Mary Wollstonecraft was a firebrand thinker of the Enlightenment – proposing radical ideas about the fundamental rights of women. And her life was just as groundbreaking as her work, from having a front row seat at the French Revolution and embarking on a treasure hunt for stolen silver along the Norwegian coast, to courting scandal by giving birth outside of wedlock. In today’s Life of the Week episode, author Bee Rowlatt tells Ellie Cawthorne more about Wollstonecraft’s life and legacy.
Bee Rowlatt is the author of In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys (Alma Books, 2015)
]]>Edmund of Woodstock, first Earl of Kent, was executed for treason outside Winchester Castle on the orders of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, Earl of March. He had been a supporter of his half-brother, the deposed Edward II and, believing him to still be alive, had got involved in a conspiracy to rescue him from prison. Initially nobody was prepared to behead so eminent a figure and he had to wait for several hours until a common criminal agreed to do the deed in exchange for a pardon.
Wyatt Earp, hunter, gambler, saloon keeper, lawman and killer, is born in Monmouth, Illinois. In October 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona, he will participate with John “Doc” Holliday and two of his brothers in the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral.
Parliament abolishes the House of Lords, describing it as “useless and dangerous to the people of England”. Two days earlier it had abolished the institution of monarchy following the execution of King Charles I at the end of January. A large number of MPs had been excluded from the House of Commons by the Army in the previous December, earning those that remained the nickname of the Rump Parliament. The Rump will rule England for over four years until it is forcibly dissolved by Oliver Cromwell in April 1653.
Scottish writer, doctor, missionary and explorer David Livingstone was born in a Lanarkshire tenement. As a young boy he worked in a cotton mill before leaving for London in 1838 to undertake scriptural and medical studies.
More than one million people attended rallies as the first International Women’s Day was marked in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
After six years of construction, Sydney Harbour Bridge was formally opened. Jack Lang, Labour premier of New South Wales, was about to cut the ceremonial ribbon to signify the opening of the bridge when Captain Francis de Groot, a member of a right-wing group called the New Guard, interrupted proceedings. Dressed in his First World War cavalry uniform, de Groot rode up and cut the ribbon with his sabre, declaring the bridge open “in the name of the decent citizens of New South Wales”. He was later fined five pounds.
In the US, a young folk singer called Bob Dylan releases his first album, the imaginatively titled Bob Dylan.
One of the key goods traded along the Silk Road, a network of interconnected trade routes that ran for some 4,000 miles from China to Europe, was silk.
That might sound glaringly obvious, but the Silk Road – which was established in 130 BC by the Chinese Han Dynasty and active until the 15th century – did not go by that name at the time. It was only centuries later when, in 1877, the term was coined by German geographer, traveller and scientist Ferdinand von Richthofen.
And despite its famed moniker, silk was far from the only valuable resource to be transported on the long journey from east to west.
“It’s more a kind of an inspirational clue to make you think about all the other things that could be traded,” says historian Dr Sam Willis.
Silk farming, or sericulture, was an ancient skill perfected by the Chinese, the only people in the world who knew how to produce this remarkable material for thousands of years.
“Legend has it that [the secret] was discovered by a princess who was sitting under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her tea and began to unravel,” according to Willis, who was speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
“And from that, she realised that there was this incredible strand of material which could be woven.”
The industry involved growing silkworms, keeping them fed with mulberry leaves, and then cultivating the raw silk, which could then be worked into strong, beautiful textiles.
“The Chinese were the only people who knew how to farm it, they knew how to weave it and how to work it,” Willis explains.
Among the fine finished products were silk coats and silk dresses, sold by Chinese merchants to the West, and in increasing numbers as demand rose.
Member exclusive | Walk in the footsteps of the first crusaders, witnessing the hardships they faced, meeting the people they came across and seeing the landscapes they traversed through their eyes.
More than silk was traded on the Silk Road. Spices, precious metals, handicrafts, clothing, furs, weapons and horses all got sent along the routes bound for foreign markets. Humans also became commodities, with enslaved labour a thriving business.
Depending on demand, goods could be transported along the entire length of the Silk Road, from eastern China to the Mediterranean Sea. Not many of the traders themselves, however, made the full journey.
Merchants would go backwards and forwards on short stretches, before handing over their cargo to the next link in the chain.
“Very few merchants travelled the entire length of the Silk Road,” says Willis. “The majority of the merchants travelled short distances to and fro, and became experts on particular legs of the journey.”
With all this movement of people and goods over many centuries came an inevitable exchange of ideas.
“That’s the most important takeaway about the Silk Road,” asserts Willis. “Goods are going from left to right and right to left, but it’s the ideas that are important. Religion, science, maths and art.
“The single easiest way of demonstrating the power of the Silk Road is to go to Xi’an [in central China] where there is an enormous, eighth-century mosque,” he says.
Xi’an was one of the major ancient Silk Road cities, and the first city in China to encounter Islam. “Or if you want a more modern version, you can go to see the Catholic Cathedral in Guangzhou. Or the giant Buddhas in Dunhuang.”
This rich and world-changing cultural exchange flowed in both directions. From the east, knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and the Chinese invention of paper and gunpowder travelled west.
Going the other way, western knowledge of clockmaking and automata spread eastwards. “It’s all made possible by this great connection of people which happens on the Silk Road,” explains Willis.
Dr Sam Willis has made more than ten major TV series for the BBC and National Geographic including The Silk Road, Invasion! and Castles, and written history books including the Penguin Ladybird Expert Series: The Spanish Armada, The Battle of the Nile and The Battle of Trafalgar (2018). He was talking to Rebecca Franks on the HistoryExtra podcast episode: The Silk Road: everything you wanted to know
]]>Elizabethan daily life, with Professor Tracy Borman – watching time 15 mins
What did the Tudors wear? – listening time 36 mins
The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins
Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England – reading time 14 mins
10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins
Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins
The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England – reading time 5 mins
Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
What did the Tudors wear? – listening time 36 mins
The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins
Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England – reading time 14 mins
10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins
Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins
The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England – reading time 5 mins
Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
In 1877, Annie Besant took the stand. She was on trial for selling an “obscene publication” – a pamphlet designed to educate the masses on birth control. Author Michael Meyer tells Ellie Cawthorne about how this sensational legal case lit a fire under Victorian society, and why the woman at the centre of it decided to represent herself in the courtroom.
Michael Meyer is the author of A Dirty, Filthy Book: Sex, Scandal, and One Woman’s Fight in the Victorian Trial of the Century (WH Allen, 2024)
]]>The teenage monarch is viciously stabbed in the back
On 18 March 978, a brutal murder was committed at Corfe in Dorset – and the victim was Edward, king of the English. “No worse deed for the English race was done than this,” the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lamented.
The main suspect for the assassination was Edward’s stepmother, Ælfthryth, widow of his father, King Edgar. Certainly she had a motive: with Edward dead, his younger half-brother – her son, Æthelred – would inherit the English throne. It has been suposed that she invited the young king to Corfe to participate in a hunt, with murder in mind.
That March evening, as the hunters gath- ered, mounted and ready to ride out, Ælfth- ryth offered Edward a cup of wine. Turning to sip from the cup, he was stabbed in the back by her servants. As he fell from his steed, bloodied but still alive, Edward’s foot became caught in the stirrup – and, when the horse fled, he was dragged to his death.
The murdered king was buried quickly and unceremoniously at Saint Mary’s Church in nearby Wareham; soon afterwards, though, his remains were disinterred and moved to the more-prestigious Shaftesbury Abbey. Following reports of various miracles at his tomb, he was then canonised – becoming known as Edward the Martyr. | Written by Helen Carr
Frederick, Duke of York, resigns as commander-inchief of the British Army. It had been revealed that his mistress, Mary Anne Clarke, had been making money by offering to use her influence on behalf of officers wishing to gain promotion.
After a year and a day’s hostilities the first Taranaki War was brought to an end when a truce was signed between the New Zealand government and their Maori opponents.
HMS Edinburgh is launched at Pembroke Dockyard.
King George I of Greece was assassinated by anarchist Alexander Schinas while walking in the streets of Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met in the Alps at the Brenner Pass and discussed Italy’s participation in the war against France and Great Britain.
The Algerian War of Independence was brought to an end when representatives of the French government and the Front de Liberation Nationale signed the ‘Evian Accords’ at Evian-les-Bains.
Josef Stalin is a titan of modern history – and one of its most infamous leaders, responsible for the deaths of millions. Danny Bird spoke to Robert Service to chart the Soviet tyrant’s life, from his childhood in Georgia to his rise to become the dictator of the Soviet Union and an architect of the post-war world.
]]>How did the Capetian dynasty hold on to the French throne for such a long time during the Middle Ages? How did deep-seated religious beliefs shape their rule? And what was the ‘Capetian miracle’? Speaking to Emily Briffett, Justine Firnhaber-Baker answers listener questions on the influential French dynasty – from how they popularised the name ‘Phillip’ and the iconic fleur-de-lis, to their religiously-inspired ‘royal touch’.
]]>Harold Harefoot, King of England, died at Oxford. He was buried in Westminster Abbey but his body was later dug up on the orders of Harthacanute, his successor, and thrown into a nearby bog.
A cave on Lough Derg, Donegal, believed by some to be St Patrick’s entrance to Purgatory, is sealed on the orders of Pope Alexander VI.
Marie Stopes opened Britain ‘s first family planning clinic, the Mothers’ Clinic, in Holloway, north London. In 1925 the clinic moved to Whitfield Street in central London, where it remains to this day.
Colonel William Carver, Conservative MP for Howdenshire, asked the home secretary in parliament whether in view of the shortage of paper in the country the throwing of confetti at weddings should be prohibited.
Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg sign the Treaty of Brussels, the first move towards European co-operation after the Second World War. It paves the way for the Western European Union and Nato.
As China crushes opposition to its rule in Tibet, the Dalai Lama flees the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, accompanied by about 20 supporters. Fifteen days later, after a 300-mile trek through the Himalayas, he will arrive safely in India.
The new London Bridge was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. The pre-stressed concrete box girder bridge had been designed by architect Lord Holford and engineers Mott, Hay and Anderson. Construction had begun in 1967.