hearts’ adverts, which they would write and post via newspapers including The Times, later in matrimonial gazettes, circulated around London’s coffee houses, while the Victorians settled on the idea of the marriage bureau, an agency designed to match the middle classes, via photos and details about their hobbies. In the 1930s, gay men and women would use the fan columns of movie magazines to drop hints about their sexuality by referencing Hollywood stars such as Bette Davis and Montgomery Clift. Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all Chaperones and calling cards In the flesh, of course, the best seduction tool has always been dancing. From Regency square dancing to secret Victorian drag balls, from the 1910s ‘turkey trot’ to the 1980s and 1990s acid house rave scene, the vertical expression of the horizontal desire has rarely failed a trier. As playwright and actor Steven Berkoff reminisces about the Tottenham Royal dance hall in his autobiography Free Association: “You were the dandy, the mover and performer in your own drama, the roving hunter and lover, the actor adopting for the girl the mask of your choice.” But if you couldn’t dance, witty conversation and excellent manners have always served as a good substitute. Meeting a lady on the street in Victorian England was a fraught business. As the etiquette manual Manners for Men put it, you were never to introduce a lady to a gentleman, but always the gentleman to the lady, and must never offer an umbrella to a woman on the street on the basis that “No lady would accept the offer from a stranger, and the other sort of person might never return the umbrella.” WATCH | Fern Riddell's presents her groundbreaking research into one of the most tantalising royal rumours in British history View Green Video on the source website Middle-class Victorians embraced a complicated ritual of giving out calling cards, and of making home visits according to a strict etiquette. However, even if you succeeded getting an audience with your potential amour, you would never be left unattended. Chaperones were in full force until the First World War, when the exodus of Britain’s young men left women to parry and party on their own. Etiquette manuals were swapped for magazine problem pages, and by the 1930s, handbooks on sex were as easily purchased as those on hosting. When we think of the early 20th century, we may imagine courting couples meeting one another on realistic terms, their expectations untroubled by the imagery of dream homes and impossibly honed bodies that haunt contemporary media. However, we’ve always idealised glamour. From the birth of the celebrity-courted gossip column in the 1920s and the boom in cinema from the 1930s, our aspiration to marry the richest and most beautiful has long intruded upon our daily contentment. Today, with living standards so much higher, and the cost of clothes and cosmetics cheaper, it’s actually easier than ever before to replicate celebrity standards of grooming. And while we frequently flagellate ourselves for living in an increasingly narcissistic, selfie-obsessed culture, we aren’t the first generation to be so concerned with the vagaries of appearance. In fact, the Victorians even had their own version of Instagram, exchanging cartes-de-visite – small portrait prints which would be organised into albums also containing images of celebrities and royalty. These albums were exchanged in flirtation but also as a means of asserting one’s social standing. The trick was to guess whether someone showcasing a royal portrait had in fact met the royal in question. Sex before marriage Perhaps the biggest surprise about our dating history is that pre-marital sex has often been the norm for most people. Apart from the revival of a long-practised behaviour called ‘bundling’ – cuddling with clothes on – which was a response to the 1834 Poor Law penalising women who found themselves pregnant as single mothers, it seems our ancestors always found a way to “try the goods before you buy them,” as I remember my grandmother once joking to me. Condoms that could be washed out with carbolic soap were used from the mid-19th century, while contraception campaigner Annie Besant was tried for obscenity for publishing a pamphlet on the topic in 1877. Read more | From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys When Marie Stopes published her sex manual Married Love in 1918, it was just as widely read by single girls as married ladies. In her book, Stopes advocated the benefits of conjugal love, and physical pleasure within marriage. “I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance,” she says in the preface, “that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed at the service of humanity.” In the 1930s, Marjorie Hillis, the author of Live Alone and Like It, recommended that women stay away from affairs before the age of 30 while acknowledging that plenty of single ladies were inviting gentleman callers back to their homes at night, and that societal attitudes were changing: “A woman’s honour is no longer mentioned with bated breath and protected by her father, her brother and the community. It is now her own affair.” Meanwhile, in the 1960s, ‘the pill’ didn’t quite provide the immediate revolution it has been credited with. Originally it was only prescribed to married women, and even in the 1970s, doctors could refuse women a prescription on moral grounds – something my own mother remembers happening when she went, as an engaged woman, to seek it out. What’s more, the downside of women procuring the pill was that men, who had originally assumed responsibility for acquiring condoms, stopped taking as much responsibility for contraception. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/4BXPEMP-2d507fc-e1770991054847.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a young woman. She is sitting at a desk, looking at the camera, while bent over a microscope. In front of her is a large glass globe" title="Birth control pioneer Marie Stopes pictured in her laboratory, 1904. Stopes advocated the benefits of “conjugal love and physical pleasure within marriage” (Image by Alamy)" /> Long before apps like Tinder widened the dating pool, developments in travel and technology have been crucial to navigating the course of true love. When the stream train came into everyday use in the mid-19th century, rail travel reached the masses. Women now shared dimly lit, cramped carriages with men, and even if you were venturing to visit a maiden aunt, there was every chance you could enjoy a verbal dalliance or three along the way with people you wouldn’t necessarily ever clap eyes on again. “Surprise visits by moonlight” The bicycle, meanwhile, also improved romantic opportunities. Contrary to the tricycle, which saw women wearing full skirts and accompanied by a chaperone, the two-wheeler required women to get their leg over, and was effectively the first mode of transport that they could use entirely independently of men. Etiquette guides of the period recognised that people could now pay “surprise visits… by moonlight” and that seaside flirtations could be enhanced by romantic bike rides together. While there was fear about exactly what kind of excitations might be invoked by the bike riding, 1897’s Manners for Men advised that men encountering female cyclists “help ladies as much as possible by pushing their machines up the hills for them”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/5GettyImages-3292776-48250fa-e1770993875813.jpg" width="1500" height="1912" alt="A black and white photograph a woman in a long coat, wearing a hat. She is sitting on a bicycle with her arms crossed. Behind her, there are some trees and a road" title="A young woman enjoys a ride on a ‘scorcher’, a type of bicycle, c1897. Etiquette guides from the era suggested that courtship could be enhanced by romantic bike rides with your partner (Image by Getty Images)" /> Of course, when circumstances called for it, people have travelled to far-flung lands to find a mate. In the 1930s middle-class women that found themselves ‘left on the shelf’ still travelled to colonial India in search of husbands. Nicknamed ‘the fishing fleet’, these women travelled by boat to colonial outposts along with ambitious young men seeking work. In some cases, they’d often coupled up before the vessel had even docked, or used the voyage as an opportunity to scope out who would be available on dry land. This was encouraged by local Indian churches who did not approve of ‘loose’ women flitting about the provinces. Read more | A timeless love story? Abélard and Héloïse’s passionate affair There was even a tale of one 36-year-old woman named Kitty Irwin who was invited to stay with a married friend in Karachi. During her six months ‘on tour’, she met an exporter called Sam Raschen who became more or less besotted with her at first sight. When she arrived at the booking office to arrange her passage home, she was escorted to see Raschen in his office at the dock and he subsequently persuaded her to delay her return indefinitely and, instead, marry him. In the 1950s, the first package holidays opened up the possibility of a ‘holiday fling’ to the general populace. The 1970s, meanwhile, saw the invention of 18–30s holidays, which began with the same insalubrious reputation that they ended up with. A Sunday Times reporter from the end of the decade wrote: “I spent one night on the beach until 4am waiting for Chas to finish and let me get back to bed. But he did give me 1,000 pesetas to amuse myself with. As for my other room-mate, he was sick in the sink on the second day. Too much sangria. Despite that, he managed five girls in our seven nights there. And one girl, I found out, had tackled an equivalent number of blokes.” Later, the film Shirley Valentine would inspire a flock of similarly inclined women, including female sex tourists who were courted by young Caribbean men called ‘rastitudes’, and men who sought mail-order brides, on a ‘no-try-before-buy’ basis. Today, dating organisations like Inner Circle connect peripatetic singles at events in multiple capital cities. And with advances in digital messaging and virtual reality technology, it’s never been easier to start a relationship across a distance. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/62JRHC3E-8ac18b1-e1770994863561.jpg" width="1500" height="1003" alt="A photograph of a couple looking lovingly into each other's eyes. The woman has a pink top on and curly hair. The man is in a dark blue shirt and has a moustache. Behind them is a large beach" title="Pauline Collins and Tom Conti in Shirley Valentine (1989). The award-winning film, based on a Willy Russell play of the same name, inspired women to pursue their own holiday romances (Image by Alamy)" /> Nor has it ever been easier to date according to broader gender preferences, sexual orientation or erotic peccadilloes. Much of that is as a result of the relaxation of some of the laws discriminating against LGBTQI individuals and so-called ‘alternative’ relationships, but also a cultural shift in how we define gender, and who gets to decide what kinds of couplings and throuplings (or more) are permitted. But some of it is the dating industry’s desperate attempt to cast the net ever wider as dating app fatigue sets in and users become cynical of taglines such as ‘Designed to be Deleted’. The future of dating Finding an appealing alternative to dating apps is proving tough; experimental in-person dating events in places like bookshops just don’t yet have the same reach or appeal, and younger users are frequently finding apps such as Snapchat and TikTok a much better way to connect. And if AI is set to pose a bigger shift to how we live since the Industrial Revolution, that includes dating. That could be your AI bot talking to another AI bot to streamline the process of making a partner shortlist for you, but also AI’s increasingly sophisticated ability to dredge the internet for information about specific individuals, collated from a lifetime of social media posts. However, as we've seen throughout history, dating as simply yet another commodification has never stuck – and certainly never managed to fulfil the wild longings of the heart. And while marriage rates flounder, dating as not just entertainment but self-fulfilment has a rose-tinted future. Nichi Hodgson is a journalist and the author of The Curious History of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder (Little, Brown, 2017)
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is much more historically accurate than you think – here's why
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
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 making sure that the “gripping, compelling nature of 14th-century tournaments” retained some basis in reality. “What period was George RR Martin thinking of here? He’s thinking the 1360s, 1370s. And I thought: wonderful. That is the apogee of the tournament in the late Middle Ages,” says Doherty. In other words: the series had the perfect canvas to explore knighthood at its peak. But while it’s flashy tournaments that take much of the centre stage in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Doherty wanted to ensure that the on-screen knights who perform at them also felt real. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-142085899-1-cab8f00-e1770053806838.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 14th-century detail from the Entrée d’Espagne manuscript shows a lone knight setting out on his journey, capturing the moment when an individual warrior left the safety of court or camp to seek glory on the battlefield or in distant lands." title="The departure of lone knight" /> What medieval knighthood was really like “Knights like Ser Duncan the Tall were much more common than we tend to think.” Knighthood in the later Middle Ages was an active profession rather than a static title. A knight needed equipment, horses, servants, and money – all of which required steady income and the right connections. He needed patrons to recommend him, and opportunities to prove that he was worth keeping. Tournaments were one way to demonstrate that worth. They were arenas of reputation and networking where knights could demonstrate their skill before powerful patrons, win money, and secure connections that might lead to their employment. But they weren’t the most important way for a knight to show his worth. The real engine of advancement was war. Prolonged conflicts including the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War created constant demand for experienced military men, and gave ambitious knights a chance to distinguish themselves in real campaigns. That’s why “figures like Henry V want good soldiers first and foremost,” Doherty explains. Read more | Who were the Knights of the Round Table? “Tournaments are important, but the emphasis here must be on the business of warfare. And not just soldiering, but organising money and logistics. That’s what makes or breaks men.” So, successful knights were often effective administrators as much as fierce fighters. They had to raise men, secure supplies, manage pay, and keep companies together under extreme stress. Kings and princes might have valued knights who could joust well, but they almost certainly valued well-organised competence, and battlefield nous, much more. That presents something of a paradox, says Doherty. “At one level, this society is so hierarchical and aristocratic. But it also values and rewards military talent, courage, and ambition. The Middle Ages was a very complex world.” This tension between inherited status and earned reputation was central to medieval knighthood. This was a society that celebrated lineage, but still made room for men who could prove their capability. One of the sources Doherty used to underline this culture was The Life of the Black Prince by Chandos Herald, a medieval poetic biographical chronicle composed c1385. The chronicle celebrated the life and military career of Edward of Woodstock, the English heir to the throne, also known as the Black Prince. Read more | 7 medieval kings of England you should know about Herald’s work is “very detailed, and evokes knightly culture so powerfully,” says Doherty. “It is so moving. You get a sense of a brotherhood. It’s this celebration of martial values; of derring-do and courage. And the Black Prince’s household was staffed with men who had risen through the ranks. They were achieving huge amounts of success and enrichment through the application of warfare.” Nevertheless, tournaments still remained a vivid and important part of this social landscape. What were medieval tournaments really like? Much of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is centred around a great tournament – and the accompanying feasts, side-performances, and merriment – as Dunk heads to the tournament at the fictional Ashford Meadow in the hope of making a name for himself. Tournaments were part of what sustained and maintained knightly culture. But they’re often misrepresented. “Tournaments were not gladiatorial combat. There’s a tournament in the very first episode of House of the Dragon, and it’s too violent,” Doherty says. “This was an incredibly violent world. Violence is always just under the surface. That’s true not just of the later Middle Ages; it’s true of antiquity, the early Middle Ages, and the early modern period. Violence can break out at any moment. “But the violence of the tournament was different. It was contained, most of the time. In fact, tournaments shunned violence. Violent death, murder, and mutilation do happen, of course – but they’re rare.” These were spaces where rivalries could be decided without the threat of death. It was a form of catharsis, where knights could display their skills without intending to kill one another. And, in some cases, they even coexisted with active diplomacy, as was the case with the tournament at Saint-Inglevert in France in 1390. Read more | Was Agincourt medieval England's finest hour? “This was one of the great tournaments of the late 14th century, drawing knights from across Europe,” says Doherty. “It took place at the very same moment when teams of negotiators from the courts of Charles VI of France and Richard II of England were negotiating a peace [during a stage of the conflict known as the Hundred Years’ War] just up the road. They were tourneying during the day, and then politicking at night.” This duality of ritualised violence by day, and political negotiation by night, evokes the reality of knighthood. Knights were professional soldiers and masters of the arts of war. And, when the time came, they were also performers of spectacle for cheering crowds. For Doherty, this is the authentic historical reality that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms taps into without having to pull from ‘real’ history. A wandering, working knight was a familiar figure of the later Middle Ages: a man in search of reputation, and all of its bountiful rewards. “This is what they’ve done brilliantly,” he says. “They’ve recreated that world; they’ve given it a texture that is absorbing, compelling, and believable. And it makes it so much more enjoyable than many very broad medieval films.” A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is streaming now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week.
Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates?
From 1066 to 1918, our obsession with battles, elections and even voyages of discovery risks distorting a true understanding of the past
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 English Dictionary leaves little room for doubt. Its definition of an event is “something that happens or takes place, especially something significant or noteworthy”. History is often taught as a succinct sequence of such occurrences – those accepted as important moments, neatly knitted together to explain the present. Indeed, for many historians, especially those preoccupied with political, constitutional or military matters, the practice of history itself involves assessing the importance of events by examining their causes, contexts and consequences, considering how they represent change or continuity over time. Yet almost no archaeologist would approach the past in such terms. Nor would many of today’s social, economic or cultural historians. In the 20th century, proponents of the Annales school, named for a scholarly journal, famously considered events relatively insignificant. French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–85) argued that events were simply “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”. Has the importance given to events been overstated? Should we, therefore, put less emphasis on learning dates? Are there better ways of understanding history? The first issue to consider is just how ‘important’ dates are selected. If we are told that some day or year is more noteworthy than another, who decided this? It would be appealing to be able to say that the established chronology has been objectively selected by balanced, skilled historians, and arrived at through years of scrupulous scholarship and vigorous debate. Yet history is a human thing, written and argued over for all kinds of reasons. Even if such matters are really decided by historians – instead of, say, politicians or poets – we are all equally flawed, prone to error and liable to misinterpret the past through a panoply of biases, conscious or not. Moreover, humans are social animals and have consequently evolved to value convention, tradition and the received wisdom of our ancestors. Most of us simply accept the established chronology. Such a shared history can indeed function as a powerful bond cementing the otherwise disparate identities of social groups. To reinforce this sense of the collective, past incidents thought worthy of remembrance were once upon a time written in stone – literally. The Parian Marble, a fragment of a stele found on the island of Paros and now displayed in the ancient Greek section of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, is inscribed with a neat chronology of events and their dates from 1582 BC to 299 BC in our terms. These include the fall of Troy, purportedly in 1209–1208 BC, and the rather more reliably dated battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The stele’s text, similar to the earlier ‘Sumerian King List’ housed in the nearby Mesopotamian gallery, fuses myth with history. Such objects represent early examples of a phenomenon that has become increasingly common in the past two centuries or so. With the rise of nation states, backstories have been created for their “imagined communities”, as Anglo-Irish political scientist Benedict Anderson famously dubbed nations in 1983. These stories typically rest on simple historical narratives, ideally sprinkled with a few inspirational national heroes and some key dates. In the UK, a chronology of past rulers plays a major role. Reigns became surrogates for eras, suffused with each ruler’s character. Looking back, for example, we see all those who were alive between 1837 and 1901 as ‘Victorians’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-815264642cmykWeb-Ready-2ce7a55.jpg" width="3569" height="2379" alt="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" title="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" /> Battles are often key parts of national stories. Like Marathon for the ancient Greeks, the battles of Hastings in 1066 and Agincourt in 1415 are considered important to the English. For the British more generally, Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo in 1815 are significant. In Serbia, the notoriously bloody battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which forces led by Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović squared up to an invading Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Murad I, has been endlessly mythologised. Lithuanians and Poles still celebrate victory over the German Teutonic Order at the battle of Grunwald in 1410. But few dates and events are as significant as national narratives suggest, battles least of all. Why? Because battles, though certainly rare and dramatic moments, are seldom, if ever, decisive at ending wars so can’t be imbued with much causal importance. Even after Hastings, at which much of the English ruling class was killed, it took William the Conqueror many years to bring England truly under Norman rule, a period notorious for the so-called Harrying of the North (1069–70). Likewise, the greatly celebrated clash at Agincourt (1415), which owes much of its fame to William Shakespeare, saw the mass slaughter of French nobility – but it was not until 1420 that Henry V forced Charles VI to agree to recognise the Plantagenet claim to the French throne under the Treaty of Troyes. Read more | Do you know the correct date of Magna Carta? Here’s why you might be wrong Yet such totemic dates are repeatedly reinforced by that staple of public history and national myth-making: the commemoration of anniversaries. These appear to be good moments to reconsider the past and revive enthusiasm for historical enquiry, but there’s a built-in problem: at least outwardly, nobody involved questions the real significance of the events marked – that would defeat the exercise. It is understandable that, on occasion, people wish to memorialise the loss of their loved ones in wars or other disasters. In general, however, anniversaries reflect current concerns and as such are profoundly unhelpful when it comes to understanding what happened in the past. Admittedly, some moments appear to have been so overwhelmingly important that they demand our attention. For Europe, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 seems epochal. In China, the final defeat of the Song dynasty by the forces of Kublai Khan in 1279 has a similar significance. Yet these events represent the culmination of long and complex processes. Seen in this light, the events themselves were largely symbolic. Surely, you say, the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 had massive historical consequences. Well, one can quibble over whether his first voyage itself achieved much – likewise his three further transatlantic expeditions in 1493–96, 1498–1500 and 1502–04, for that matter – despite being catastrophic for the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean. Columbus thought – and continued to think for the rest of his life – that he was exploring east Asia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-599969077cmykWeb-Ready-7d51147.jpg" width="4272" height="2848" alt="A painting of a man dressed in a white shirt with a brown cloak, and a dark hat" title="This 1519 portrait reputedly depicts Christopher Columbus. Did his first transatlantic voyage in 1492 really have such world-changing consequences? (Image by Getty Images)" /> The world indeed changed thereafter as it gradually fused into what, in 1974, the American economic historian and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein termed the “modern world-system”, but this was not an inevitable consequence of Columbus’s first voyage. After all, Europeans had been in the Americas before. The Norseman Leif Erikson is thought to have reached North America around AD 1000, and a Norse settlement excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada seems to support this. So it is of far greater historical significance that pivotal processes occurred after 1492 – but not after 1000. This is a point made in Alfred W Crosby’s groundbreaking 1972 book The Columbian Exchange, a foundational text of environmental history that charted the seismic global effects of the intercontinental transfer of plants, animals, diseases and cultures. Such developments can be shown to be genuinely transformative to people’s lives, from the food they ate to the diseases that afflicted them. By contrast, traditional chronology often neglects the experiences of a broad spectrum of people. Not everyone was present at battles or on voyages of discovery. Indeed, most humans who have ever lived were peasants who wrested their subsistence from the soil. For these people, few experiences were shared beyond a restricted locality, especially in periods when speeds of travel were slow and communication limited. Nearly all people must have been ignorant of what we now assert, after the fact, were key events. Others would have been simply indifferent. According to the historian De Lamar Jennsen, the Spanish Armada – King Philip II of Spain’s unsuccessful project to invade England in summer 1588 – was the “worst kept secret in Europe”. Yet research suggests that, far from striving to achieve victory for their country in some epic national struggle, during the Armada many English sailors and merchants were more preoccupied with selling food and other supplies to the enemy than with fighting them. Perhaps the key problem is that narrative history gives us a false sense of order, in part by playing to our innate tendency to identify and interpret patterns. It suggests that big events necessarily have big consequences. This completely fails to account for the unpredictable nature of the world through which we move. Seemingly insignificant factors can and do have a disproportionate impact on history. As the proverb has it in James Baldwin’s version: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for the want of a horse the battle was lost; for the failure of battle the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Conversely, apparently important things can turn out to be irrelevant. To return to Columbus, how are we to frame the decision of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon to support him, having equivocated for years over whether to stump up the cash to fund his voyage west? Some cite the fall of Granada to Christian forces in January 1492 – marking the end of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula, which gave the co-ruler monarchs both confidence and the promise of more secure finances – as the key explanation for their change of heart. Assuming this were true, we could equally portray what happened as the result of the Arab Nasrid dynasty, which ruled the Emirate of Granada for more than 250 years, carelessly losing control of their territory. In the latter reading, Wallerstein’s modern world-system was in a sense created “for want of a nail”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-128261385cmykWeb-Ready-6731e0e.jpg" width="3941" height="2628" alt="A photograph of a courtyard under tall, intricate archways with several columns throughout" title="The Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada. That city’s fall in January 1492 arguably led to the European colonisation of the Americas. But it’s an episode that can be framed in different ways, argues Robert Blackmore (Image by Getty Images)" /> As should be becoming clear, questioning the assumptions that underpin so much conventional narrative history has serious implications. This forces you, for example, to recognise that the lowliest peasant may have been as significant as an emperor or king, and that their relative impact on history was not necessarily proportionate to their immediate influence. “The ruler’s power was rarely effective,” Danish historian Patricia Crone put it, “even within such sphere of competence as he did enjoy.” Braudel hauntingly evoked a “historian who takes a seat in Philip II’s chair and reads his papers” and is transported into “a world of strong passions” but one “unconscious of the deeper realities of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks are tossed like cockleshells”. Yet such is our wish to impose order on a complex world that we have frequently reached for elaborate explanations for erratic ‘nonlinear’ outcomes, among them the capricious will of deities, the movements of celestial bodies, even conspiracy theories. In truth, because our evidence of the past is so incomplete, we are unlikely ever to pinpoint true cause and effect. Despite this, we still tend to look for what Annales school historian Marc Bloch called “the idol of origins”. Countless books claim to trace the roots of anything from states and religions to sports. Even the aforesaid Parian Marble located the birth of agriculture to 1409–08 BC when the goddess Demeter supposedly invented grain crops. In practical terms, though, nothing has any origin in history. “For most historical realities,” Bloch wrote in the early 1940s, “the very notion of a starting point remains singularly elusive.” As we have shown, we cannot even be sure that the origin of the Columbian Exchange was Columbus himself. Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster Indeed, trying to frame this story, we could be more radical and go back even before the time of Leif Erikson – perhaps all the way back to 14,800 years ago, when the Bering Strait Land Bridge was last rendered impassable and Asia was fully separated from the Americas. But where do you stop? Rather than there being actual origins, all things were and are constantly in the course of being made through a process of emergence. As Bloch argued, “A historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time. This is true of every evolutionary stage, our own and all others.” So how, then, are we to approach history without straightforward narratives? There are any number of options. Some historians, such as those of the Annales school, have examined historical structures – social, political and economic – rather than events to explain change, frequently over the long term. This approach has often been fused with the so-called histoire des mentalités (history of attitudes), which endeavours to understand the perspectives of those in the past in their own terms. Meanwhile, some social and economic historians have used Marxist theory and framed conflict between social classes as explaining change. Others have put the emphasis on demography and land use. Today, in a time of climate change, many historians are interested in understanding past societies’ interactions with their environments. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-122317088cmykWeb-Ready-15b2d1a.jpg" width="3708" height="2472" alt="An image showing four people dressed in wool skins and carrying spears, walking across a large" title="An illustration depicts Asian hunters migrating across the Bering Strait Land Bridge. The strait becoming impassable some 15,000 years ago was a vital juncture in global history (Image by Getty Images)" /> Each new approach has inevitably attracted criticism for its own alleged oversimplification and misrepresentation of the past. British historians, in particular, were notoriously hostile to the Annales school. Geoffrey Elton of the University of Cambridge, for example, held to his focus on events, with disdain for nearly all scholarship outside the study of power politics. It is said that his colleague Maurice Cowling would privately exclaim: “Annales is balls!” Despite such intransigence, though, new ideas did spread. Going forward, future historians will doubtless find even more innovative forms of historical enquiry using formidable artificial intelligence-driven tools. Read more | Do you know all the major periods in British history? To be clear, though they make less of specific events, new approaches are not necessarily histories without dates. Peter Laslett, in his pioneering 1965 work of social history The World We Have Lost, even began with one: “In the year 1619 the bakers of London applied to the authorities for an increase in the price of bread.” Though Laslett pinpoints a moment that might seem banal when compared with a great battle, coronation or discovery, we should arguably accord such granular details equal attention for what they tell us of our ancestors’ priorities. Their world, like our own, was a practically infinite morass of events and dates whose relative importance and interrelationships were vastly more uncertain than we impulsively suppose. History is not, as one student in Alan Bennett’s 2004 play The History Boys put it, “just one f****** thing after another”. Rather, as the sixth-century historian and bishop Gregory of Tours began his Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), “A great many things keep happening.” Faced with this truth, should we not stop presenting history as neat, ordered and, as such, unrepresentative of how our forebears experienced it? Ultimately, we cannot preserve the past inside the present. Explorers such as Columbus and rulers such as Charles I or Philip II will eventually be forgotten, just as we will all one day be swept away by the stream of time. Trying to understand this process, not learning dates, is the true art of history. Kings and queens are not innately important; neither are great battles. All things are transient. As the 11–12th-century Persian poet and scientist Omar Khayyam put it, it is far better we “think, in this batter’d caravanserai [a refuge for travellers] whose doorways are alternate night and day; how sultan after sultan with his pomp, abode his hour or two, and went his way”. This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp”
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
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 Allied commander in Europe. While taking various souvenirs, Rosengren cut out a swatch of the fabric on the sofa on which Hitler had shot himself – and which, crucially, was stained with blood. He took it home to the United States and kept it under lock and key, before passing it down to his son. It was later acquired by the Gettysburg Museum of History in Pennsylvania, which in turn offered it for DNA analysis to anyone who was interested. Accompanying the swatch was a signed affidavit from Rosengren’s son confirming its provenance. Certainly, the fabric looked like it matched photographs of the sofa. So far so good. Next came the genetic analysis for the identification. It is standard in cases such as this to analyse the DNA from the sample and compare it either with a previous authenticated sample from the individual in question or with the DNA of a close relative. Yet there were no such close relatives available to carry this out: Hitler had no children. However, as part of a previous study, more than a decade ago, a journalist called Jean-Paul Mulders and a genealogist named Marc Vermeeren had traced distant male-line members of Hitler’s family tree living in Europe and had obtained DNA from one of them. Mulders had been particularly interested in tracing male-line members of Hitler’s family tree because there is a segment of DNA that is passed down through the male line: the Y-chromosome. Y-chromosome types differ between individuals, but male-line members of the same family tree should carry identical, or near-identical, Y-chromosome types. Analysing the Y-chromosome type from a male-line relative gives you, essentially, Hitler’s Y-chromosome type. All these years later, if the blood on the piece of fabric was from Hitler, the Y-chromosome from it should match that from the relative whose DNA had already been tested. Read more | Step inside Hitler's U-boats to witness the nightmarish reality of life on board This was a huge moment in the project. So you can imagine our relief when we established that there was a DNA match – and, what’s more, it was a rare Y-chromosome type. Still, here historical context is, again, important. What were the chances of a male-line relative having access to the bunker and, crucially, also bleeding on the sofa? Given the rarity of the Y-chromosome type and what we know about the whereabouts of Hitler’s few male-line relatives at the time, the chances of this happening were vanishingly small. The blood sample, and thus the DNA in it, belonged to Hitler. We had his DNA. Sequencing the genome The match led to another of the study’s major discoveries: an answer to the question of whether Hitler had Jewish heritage through his paternal grandfather. In view of Hitler’s virulent antisemitism and his pivotal role in the extermination of 6 million European Jews, it is understandable that this particular rumour has triggered a great deal of speculation among both scholars and the general public alike. Well, the rigorous scientific testing carried out for the documentary has now confirmed beyond doubt what serious historians had long believed: namely that there is no truth in a rumour that has circulated since the early 1920s. The DNA match firmly debunks the Jewish ancestry myth. The next step was to sequence the entire genome. Hitler now joins thousands of historical individuals – often nameless but including among their number the famous German composer Ludwig van Beethoven – whose genomes have been sequenced. We approached the task with an open mind. But given how many medical biographers have tried to diagnose Hitler from a distance, we were naturally interested in what the former German leader’s DNA could tell us about his health. But first, let us be clear about what Hitler’s DNA can tell us – and, more importantly, what it cannot. This calls for a quick genetics lesson. For some diseases and conditions, the process is straightforward. Known as monogenic in origin, the development of a given condition can be traced back to a single gene or genetic variant that affects how the gene is working or, in this case, not working. A common example of a single gene disorder is cystic fibrosis. However, for other conditions and diseases, it is a far more complex picture, because they are both polygenic and multifactorial. This means that many – often hundreds – of genetic variants are involved, each incrementally increasing or decreasing a person’s risk of developing the condition. What’s more, the risk of developing the condition is also influenced by environmental factors ranging from chemical exposure (such as smoking) to lifestyle (such as diet). A common example of one of these conditions is coronary artery disease. A shock revelation We analysed the DNA in two ways: by sending the genetic results to experts in different fields so that they could identify any medical conditions of interest; and also by running it through the standard medical pipelines for known genetic variants associated with various conditions. The results were striking. First, thanks to the work of colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, we found that Hitler had a well-known deletion in a gene that is associated with Kallmann syndrome and the elaborately named Congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. While the severity can vary from person to person, this mutation can result, among other things, in an impaired testosterone production, low libido, abnormalities in the development of sexual organs, and, by extension, a disrupted reproductive function. This was a gasp moment in the study, and of particular interest to historians. The revelation that Hitler had some form of Kallmann syndrome is intriguing because of the implications for his private life. The finding suggests there could have been a causal relationship between Hitler’s genetic make-up and particular facets of his behaviour. It complements what we already knew about this part of Hitler’s biography, and it sheds light on aspects of his life that we could previously only speculate about. A physical examination of Hitler, conducted during his incarceration in Landsberg prison in 1923 following the failed Munich putsch – but only known about since the rediscovery of the medical file in 2010 – revealed that he had “right-sided cryptorchidism”. That is, an undescended testicle. (It turns out that the British satirical song ‘Hitler Has Only Got One Ball’, the origins of which remain unknown, was close to the mark after all.) “Some sense of shame” This physical abnormality might help to explain an account given by August Kubizek, Hitler’s closest (and perhaps only) friend during his adolescence. Hitler and Kubizek shared a room in Vienna from February to July 1908. Noting Hitler’s “obvious indifference to the opposite sex”, his “strict monk-like asceticism” and the fact that he “refrained from masturbation”, Kubizek observed: “My friend undoubtedly found favour with the opposite sex although, to my amazement, he never took advantage of it.” Commenting on the entirety of their friendship from the autumn of 1905, when they met at the opera in Linz, to the summer of 1908, when their time together in Vienna came to an end, Kubizek concluded: “I think I can say with certainty: Adolf never met a girl, either in Linz or Vienna, who actually gave herself to him.” Tellingly, Ernst Hanfstaengl, one of Hitler’s closest confidants during the 1920s and 1930s, later wrote: “I can never recall having seen him in a bathing costume, nor had anyone else. A story, probably authentic, was frequently told that Hitler’s old army comrades, who had seen him in the wash-house, had noted that his genital organs were almost freakishly underdeveloped, and he doubtless had some sense of shame about displaying himself. It seemed to me that this must all be part of the underlying complex in his physical relations, which was compensated for by the terrifying urge for domination expressed in the field of politics.” According to the historian Ian Kershaw, author of the definitive biography of Hitler, “Kubizek’s account, together with the language Hitler himself used in Mein Kampf, does point at the least to an acutely disturbed and repressed sexual development.” Rumours that Hitler had been infected with syphilis by a Jewish prostitute were without foundation: medical tests in 1940 showed that Hitler had not suffered from syphilis. The discovery that Hitler had Kallmann syndrome might thus be the key to explaining his seemingly “disturbed and repressed sexual development”. Looking for patterns Hitler may well have been extremely self-conscious about his body and, for this reason, reluctant to engage in relations of an intimate or sexual nature – and perhaps even uninterested in that side of life. This fact would help to explain his absolute devotion to politics to the almost complete exclusion of any kind of private life. Such devotion was exceptional among Nazi leaders. All other senior Nazis – Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, and so on – had wives and children. Some even had extramarital affairs. Ian Kershaw also wrote: “There was no ‘private life’ for Hitler. Of course, he could enjoy his escapist films, his daily walk to the Tea-House at the Berghof, his time in his alpine idyll far from government ministries in Berlin. But these were empty routines. There was no retreat to a sphere outside the political, to a deeper existence that conditioned his public reflexes.” Read more | Did Eva Braun love Adolf Hitler? The discovery and testing of Hitler’s DNA, combined with the historical facts already available to us, may explain why. When testing the DNA sample, experts at Aarhus University in Denmark looked at more complex conditions such as neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. When scientists are interested in a condition that is polygenic, they determine which genetic variants might predispose someone to the condition by looking, in a large population, at the patterns of DNA in people who have that particular condition compared to those who do not. One can then take an individual’s DNA and place them, based on the genetic variants they carry, on the bell-curve distribution to see how they compare to others in that population. Do they have a lot of the genetic variants that seem to predispose someone to the condition, or very few? This is known as a polygenic score. Hitler’s results were, again, striking. His polygenic score placed him in the top 1 per cent for schizophrenia, for autism and for bipolar disorder. However, we have to be really clear here: Hitler’s polygenic score being high is not diagnostic. We cannot, from his DNA, say that he would have been diagnosed with any of these conditions. Even people with the highest scores aren’t diagnosed with the disorder 95 per cent of the time. What makes Hitler so unusual is not the possibility that he might have had any one of these disorders on its own, but rather the fact that his placement in the top 1 per cent for the polygenic scores of all three of these conditions is exceptional: none of the other individuals in the population analysis had the same result. Still, we know that numerous environmental factors, such as adverse life events, would have had a big influence on his likelihood of developing them. What’s more, it is important not to stigmatise people with these conditions. It is rare for anyone with any of these conditions to go on to commit violent acts, let alone genocide. Indeed, they are more likely to be on the receiving end of violence. Genetics is only one part of the puzzle in determining who someone will become. Nature vs nurture No attempt to explain the man Hitler became and the extreme inhumanity he exhibited can, therefore, be reduced to a question of genetics. But it is interesting to view these scores in light of what we already knew about him. Environmental and social factors played a central role in moulding Hitler. Born in provincial Austria in 1889, he had a traumatic childhood, experiencing abuse at the hands of his father and losing four out of five siblings as well as both parents by the age of 19. He later wrote in Mein Kampf that the death of his mother, Klara, had been “a dreadful blow”. These events would have gone a long way toward shaping Hitler’s character, regardless of his genetic makeup. Similarly important for the bigger picture is the fact that Adolf Hitler was only one man. He was the undisputed dictator of Germany for 12 years. He devised and ordered the genocide of Europe’s Jews, as well as countless other atrocities. But he did not act alone. There were hundreds of thousands of perpetrators, each with their own genetic makeup and life experiences. Millions more eagerly followed him and profited from his policies. Genetics does not bring us any closer to understanding and explaining how the Holocaust could have happened. At the same time, it is undeniable that certain people have a huge and lasting impact on the course of historical events. Hitler is one of those people. Ian Kershaw once wrote of the dictator: “He is one of the few individuals of whom it can be said with absolute certainty: without him, the course of history would have been different.” Being able to analyse Hitler’s DNA thus offers us a remarkable opportunity to add another layer of information in the quest to understand more about the man regarded as “the embodiment of modern political evil” (Kershaw). However, we want to emphasise that it is not possible to see evil in someone’s DNA. A new piece of the puzzle It can be argued that only under Hitler could the Nazis have come to power, consolidated that power, waged a European war and committed the most terrible crimes in modern history. One reason for this is Hitler’s single-mindedness in the pursuit of power, which was unmatched by any other senior Nazi. That he had some form of Kallmann syndrome could well have been a factor in his renunciation of any kind of private life or intimate relationships. All available evidence suggests that he did not even have sex with his long-term companion, Eva Braun. Hitler always claimed that his life was devoted to Germany, so that there was no room in it for a wife. It seems this claim might, at least in part, have been a way of covering up his aversion to intimate relationships, and that his genes could have played a more significant role in his decision not to marry (until the day before his death) and not to have children than he was willing to admit. No single piece of evidence explains everything. We cannot take the genetic information about Hitler in isolation. It needs to be couched within our knowledge of what DNA can and cannot tell us, but crucially also within what we know about Hitler, and the time in which he lived. A rare constellation of factors – genetic, environmental and societal – all contributed to the emergence of Hitler. The discovery of his DNA – and the findings that have emerged from its analysis and are now presented in this cutting-edge documentary – provide historians with a rare and extremely significant new piece of the jigsaw puzzle in their attempts to understand and explain the most notorious figure of the 20th century. Turi King is the lead geneticist on the research into Hitler’s DNA. Alex J Kay is a historian specialising in Nazi Germany. Their groundbreaking work is covered in the two-part Channel 4 and Blink Films documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator
9 things you might not know about Sherlock Holmes
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...
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 oldest surviving film adaptations of Conan Doyle’s work dates to 1916 (William Gillette again) but it was the English duo of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the 1940s who for many years became identified in the public imagination as the Holmes and Watson. Rathbone and Bruce made 14 Sherlock Holmes films between 1939 and 1946 (and starred in more than 200 dramatisations for American radio), yet only the first two films were set in the Victorian period. The others had a contemporary setting, allowing Sherlock Holmes to pursue Nazi spies and to urge the purchase of war bonds. Bruce’s dim, bumbling Watson tends to infuriate Holmes purists. 5. He inspired hundreds of parodies The Adventures of ChubbLock Homes, an early comic strip, appeared in Comic Cuts magazine as early as 1893, and the urge to parody the great detective has never gone away. In 1901, while William Gillette’s official Holmes play was running in London, audiences at Terry’s Theatre were enjoying performances of the rather more frivolous Sheerluck Jones. The comic strip Sherlocko & Watso was hugely popular in the USA in the early 20th century, and silent film parodies abounded. Later in the century, Peter Cook and John Cleese both played comedy Sherlocks on film (Cleese's character was Arthur Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock’s grandson). Less well remembered, perhaps, is the 1976 TV film The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective, in which a youthful Larry Hagman (before his JR Ewing days) played a deluded motorcycle cop, Sherman Holmes. Read more | Women detectives: meet the Victorian female super sleuths 6. Tobacco, cereal and… mouthwash? Holmes has sold it all Even in his early days, Sherlock Holmes was helping manufacturers to sell their products. In the 1890s, the makers of Beecham’s Pills ran advertisements suggesting that the great detective was a devoted user. And as a smoker, Holmes was popular with the tobacco companies. Early cigarette advertisements using Holmes’ image included brands such as Lambert and Butler’s ‘Varsity’ mixture, Chesterfield, Ogden’s, Gallaher’s and Players. Since then, products as diverse as furniture cream, mouthwash, breakfast cereal and photocopiers have all benefited from association with the great man. 6. He debuted on TV to mixed reviews With the growth of television after the Second World War, the Baker Street detective was quick to adapt to the new medium. Alan Wheatley was the first actor to portray Holmes on British television – his 1951 series was broadcast live. But it seems Wheatley was not a fan of Holmes. When asked about Holmes’ character, he is said to have replied: “In my opinion he just seemed to be an insufferable prig”. 7. One actor played Holmes twice… and his brother Peter Cushing appeared as Holmes on the BBC in the 1960s. He had already played the detective in the 1959 Hammer film The Hound of the Baskervilles, alongside Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville. Lee was to play Holmes himself in a 1962 film; then, nearly 30 years later, he took up the pipe again, playing an ageing Sherlock in two TV films known together as Sherlock Holmes the Golden Years. Throw in an appearance as Mycroft Holmes in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and Sir Christopher almost bagged the complete set. Alas, he never appeared on screen as Doctor Watson. 8. The most prolific Holmes For many people, the definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was by Jeremy Brett, for Granada Television, in the 1980s and 1990s. Brett appeared in 41 episodes, including five feature-length productions. However, even that impressive achievement doesn’t make Brett the most prolific Holmes. That title must go to the British actor Clive Merrison, who played the detective on BBC Radio between 1989 and 1998, and who completed the full canon – dramatisations of all 60 of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories and novels. 9. Holmes, The Avengers and Britain's most famous secret agent are forever linked on screen And so to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, in which Andrew Scott rose to prominence playing Moriarty. Scott has also appeared in the new James Bond film, Spectre, joining an illustrious club of actors who have performed alongside Britain’s most famous spy and Britain’s most famous detective. But only Sir Roger Moore has played both leading roles on film. Sadly his one appearance as Holmes – in the 1976 TV-film Sherlock Holmes in New York – is not, perhaps, his most memorable work. Sean Connery never played Holmes, but he did play the ultra-astute friar William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose, so you might say that he came close. The actor playing Dr Watson to Roger Moore’s Holmes was Patrick Macnee, most famous as John Steed in The Avengers. Macnee played Watson again, 15 years later, alongside Christopher Lee’s Holmes. Then, in 1993, he donned the deerstalker himself in The Hound of London, thus becoming that very rare thing – an actor who has starred in films as both Holmes and Watson. But all these efforts to breathe new life into Sherlock Holmes might well have been greeted with bemusement by Holmes’ creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote in a letter in 1892: “Holmes is as inhuman as Babbage’s Calculating Machine.” Martin Davies is the author of Mrs Hudson and the Spirits’ Curse (Canelo, 2015)