HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-29T09:46:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Are the secrets of the Middle Ages' most mysterious manuscript hiding in plain sight?
items: Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant?
items: “Check your husband’s dunghill” – here’s why medieval society was obsessed with poo
items: Nato is in crisis. Can history predict what happens next?
items: Why does Putin blame this infamous Russian revolutionary for Ukraine’s independence?
items: One of medieval history’s biggest mysteries has just been solved – and it rewrites 1066
items: For decades, this prehistoric grave was a mystery. Have its dark secrets now been revealed?
items: What did Elizabeth I really think about Anne Boleyn? These secret symbols might unlock the truth
items: Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it?
items: The ancient Romans knew the power of entertainment as propaganda – here's the proof

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

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

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

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

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Why does Putin blame this infamous Russian revolutionary for Ukraine’s independence?
type: item
date: 2026-03-21T10:45:29.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: More than a century after the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin’s decision to organise the Soviet state around national republics continues to shape political arguments about Ukraine
encoded: When Vladimir Putin speaks about the origins of the war in Ukraine, he often reaches back into history for his justifications. In speeches and essays, the Russian president has repeatedly argued that modern Ukraine is an artificial construct that was effectively created by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917 – and above all by their leader, Vladimir Lenin. According to this interpretation, Ukraine has never been a serious, distinct nation from Russia, but a political idea that emerged when the new Soviet regime reorganised the territories of the former Russian Empire into a federation of republics. In Putin’s view, by granting Ukraine formal status as a Soviet republic, Lenin unintentionally laid the groundwork for Ukrainian independence decades later. It’s a disputed version of history, to say the least. Read more | Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s partly to do with the Vikings Many historians argue that Ukrainian cultural and political identity long predated the Soviet Union. Ideas of a distinct Ukrainian language, culture and political community had been developing since at least the 19th century, alongside nationalist movements across Europe. But it’s impossible to understand Putin’s version of history without coming back to Lenin. Historian Dr Lara Douds reflected on Lenin’s life and legacy on the HistoryExtra podcast – and explained how he’s become Putin’s bogeyman. Lenin’s revolution “The boy who would become Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in a provincial town in the Russian Empire,” explains Douds. The town was Simbirsk, about 400 miles east of Moscow on the Volga river. Simbirsk was a modest administrative town in the interior of the empire, far removed from the political centres of St Petersburg and Moscow. At the time of Lenin’s birth, the Russian Empire was one of the largest political entities in world history. It stretched from eastern Europe across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. Its political system remained …

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One of medieval history’s biggest mysteries has just been solved – and it rewrites 1066
type: item
date: 2026-03-21T00:01:25.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
subject: Trends-News
description: A fresh re-reading of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests that King Harold Godwinson didn’t race south by land after Stamford Bridge, but instead used a coordinated naval strategy. What does that mean for how we should understand the events of 1066?
encoded: Alongside the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, 1066 stands as one of the most pivotal years in British history. It marked the end of Anglo-Saxon rule and the ascendancy of the Normans under William the Conqueror. At the centre of this story is King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king. In the space of just a few weeks, he fought two major battles at opposite ends of England. In September, he defeated the Viking king Harald Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire. He is then said to have rushed south, covering some 200 miles to confront William, Duke of Normandy, who had landed on the Sussex coast to attempt to take the throne. According to the traditional account, Harold and his army arrived exhausted – but just in time to fight at the battle of Hastings on 14 October, where he was killed. This dramatic forced march has been used to explain both the pace of events, and Harold’s eventual defeat: his troops, worn out from the journey, were at a disadvantage against William’s forces. But what if that version of the story is wrong? New research now suggests that one of the most famous – and decisive – military marches in English history may never have happened at all. A journey by land – or sea? In new research, Professor Tom Licence of the University of East Anglia argues that Harold didn’t lead a desperate overland march from Yorkshire to Sussex. Instead, much of the journey south may have been made by sea. The idea that the march itself may be implausible is not entirely new. “There’s an argument going back to the that this great heroic march is almost impossible,” he says, speaking to HistoryExtra. He explains that even when compared with the most demanding marching rates recorded in modern warfare (for example, in the American Civil War) the speed required to cover the distance simply doesn’t hold up. “To cover that distance in that period of time on foot is just unfeasible,” he says. Crucial to Licence’s argument, he says, is the finding t…

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For decades, this prehistoric grave was a mystery. Have its dark secrets now been revealed?
type: item
date: 2026-03-20T11:15:27.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Devastating illness wiped out a community in Iron Age Serbia – or so it was thought. New research suggests the real story behind a large prehistoric burial site might be much darker
encoded: As Europe progressed into the early Iron Age, it marked the beginning of a new chapter in prehistory. The Iron Age in Europe began roughly around 900 BC, when iron tools and weapons began to replace those made from bronze. The transition brought technological change, accompanied by major shifts in social organisation. Clan-based communities that had long relied on mixed economies of farming, herding and seasonal mobility began to organise themselves into static chiefdoms organised around powerful leaders. Settlements grew larger, and trade networks expanded across the continent, opening up new opportunities for cultural and economic exchange. It was a change that created new ways of living – and new ways of dying, too. Read more | A brief guide to the British Iron Age Across central and south-eastern Europe, landscapes appear to have been increasingly contested as communities vied for access to new trade routes and fertile land, clashing over opposing ideas, beliefs, territorial needs and resources. In some cases, these disputes descended into violent conflict. Archaeological evidence from this period includes fortified hilltop settlements, weapon deposits and graves showing signs of trauma, all suggesting that warfare and organised violence were becoming more common in parts of Iron Age Europe. The Carpathian Basin of south-eastern Europe – the vast region spanning parts of modern Hungary, Serbia, Croatia and Romania – forms a natural crossroads between central Europe, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, making it an important corridor for trade, migration and cultural exchange during the prehistoric period. It was one of these dangerous zones of violent change. It was in this region, in 1954, that archaeologists first uncovered a site called Gomolava along the banks of the Sava River in northern Serbia, which dates to the earliest years of the Iron Age, around 2,800 years ago. Gomolava is a large archaeological mound known as a tell – a mound formed by cent…

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What did Elizabeth I really think about Anne Boleyn? These secret symbols might unlock the truth
type: item
date: 2026-03-19T11:10:48.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s second wife, and the first to be executed. She was also the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. But how did the longest reigning Tudor monarch remember her ill-fated mother?
encoded: On 19 May 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed inside the Tower of London. The charges against her – adultery, treason and incest with her own brother – were sensational by any standard. Within days of her arrest, she had been beheaded on the orders of her husband, Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn had been one of the most powerful figures at the English court during the early 1530s, and her supporters, including reform-minded clergy and courtiers, lost influence rapidly after her death. Her demise also had immense consequences for her daughter, Elizabeth, who wasn’t yet three years old. In the years that followed her execution, Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was declared invalid, and her daughter was denounced as illegitimate. But Elizabeth would, of course, eventually come to rule England for four and a half decades, becoming the longest reigning Tudor monarch. In this position of power, how did she look back on the death of her mother? Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Tudor historian Dr Nicola Tallis explains the clues she left behind that help to answer that question – and why it’s essential to first understand the context around Elizabeth’s ascent to power. Henry VIII’s great disappointment Elizabeth Tudor was born in 1533, during a moment of extraordinary political upheaval. The Tudor monarchy itself was relatively new, having been established only in 1485 after decades of the Wars of the Roses. Ensuring a clear male succession was therefore considered essential to the continuation of the Tudor line, and the country’s stability. So, Elizabeth’s birth had been eagerly anticipated. Henry VIII had spent years attempting to secure a male heir to guarantee the future of the Tudor dynasty – and it was expected that Anne Boleyn would deliver. As Dr Tallis explains, “all of the astrologers that Henry VIII had employed to predict the gender of his child, except one, had said that this child was going to be a boy”. His first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, had produced only one s…

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Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it?
type: item
date: 2026-03-16T16:29:41.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: From the Suez Crisis and Vietnam, to 21st-century political tensions, the alliance between Britain and the United States has been declared dead – or dying – many times
encoded: Few diplomatic partnerships have been declared to be on life support quite as often as the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the United Kingdom and the United States. The phrase refers to the theoretically unique presumption of shared understanding and cooperation that has existed between the two countries in the decades since the Second World War. But did the special relationship ever actually exist? And if it does, what exactly does it mean in the cold light of day? “This is a perennial subject of discussion,” says historian Sam Edwards, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “You could probably go back to the 1960s to find the first obituary of the special relationship – the first moment where commentators were asking the question: is the special relationship done and dusted, or can it survive?” Those debates have resurfaced repeatedly whenever London and Washington DC have had public differences over foreign policy or military strategy. It’s a question that has arisen once again in March 2026, as President Trump has instigated a new wave of military operations in the Middle East, albeit without Downing Street’s unconditional support. Winston Churchill coins the phrase The term ‘special relationship’ has been in the political vocabulary for 80 years, making an entrance in the early days of the Cold War. In March 1946, Winston Churchill travelled to Fulton, Missouri to deliver a speech formally titled Sinews of Peace. Churchill was no longer the UK’s prime minister at the time – he had lost the 1945 British general election – but he remained one of the most influential political figures of the era. The Second World War had ended less than a year earlier, but tensions between the Soviet Union and western powers were already hardening along ideological faultlines. Churchill used the speech to warn about Soviet expansion across eastern Europe, and what he saw as the impending threat of communism. As Sam Edwards explains, the speech is “famous for two evocative …

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

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