February 2019

Articles from the February 2019 issue of BBC History Magazine

This engraving by William Hogarth shows the final instalment of a sequence of artworks called 'The Four Stages of Cruelty' (1751). In it, the fictional Tom Nero is being dissected for anatomical studies at Cutlerian theatre near Newgate prison after being hanged for murder. Nero looks like the Dead-Alive, as though he can see and smell his own executed body on the dissection table. The chief physician sits in the centre on a high-backed chair, resembling a high court judge. He is surrounded by various medical men, including penal surgeons, who did gallows work. The skeletons of dissected criminals were usually refused a Christian burial and so were displayed as specimens, as can be seen top left and top right. (Photo by Guildhall Library/Getty Images)

Surviving the gallows: the Georgian hangings that didn’t go to plan

History graduate Steve Humphries' 1998 film exploring the stories of women who worked in Magdalene laundries

How my history degree led to my dream job

Michael Wood on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. (Illustration by Femke de Jong for BBC History Magazine)

Michael Wood On Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

Aleksander Kulisiewicz, wearing a concentration camp uniform, performs at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Italy, 1965. (Image: Kulisiewicz family)

Second World War

The Library Songs of the Holocaust: the music of Aleksander Kulisiewicz

An 11th-century depiction of the Anglo-Saxon priest Wulfstan, who feared that Viking raids on England signalled the end of the world. (Image by Mary Evans)

Viking apocalypse: the invasion that spelled doom for the Anglo-Saxons

Lady Sybil Grey, an indomitable Englishwoman who, as a nurse in Russia, led a field hospital and had a grandstand view of the February 1917 revolution that toppled the tsar. (Illustration by Sue Gent for BBC History Magazine)

First World War

The Library Lady Sybil Grey: a lady in the line of fire

In a photograph taken at Bishop's Stortford railway station in Hertfordshire, 1972, resettled Ugandan Asians wait for the train that will take them to their new home. (Photo by Alamy)

Fleeing Idi Amin: the long journey to a new life

A maid polishes a silver dish. Female domestic servants were highly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, but in Reformation France they found some ways to fight back. (Photo by: Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images)

The Library The women who wouldn’t be silenced in Reformation France

Petra Kelly. “Through sheer force of will, Petra Kelly put green politics on the map. Her success in Germany in the 1980s inspired green parties across the world to shake things up,” says Caroline Lucas. (Photo by Schulze-Vorberg/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

My history hero: Caroline Lucas chooses Petra Kelly (1947–92)

The reconstructed Castle Square offers a glimpse of how Warsaw would have looked in the past. (Photo by Alamy)

My favourite place: Warsaw, Poland

Richard Evans. (Photo by Fran Monks for BBC History Magazine)

Books interview with Richard J Evans: “For Hobsbawm, communism was a matter of life and death”

Duncan Grant's studio at Charleston. Despite its lack of creature comforts, the East Sussex farmhouse became the weekend hub of the Bloomsbury set. (Photo by Charleston House/Tony Tree)

History Explorer The story of the Bloomsbury set

The unemployed scramble for soup tickets in an engraving from 'The Illustrated London News'. Elizur Wright observed the plight of the poor with a horrified fascination. (Photo by Massachusetts Historical Society/ Bridgeman)

A Victorian Bill Bryson: Elizur Wright’s letters from Great Britain