HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-06-26T11:50:22.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Were ancient Ireland’s ‘incestuous elites’ just a myth? A tomb older than Stonehenge has new answers
items: Who was to blame for the Irish famine?
items: The battle of the Boyne: what happened at the July 1690 clash and why is it commemorated on ‘the Twelfth’?
items: Ireland's tangled relationship with empire
items: A brief history of the Good Friday Agreement
items: Fake news and Nazis: Richard J Evans on the spectre of conspiracies
items: What is the history behind the Celtic festival of Samhain and what does it have to do with Halloween?
items: Why we should remember the battle of the Bogside
items: The Irish Civil War: 100 years on
items: A brief history of the partition of Ireland

Were ancient Ireland’s ‘incestuous elites’ just a myth? A tomb older than Stonehenge has new answers
type: item
date: 2025-06-26T11:46:40.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In 2020, analysis of a skull fragment discovered at Newgrange, County Meath, led to sensational claims of royal incest within the region’s prehistoric ruling dynasties. But new research suggests that Neolithic Ireland may have been far more socially equal – and more complex – than originally assumed
encoded: In the Boyne Valley of eastern Ireland stands one of the world’s most fascinating prehistoric monuments: Newgrange. Centuries older than the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge, Newgrange is a large passage tomb, and a 5,000-year-old marvel of ancient engineering. It’s also one of the best windows that researchers have into the ancient society that constructed it: how it functioned, what it valued, and who held power. That final question has been the source of stunning theories with incredible implications. For years, many archaeologists and geneticists believed that a small, powerful elite ruled over Neolithic Ireland and commissioned monuments like Newgrange as a reflection of their social dominance. That theory gained momentum in 2020, when DNA analysis of a skull fragment discovered in the tomb revealed that the buried individual – referred to by researchers as NG10 – was the product of an incestuous union between two siblings, or a parent and child. Some experts interpreted this as compelling evidence of a dynastic elite that practised incest to preserve a sacred bloodline – not unlike royal traditions in ancient Egypt. This, in turn, painted a picture of Neolithic Ireland as a deeply hierarchical society ruled by a tightly knit, closely related few. So, did a sacred royal family, buried at Newgrange, really rule over Neolithic Ireland? Or might the evidence have been misinterpreted? That is the conclusion of new research led by scholars from the University of York and University College Dublin – ‘The ‘king’ of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber’ – published in the journal Antiquity. Their findings cast serious doubt on these earlier assumptions and instead paint a very different picture of the society that built this monument. The cosmic history of Newgrange Newgrange is one of several monumental passage tombs built during the Neolithic period (c4000–2500 BC) across Ireland and western Britain. Located in Co…

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Who was to blame for the Irish famine?
type: item
date: 2025-05-13T08:00:20.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
description: When blight began devastating potato crops across Ireland in 1845, British officials immediately recognised the dangers. And yet, within six years, the Great Famine had caused the deaths of at least 1 million people. This is the story of how tangled Anglo-Irish relations and a profound devotion to market forces turned a crisis into a national catastrophe.
encoded: In late 1846, a magistrate called Nicholas Cummins visited Skibbereen, a small town in County Cork. The scenes he witnessed there, he would go on to write, “were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of”. Cummins described “famished and ghastly skeletons”, nearly catatonic but shaking with fever, sheltered in unheated cottages. At the sound of footsteps, what seemed like hundreds of people emerged into the daylight, begging and screaming for food. The horrors that Cummins encountered that day were repeated with terrible regularity across the island of Ireland. From 1845–51, as potato crops failed again and again, at least 1 million people died, many in lonely, hideous and degrading conditions. At least 1.5 million more emigrated. The people of Ireland had endured periods of starvation before, but they had encountered nothing on the scale of what we remember today as the Great Famine. As the death toll soared, Ireland seemed remote, an isolated hell. And yet the Great Famine was a British, as well as an Irish, crisis. Ireland had, after all, been under sometimes notional English dominion since the Middle Ages. It had been conquered in the 17th century, invaded by Oliver Cromwell’s forces during the Civil Wars, and then, once more, by William III’s armies after the Glorious Revolution. During the 18th century, restrictions on trade subordinated Ireland’s economy to Britain’s. The Irish Catholic majority were dispossessed and barred from public life. After the rebellion of the United Irish against British rule in 1798, the 1800–01 Acts of Union combined Ireland and Britain into a new United Kingdom. Britain and Ireland were now more closely intertwined than ever. The union had one currency and an integrated economy. Ireland sent 100 MPs to Westminster. By 1845, nearly a third of the population of the UK lived in Ireland. But when famine struck, the gulf within the union seemed unbridgeable. John Russell, prime minister at the height of the crisis, impl…

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The battle of the Boyne: what happened at the July 1690 clash and why is it commemorated on ‘the Twelfth’?
type: item
date: 2024-07-08T11:05:00.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
description: What and when was the battle of the Boyne? Find out more about the background to the clash and its continued significance today
encoded: What and when was the battle of the Boyne? The battle of the Boyne was fought on 1 July 1690, between forces of the deposed and exiled Catholic king, James VII of Scotland and II of England, and the Dutch Protestant new king, William II of Scotland and III of England (William of Orange). It was fought on the banks of the River Boyne near the town of Drogheda in modern day Republic of Ireland, approximately 30 miles north of Dublin. Why is it commemorated on ‘the Twelfth’? The battle is today commemorated by many Ulster Protestants on or close to 12 July (also referred to as ‘the Twelfth’, ‘the Glorious Twelfth’ or ‘Orangemen’s Day’). Due to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the calendar moved forward 11 days, and so the new anniversary of the battle of the Boyne was 11 July. The anniversary of another decisive battle of the Williamite Wars, the 1691 battle of Aughrim, falls on 12 July (its pre-Gregorian calendar anniversary was 22 July), and marks the date when Jacobite forces in Ireland loyal to James were destroyed. The dates of the two battles have been conflated since the 18th century, when loyalist groups began celebrating on 12 July. What was the background to the battle? In 1685, James VII of Scotland and II of England had succeeded to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His elder brother, Charles II, had no legitimate children, so James became the next Stuart king. James was a Catholic, which made him a figure of suspicion to many Protestants, who held a deep-seated fear of Catholicism (‘popery’) and worried that the king might increase the power and influence of fellow Catholics in Stuart England and Scotland. However, it wasn’t until the birth of the king’s son, also named James, that the threat of a Catholic dynasty led a group of prominent Protestants – the so-called ‘Immortal Seven’ (three earls, a viscount, a bishop and two other noblemen) – to turn to Prince William of Orange. The Dutch prince was James’s nephew, and also marr…

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Ireland's tangled relationship with empire
type: item
date: 2024-01-31T11:29:09.000Z
creator: Rhiannon Davies
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The British Empire
description: Historian Jane Ohlmeyer reflects on Ireland's difficult relationship with imperialism in the early modern period
encoded: Often described as England's first colony, Ireland has a long – and deeply complicated – relationship with empire. Rhiannon Davies speaks to historian Jane Ohlmeyer to learn more about this complex picture, from how Ireland was a 'laboratory of empire' to how imperialism influenced the clothing people wore. View Green Video on the source website

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A brief history of the Good Friday Agreement
type: item
date: 2023-04-07T08:48:07.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
description: On 10 April 1998, a deal was reached to bring an end to Northern Ireland's Troubles, in what became known as the Good Friday Agreement. Here, historian Alan MacLeod investigates the long road of the peace process which sought to reconcile two different traditions in Ireland – and considers the legacy of the Agreement...
encoded: The Good Friday Agreement, reached on 10 April 1998, was a careful balancing act, reflecting the competing demands and aspirations of the different parties to the talks. Yet, despite the widespread euphoria that greeted the deal, this was only a beginning. Implementing the Agreement has been a difficult process, depending on the willingness of the political representatives of Northern Ireland’s two communities to work together. That willingness has frequently been missing... The Good Friday Agreement: the background The partition of Ireland in 1921 followed more than a century of unrest between Britain and Ireland. Under the Act of Union of 1800 Ireland lost its parliament in Dublin and became governed directly from Westminster. For much of the 19th and into the 20th century, varying states of tension and conflict developed as unionists campaigned for Ireland to remain part of the UK, while nationalists campaigned for either home rule or an independent Irish state. The issue of Irish home rule dominated domestic British politics from 1885 to the start of the First World War. In April 1916, the Easter Rising shook Dublin, as a group of Irish nationalists proclaimed the establishment of an Irish Republic and clashed with British troops in the capital. The rising, which resulted in the loss of 450 lives and destroyed much of the centre of Dublin, was ended by the British within a week. However, the public mood shifted decisively when the 15 leaders of the rising were executed by the British authorities in May 1916. The executions and imposition of martial law fuelled public resentment of the British. The next five tumultuous years, including the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), resulted in the end of British rule across most of Ireland. Read more | The Easter Rising: when Ireland went to war Read more | Bullets and ballot boxes: a history of Anglo-Irish relations since the Easter Rising The Government of Ireland Act, which became law in May 1921, split Ireland. Nor…

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Fake news and Nazis: Richard J Evans on the spectre of conspiracies
type: item
date: 2022-12-26T08:01:31.000Z
creator: Sir Richard J Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Second World War
subject: Period
description: From the ‘stab in the back’ to Hitler’s escape from the bunker, conspiracy theories swirl around the Nazis. But how far do they really help us understand the Third Reich? | By Richard J Evans
encoded: Listen to this article: The idea that nothing happens by chance in history is as old as history itself. For a significant number of people, nothing is quite what it seems to be at first sight; everything that occurs is the result of the secret machinations of malign groups of people manipulating events from behind the scenes. Conspiracy theories seem to be growing more popular and more widespread in the 21st century: powered by the rise of the internet and then social media; enabled by the declining influence of traditional gatekeepers of opinion such as newspaper editors and book publishers; and encouraged by the spread of the uncertainty about truth and falsehood encapsulated in the perverse concept of ‘alternative facts’. Go on to social media and you will quickly realise how widespread conspiracy theories about key events in history have become. They have even found their way into television programmes, not just in fictional form, but in presentations that claim to pursue the ‘real’ truth that has up to now been suppressed by ‘official’ historians, or in other words, those who teach and research the past as a profession at universities and historical institutes. Few topics in history have attracted more conspiracy theories than Nazism. Conspiracists have focused on events such as the Reichstag fire in 1933, the flight of Rudolf Hess to Britain in 1941, and the death of Hitler in Berlin in 1945. And it is often claimed that the Nazis themselves were influenced by conspiracy theories such as the ‘stab-in-the-back’ theory of Germany’s defeat in World War I, or the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But, broadly speaking, the Nazis were not particularly obsessed with conspiracy theories themselves. Compared with Stalin, who saw plots and cabals everywhere and manufactured fake conspiracies supposedly hatched by some of his closest ‘Old Bolshevik’ comrades so that he could rid himself of potential rivals, Hitler was relatively disinclined to believe in conspir…

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What is the history behind the Celtic festival of Samhain and what does it have to do with Halloween?
type: item
date: 2022-11-01T09:31:13.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Family and parenting
description: Historian Mark Williams explores the history of Samhain, from its Celtic heritage to its association with modern Halloween…
encoded: There seems to be a primal need in human beings to gather and celebrate at the beginning of winter, as the nights draw in and cold and darkness take over. Contemporary British culture offers both Halloween on 31 October and Bonfire Night on the 5 November; the latter is a celebration of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, but the urge to make merry in the face of winter is much older. In Ireland and Gaelic Scotland, it generated the festival of Samhain. What is Samhain and why is it celebrated? In the modern Irish language, Samhain is simply the word for the month of November; it is pronounced like the English word ‘sound’ without the final D. But in earlier times it referred to one of the four great festivals of the traditional Gaelic year, celebrated on 1 November (though festivities spanned a few days either side) and so corresponding closely in date to our Halloween. It marked the beginning of the winter season, and in the landlocked midlands of Ireland it would often have coincided with the first frosts. We do not know exactly how it was celebrated, but gatherings of tribal groups, feasting, and the lighting of bonfires almost certainly played a part. Read more | What is the history of Halloween? What are the origins of Samhain? The Irish intelligentsia of the Middle Ages understood the word to derive from sam-fhuinn, ‘summer’s end’, and it was a rich time, when food was abundant. Early Ireland was a pastoral society, and at Samhain the harvest had been gathered in and grazing animals could be brought down from the uplands for shelter over winter. Pigs would be slaughtered and the meat salted to last over the months of darkness. In one of medieval Ireland’s most beautiful sagas, The Wooing of Emer (perhaps from around AD 800), Samhain is described as the time “when summer goes to its rest” and that at this time the people of Ulster used to hold a great assembly. The celebration would last for the three nights before Samhain, then the night of Samhain its…

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Why we should remember the battle of the Bogside
type: item
date: 2022-08-12T05:12:30.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Why we should remember
description: Historian Niall Ó Dochartaigh considers the importance of the riots in Derry that marked the start of 30 years of violent conflict
encoded: More than 50 years ago, in August 1969, the Northern Irish Troubles began in earnest with the battle of the Bogside. For three days, from 12–14 August, large crowds armed with stones and petrol bombs, loosely coordinated by the Derry Citizens’ Defence Association, battled successfully to keep the Royal Ulster Constabulary out of the Bogside area of the city after violence broke out during the annual loyalist Apprentice Boys march. The civil rights campaign had begun with a great sense of optimism a year earlier, but from October 1968, when police baton-charged a march in Derry’s Duke Street, civil rights protests had been surrounded by increasing tension. Derry – or Londonderry, as it is officially known – was the North’s second largest city. It was a chiefly nationalist city, but gerrymandering and discrimination had long ensured that the unionist party maintained control of local government in the city with only a third of the vote. The battle of the Bogside only ended when British troops marched into Waterloo Place in the city centre and stretched out concertina barbed wire and barricades across the roads and replaced the exhausted RUC at the front lines. Army commanders agreed not to try to enter the Bogside, and ‘Free Derry’, as it was dubbed, was administered for the following two months by a broad-based local defence association. The British government now forced the unionist government at Stormont to implement reforms aimed at conciliating the Catholic and nationalist minority that made up one-third of the North’s population, including disarming the police force. For many on the left, Free Derry represented a great victory of popular mobilisation over the forces of repression, and it received large-scale and sympathetic media coverage across Europe and North America. But the rioting in the Bogside had also triggered a dangerous escalation. No one had died in Derry, but in Belfast there was widespread sectarian rioting and battles with the police. Shooting br…

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The Irish Civil War: 100 years on
type: item
date: 2022-07-15T08:30:33.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: The Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in 1921, brought to an end the Irish War of Independence and set a provision for the establishment of the Irish Free State. But rather than quelling violence, the treaty ushered in a period of fresh uncertainty. A chaotic civil war followed between those who accepted the treaty and those who opposed it. As we mark a century since the Irish Civil War began, Charles Townshend explains the key tensions and milestones of the conflict…
encoded: For “four glorious years” (as the republican publicity chief Frank Gallagher called his memoir of the period) of resistance to Britain between 1918–21, the Sinn Féin movement held together in pursuit of Irish independence. But immediately after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, sharp divisions appeared. The Irish representatives had been divided from the start of the treaty negotiations on issues of sovereignty and unity. The sides were broadly marked by those who were determined to uphold the sovereign republic declared in January 1919, and those who accepted that Britain’s refusal to give ground on the central issues of crown and empire meant that any agreement must involve modifying that independence. Arthur Griffith, who founded Sinn Féin in 1905 and was the leader of the Irish delegation to London to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty, was one of the latter. More surprisingly, Michael Collins – who as president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (a role regarded by some as virtual president of the republic) was widely presumed to be a diehard republican – also became one as the negotiations went on. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/07/GettyImages-3349413-d18fa3c.png" width="620" height="413" alt="A photo of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith arriving at 10 Downing Street" title="Michael Collins (right) and Arthur Griffith (left) arriving at 10 Downing Street, London for the treaty negotiations between representatives of Sinn Fein and the British government in December 1921. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> The treaty set aside the title ‘republic’ in favour of a ‘free state’ (a literal translation of the term ‘Saorstát’, officially used by the Irish parliament Dáil Eireann since 1919), with powers equivalent to the self-governing Dominions of the Empire. Before the Irish Civil War | 5 key moments on the path to partition January 1922: Sinn Féin splits In reaction to the signing …

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A brief history of the partition of Ireland
type: item
date: 2022-05-18T10:10:57.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
description: The partition of Ireland in 1921 was a seismic moment in the island’s history; it divided Ireland and led to the creation of Northern Ireland. But what events led to Ireland being divided? Professor Heather Jones explains the causes and aftermath...
encoded: What led to Ireland being divided? Professor Heather Jones explains... A worsening devolution crisis Before partition, all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and governed by the British government in London. However, by the First World War, Irish nationalists, who were predominantly Roman Catholic, had succeeded in getting legislation passed for Home Rule – devolved government for Ireland within the UK. But Home Rule’s imminent implementation was suspended when the First World War broke out in 1914. Home Rule was vehemently opposed by Ireland’s unionists, mainly Protestants, mostly based in the north, who wanted no change to Ireland’s direct governance by Westminster. Religious differences mattered greatly in Ireland and many unionists feared that ‘Home Rule’ would be ‘Rome Rule’, leaving them as a religious minority under a Dublin parliament dominated by Catholicism. The situation dramatically radicalised when, at Easter 1916, an Irish republican uprising broke out in Dublin. Its leaders believed devolution – Home Rule – did not go far enough. They wanted a complete end to British rule in Ireland and an all-Ireland republic outside of the UK. The rising was quickly suppressed, but the British execution of its leaders led Irish nationalists to abandon Home Rule in favour of seeking full independence: in 1918, nationalists voted overwhelmingly for a pro-republic political party, Sinn Féin. In 1919, supporters of the rising mobilised an Irish Republican Army (IRA) and launched a war for an independent Irish republic. This brutal guerrilla conflict of ambush and reprisals saw Britain lose control of nationalist areas, while sectarian violence also broke out, particularly in the northern city of Belfast. Read more about the Easter Rising There were unionists all across Ireland, but they were weak in numbers in the south and west. By contrast, in Ireland’s northern province of Ulster, unionism was politically very well-organised and had powerful supporters in Lond…

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