BBC History Magazine

The online archive of articles from BBC History Magazine

New issue BBCH Sept 21 1024x768

September 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine out now!

Coming up in the next issue of BBC History Magazine…

Coming up in the October 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine

Katherine-Parr-2-384b21c

Q&A What happened to Katherine Parr’s daughter, Mary Seymour, after her mother’s death?

Portrait of Ide B Wells

Ida B Wells: civil rights activist and scourge of lynch mobs

Portrait Of Edward Seymour (Colorized)

Edward Seymour: the fall of the dithering dictator

Kennel Special

The surprising history of Victorian dog shows

A group of men observe a body lying on a table.

Early-modern cannibal doctors: why mummified corpse was considered medicine

The Persian ambassador bows before Louis XIV in the Palace of Versailles

King of the world: how Louis XIV turned France into a global power

Crown Prince Olav on his ice yacht (Getty Images)

From Hollywood to war heroes: 10 Olympians who were more famous outside sport

Belgium and the Netherlands compete in a tug of war at the Antwerp Olympic

Olympic oddballs: 5 unusual Olympic sports from the past

Jesse Owens sprinting on a track at the Berlin Olympics.

A history of unsporting conduct at the Olympics

Mao Zedong applauds a parade of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. These young militants followed Mao’s call in early August 1966 to defend the party from a ‘white terror’. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Reign of the red terror: Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution

Tokyo Olympics 1964: Yoshinori Sakai prepares to light the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. Born on the day that the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, he was a symbol of Japan’s postwar reconstruction and peace

Tokyo Olympics 1964: the Games that defined Japan

Queen Elizabeth I dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Artist unknown. (© Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy)

Tudor tunes: music at the courts of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James VI and I

An 18th Century cartoon satirises reactions to Louis XVI's attempt tp flee France. The french Revolution shows what can happen when the state fails on a catastrophic scale

Are revolutions doomed to failure?