HistoryExtra
type: channel
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-01-28T16:10:02.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Long before Cleopatra, another female pharaoh redefined ancient Egyptian power
items: Humble Victorian heroes: the ordinary Britons who sacrificed their lives for others
items: History's Greatest Scandals: secrets of the Georgian era
items: The MILLION pound forgery | Mrs Rudd vs the Perreaus
items: History's most mysterious manuscripts
items: Francisco Franco: life of the week
items: Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066
items: Why did Maggie O'Farrell write about Shakespeare's son?
items: What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? A guide to the playwright's family life and descendants
items: How grim was life on Hitler's U-boats?

Long before Cleopatra, another female pharaoh redefined ancient Egyptian power
type: item
date: 2026-01-28T16:10:02.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: More than a millennium before Cleopatra, the female ruler Hatshepsut blazed a trail for powerful women in the ancient civilisation
encoded: Cleopatra’s story is often seen through a prism of great drama, romance and spectacle, her rule coming at the very end of pharaonic history. But her position as the definitive image of the ‘female pharaoh’ obscures a much earlier ancient Egyptian experiment in female power – one that is arguably much more revealing. More than 1,400 years before Cleopatra, another woman ruled ancient Egypt as pharaoh, operating within one of the most conservative political systems the ancient world produced. She was Hatshepsut. Speaking about her life on the HistoryExtra podcast, Egyptologist Campbell Price explains what her period of rule means for how power in ancient Egypt has been understood, and how she paved the way for the rulers who followed. An ancient civilisation with a long history Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from around 1479 to 1458 BC, nearly fifteen centuries before Cleopatra’s death in 30 BC. Her power base was the city of Thebes in southern Egypt, which at the time served as the religious and political heart of the kingdom. From there, she governed a state that stretched from the Nile Delta in the north, deep into Nubia in the south, overseeing one of the most expansive and stable empires Egypt had yet known. Read more | Cleopatra: what is the real legacy of the last pharaoh? “With Hatshepsut, we’re talking about the Eighteenth Dynasty, and that is the first of several dynasties in what Egyptologists call the New Kingdom,” explains Campbell Price. Egypt, at this point was anything but new, and had already transitioned through distinct phases of cultural transformation, including the Old Kingdom. “The Old Kingdom is the time of the pyramids,” Price notes. “The pyramids are already a thousand years old by this point.” So, Hatshepsut inherited a civilisation that was already ancient. In its long history, it had already survived periods of war, collapse, fragmentation and foreign rule during the Second Intermediate Period. The role of kingship was to maintain a cosmic order i…

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Humble Victorian heroes: the ordinary Britons who sacrificed their lives for others
type: item
date: 2026-01-28T16:00:38.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Death
subject: Historical people
description: Statues celebrate monarchs, rulers and conquerors – but who remembers the brave folk who gave their lives to save others? Anna Maria Barry recounts stories of self-sacrificing but otherwise ordinary people from the 19th and 20th centuries who are commemorated in one London park
encoded: Tucked away in the City of London, a short walk north of St Paul’s Cathedral, lies a curious, oddly-shaped, leafy little sanctuary. Opened in 1880, Postman’s Park is named for the workers at the nearby General Post Office who liked to visit during their breaks. Today, though, it’s best known as the home of the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, honouring dozens of heroic Londoners who lost their lives while trying to save others, most in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Unusually, the memorial describes the details of each tragic death, from drownings and carriage accidents to house fires and poisonings. No wonder this moving, if somewhat macabre, celebration of bravery continues to fascinate. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1411624515webready-b2b4c26-e1769529632536.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a low, long wooden and brick structure against a building. In front of it there is a garden with a stone font in the middle" title="The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice honours ordinary people (Image by Getty Images)" /> Flames faced with fortitude One such quietly heroic Londoner was Alice Ayres. During the night of 24 April 1885, the 26-year-old lay asleep in her bedroom on Union Street, in the home of her older sister and brother-in-law, who employed her as a nursemaid and household assistant. Sharing this room were her nieces Edith, Ellen and Elizabeth, aged five, four and three, respectively. Shortly after 2am, Alice was jolted awake by the crackling of flames, and quickly realised that something was very wrong. Her brother-in-law’s oil and paint shop on the ground floor was on fire, and his wares were rapidly accelerating the flames. Alice had to think fast. Unable to exit the bedroom, she rushed to the window and threw it open to scream for help. She grabbed two bedsheets to tie together before realising that this makeshift rope wouldn’t enable her to lower her nieces to safety…

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History's Greatest Scandals: secrets of the Georgian era
type: item
date: 2026-01-28T10:53:57.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Join us for series two of History’s Greatest Scandals, where Ellie Cawthorne and Professor Hannah Greig are uncovering the secrets of the Georgian era
encoded: In this podcast series, Ellie Cawthorne and Professor Hannah Greig follow on the trail of forgers, expose illicit liaisons, meet cross-dressing celebrity spies and get involved in some high-stakes gambling, as they search out some of the most salacious stories of the day, and explore what they can reveal about this fascinating period of history.

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The MILLION pound forgery | Mrs Rudd vs the Perreaus
type: item
date: 2026-01-28T10:47:14.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: In 1775, a respectable lady, a mild-mannered apothecary and his fast-living identical twin stood accused of pulling off a scam that had earned them a grand fortune of £7,500 – roughly £1.5m in today's money
encoded: In 1775, a respectable lady, a mild-mannered apothecary and his fast-living identical twin stood accused of pulling off a scam that had earned them a grand fortune of £7,500 – roughly £1.5m in today's money. But as the trial of Mrs Rudd and the Perreaus unfolded, the defendants turned on one another, and the plot thickened – who was the real orchestrator of the scheme, and who would hang for it? In this episode of History’s Greatest Scandals, Professor Hannah Greig and Ellie Cawthorne revisit this sensational courtroom drama, and consider what it can tell us about the Georgian age. Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below: View Green Video on the source website

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History's most mysterious manuscripts
type: item
date: 2026-01-28T08:00:16.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Garry J Shaw explores the history of the world's most mysterious manuscripts
encoded: What do exploding bats and amphibious galleons have in common? They're both fascinating features of some of the world's most mysterious manuscripts, as revealed by journalist and author Garry J Shaw in his book, Cryptic. From Hildegard of Bingen’s secret language to the hoaxes of Renaissance Spain, and from John Dee’s angelic communications to the peculiar Voynich Manuscript, Shaw unravels the allure and enigma of texts shrouded in secrecy.

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Francisco Franco: life of the week
type: item
date: 2026-01-27T08:00:30.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Life of the week (podcast series)
description: Giles Tremlett discusses the life of General Franco, whose nearly four decades of brutal dictatorship over Spain continues to divide Spaniards half a century after his death
encoded: Emerging in the early 20th century as Europe's youngest general since Napoleon Bonaparte, Francisco Franco was destined to make waves. But how did this uncharismatic reactionary become Spain’s dictator, dominating the country for nearly four decades? Danny Bird speaks to journalist Giles Tremlett about the life of the man who continues to haunt Spain more than 50 years after his death in 1975.

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Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T16:00:28.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval Life and Death
description: 1066 is synonymous with the battle of Hastings. Yet while Duke William was launching his conquest of England, the rest of Europe had its own crises to contend with. Charles West takes us on a tour of the continent during a dramatic year
encoded: It was the summer of 1066 and two powerful leaders were rallying their supporters behind them and preparing for war. Their clash would result in political chaos, the spilling of much blood, and one of those leader’s violent deaths. Yet the people of England barely noticed. That’s because the clash took place hundreds of miles to the south-east on the Italian peninsula, and it involved two figures – a renegade cleric named Arialdo and Guido da Velate, the archbishop of Milan – who have rarely troubled British history books. These two men had been butting heads since the 1050s and, by 1066, their intense rivalry had pitched the city-state of Milan into chaos. The trouble started when Arialdo and his supporters began accusing Milan’s formidable clerical elite of corruption, chiefly because the city’s priests were married – a longstanding local practice that many non-Milanese found deeply shocking. Things quickly turned violent: armed skirmishes erupted on the streets. The showdown was soon heading for a bloody denouement. We might suppose that the pope in Rome would take a dim view of an open rebellion against the clerical hierarchy in a major Italian city. But from the middle of the 11th century, the papacy was occupied by men who agreed that the Catholic church was in desperate need of an overhaul, and so they sided with Arialdo. In March 1066, Pope Alexander II went so far as to excommunicate Archbishop da Velate because of the charges Arialdo laid against him. It was a radical move. And it backfired spectacularly. The canny archbishop was able to spin his excommunication to his benefit by positioning himself as the champion of Milanese traditions against toxic ‘external’ interference. An enraged local populace turned on Arialdo and chased him out of the city. In June 1066, while he was making his way to Rome, emissaries of da Velate hunted down Arialdo and murdered him. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-9311733…

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Why did Maggie O'Farrell write about Shakespeare's son?
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T12:37:41.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: The life of young Hamnet and the effect that his premature death had on his parents is reimagined by Maggie O’Farrell in her 2020 historical fiction Hamnet, which has since been made into a major film starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. What inspired the writer to focus on such a moment?
encoded: Very little is known about the only son of playwright William Shakespeare, except that he died at the age of 11. The life of young Hamnet and the effect that his premature death had on his father is reimagined by Maggie O’Farrell in an emotional departure from her previous works. Did the young boy’s death influence the bard’s later writing? And is the name of one of his most famous plays, Hamlet, a coincidence – was Shakespeare trying to tell us something? What inspired you to focus on Hamnet Shakespeare, and how much do we actually know about his life? We know he was born, and we know he died but apart from that, pretty much nothing. I have always been struck by how little space Hamnet was given in biographies. There's usually a paragraph about how common child mortality was in the late-16th century, but the implication was that it wasn’t that upsetting to lose a child because it happened a lot. It seemed preposterous to me because it must have been devastating to lose your only son, at age 11. Hamnet’s mother [Anne Hathaway] has also been unfairly maligned as an older woman who tricked a younger man into marriage. I think we need to look at her with fresh eyes which is why I gave her back her actual name. Her father named her Agnes, which raises a question: why all these years do we refer to her as Anne? I wanted to write a novel that gave voice to these people who've been silenced by history. Read more | What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? This is quite a departure from your previous novels. How different did you find writing this book? When writing historically there's a lot of library-based research you can do, but the author has to inhabit the lives of these people. For example, when writing the first chapter, I had this young boy falling on the floor. I stopped because I had no idea what the floor of a Tudor kitchen would be made of. I went to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw the flagstone Tudor floors for myself. I cultivated my own Elizabethan garden and l…

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What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? A guide to the playwright's family life and descendants
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T12:32:00.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
description: The story of the Shakespeares was one of social advancement, says Stanley Wells, reflected in dwellings that rose from rural farmstead to manorial splendour. Along the way were some family upsets: pregnant brides, lawsuits and excommunication. Find out more about when William married Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, when their children were born, and what became of the Shakespeare family after the playwright's death…
encoded: He is one of the greatest writers of all time, and our longing to know as much as we can about him continues. We know that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to John and Mary Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and that he was their first child to survive past infancy. During the Elizabethan period, infant mortality was very high, and his parents had already lost two daughters before young William was born. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but his baptismal record survives, showing that Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare (William, son of John Shakespeare) was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church on 26 April 1564. His birthday is now celebrated on 23 April, since it was common for baptisms to be held three days after a birth. William Shakespeare's birth family: who were his parents? The story of Shakespeare’s family – one of upward social mobility – is reflected in their homes. Start in the small village of Wilmcote, three miles north of Stratford-upon-Avon, where the playwright’s mother, Mary Arden, grew up in a small farmhouse built around 1514 by her father, Robert. Mary was the youngest of eight daughters by his first wife; his second, Agnes Hill, brought with her two sons and two daughters. When Robert made his will in 1556, he named young Mary as one of his two executors and left her a substantial amount of land and money, which suggests that she was a woman of exceptional ability. Mary Arden married the up-and-coming glover (and later wool dealer and money-lender) John Shakespeare, probably in 1557. Before long they moved into his substantial double-house in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, now known as Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Mary had eight children, but only six survived infancy. John gave the town loyal service, rising through the ranks from the relatively humble role of ale-taster to become alderman and, in 1568, bailiff (or mayor.) His application for a coat of arms was unsuccessful in 1576, but he was grant…

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How grim was life on Hitler's U-boats?
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T08:00:13.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
description: Roger Moorhouse tells the story of the U-boat war from the perspective of the German crews themselves
encoded: "Statistically, they were on a suicide mission." That's Roger Moorhouse's assessment of the odds facing Hitler's U-boat crews in the final years of the Second World War. Speaking with Spencer Mizen, Roger relates the story of these missions from the German perspective – a tale encompassing scurvy, sleep deprivation, terror and acts of astonishing kindness. Roger Moorhouse is the author of Wolfpack: Inside Hitler's U-boat War (William Collins, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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