We gave 8 historians a time machine. You won't believe where they chose to go

Our historians, broadcasters and authors board a time machine to experience the most fascinating events and eras of centuries past.

Colourful illustration of a figure in a red helmet sitting inside a futuristic time machine built from a oversized wristwatch, set against a pink background

Published: November 2, 2026 at 3:30 PM

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Rome, March 44 BC

...to be a spectator at the assassination of Caesar

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In the early hours of 15 March, Julius Caesar and his wife, Calpurnia, woke from disturbing dreams. In his, Caesar had been soaring above the clouds, shaking hands with Jupiter. Meanwhile, Calpurnia watched as a building her husband had dedicated collapsed, and she held him stabbed and bleeding in her arms. Then she woke in alarm as her bedroom door burst open, seemingly of its own accord. Disquieted, Calpurnia urged Caesar to remain home instead of venturing out to a Senate meeting.

These dreams only deepened a growing sense of unease fed by the many omens reported in the weeks leading up to that day. Chief among these was a warning issued by the haruspex (soothsayer) Spurinna, who had said that the danger to Caesar would not pass until the Ides of March.

Beyond the walls of Caesar’s house, the mood across Rome was no less strained. Senators presented an outward show of routine, but beneath it lay tension, calculation and fear. Many of those making their way to the meeting knew what was to come.

The Death of Julius Caesar

Plotters assassinate Julius Caesar at a Senate meeting, auguring the end of the Roman Republic | Credit: Getty Images

Convinced to attend by a friend who was planning to betray him, Caesar encountered Spurinna as he entered the meeting hall. “The Ides of March have come,” Caesar remarked. “Aye,” came the reply, “but they have not yet gone.”

When Caesar’s bloodstained toga was later displayed to the crowd, they responded with grief and violence. I’d love to have witnessed this moment when Rome was changed forever – and the Republic was set on a path that would lead to its demise.

Jess Venner, ancient historian and author of The Lost Voices of Pompeii (Mudlark, 2026)

France, 1590s

...to experience a religious and philosophical maelstrom

Late 16th-century France was an absolutely fascinating place in a period of extreme political and religious fermentation. The Protestant Reformation had inspired thousands of French men and women to embrace new religious ideas. They became known as the Huguenots, and their commitment to their faith was tested by horrific levels of persecution and violence. But not all Huguenot hands were clean, either: the French Wars of Religion, entangled with dynastic politics, divided the country and caused appalling suffering.

Yet out of this horrific context emerged figures of outstanding intellect, courage and charisma. Henry IV, the king who effectively put an end to the Wars of Religion with his 1598 Edict of Nantes, tried to nurture tolerance and even social justice with his famous adage that every peasant should “have a chicken in his pot”.

Equestrian portrait of Henry IV

A 16th-century equestrian portrait of ‘Good King’ Henry IV who tried to nurture religious tolerance with his Edict of Nantes | Credit: Getty Images

Ideas, philosophers and poets flourished, too. Michel de Montaigne produced a series of what he called ‘essays’ in the 1580s and 90s – groundbreaking ruminations on whatever happened to interest him. One of these discussed cannibalism in Brazil, where Europeans had recently encountered the Tupinambá people. Montaigne turned Eurocentric prejudices on their head, expressing admiration for the Tupinambá and pointing out the hypocrisies of his compatriots, embroiled in horrific religious violence.

I’d love to have joined these radical conversations in a milieu rife with terror and turbulence – but in which a profound humanism also bloomed.

Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

The Tower of London, May 1536

...to see the last days of Anne Boleyn

On 2 May 1536, the Tower received one of the most extraordinary prisoners to be confined within its ancient walls. Anne Boleyn had last stayed at the fortress a little under three years earlier, prior to her triumphant coronation as Henry VIII’s second queen.

England’s king had overturned the religious establishment to secure an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and make Anne his wife. By the time he married Anne in January 1533, she was pregnant – and in September she gave birth to the future Elizabeth I. But a series of miscarriages followed, the last of which – in January 1536 – precipitated her dramatic fall.

Illustrated of execution

A print of c1700s imagines Anne’s execution – though she was actually beheaded by a sword | Credit: Getty Images

On 2 May, the queen was arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery, and taken by barge to the Tower. She was housed in the same lavish apartments in which she had stayed before.

What must the atmosphere have been like during the 17 days that followed? Over this time, Anne’s mood veered from calm acceptance to hysteria, her every word reported by the ladies appointed to serve her. After being found guilty at trial on 15 May, she joked that her execution would be the work of a moment for “I have a little neck;” she then put her hands about it and “laughed heartily”.

At 9 o’clock on the morning of 19 May, Anne was led to the scaffold. Eyewitnesses wrote that she kept looking over her shoulder, as if expecting a messenger with a reprieve. They shared her sense of disbelief: no queen of England had ever before been put to death. But as hope faded, courage surged. As her enemies admitted, Anne was “braver than a lion”.

Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster

London, 1 February 1814

...to revel in the entertainment and aromas of the final frost fair

Wrap up warm and grab your skates, because we’re heading back to a time when the river Thames froze over. By the end of January 1814, London had been languishing in the grip of a bitterly cold winter, with sub-zero temperatures each night for several weeks. A chill wind whistled through the streets, snow drifts piled higher than coaches, and enormous icicles dangled from the gutters. Rather than shelter indoors, though, Londoners gathered to celebrate in the most unlikely of places.

coloured woodcut print

A coloured woodcut print shows Londoners cavorting, eating and drinking on the frozen Thames during the last frost fair in 1814 | Credit: Alamy

When the river finally seized up, freezing solid upstream from London Bridge, thousands of people ventured onto the ice – and on 1 February the city’s last ever frost fair began. Dozens of enterprising merchants set up tents and stalls in the middle of the river. Beer, gin and other warming tipples were sold in pop-up pubs. A sheep was roasted over a coal fire, and spectators paid sixpence just to stand and watch.

It cost a shilling – around £5 in today’s money – for a slice of this so-called “Lapland Mutton”.

Printing presses were hauled onto the ice to churn out souvenir publications. Vendors hawked toys and trinkets at triple their usual price, each with a label certifying that the item had been bought on the frozen river. Games of skittles were played and large wooden swings were erected. At one point, a performing elephant was even led across the ice below Blackfriars Bridge.

After four days of frolics, the ice began to break up and the fair was over. Thanks to climate change and the demolition of the old London Bridge – the close-set arches of which slowed the flow of the river sufficiently to allow it to freeze – we may never see its like again.

Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University

Athens, 508 BC

...to witness the painful birth pangs of democracy

At the tail end of the sixth century BC, Athens had been oppressed by a series of tyrant rulers. But in 510, with the help of a Spartan military force, it expelled the last of those despots, Hippias. Once he had been driven out, the Spartans also departed, leaving a political vacuum in Athens.

Some people argued for a return to the political system as it had been before the worst of the tyrants. Some pushed for a more radical redistribution of political legitimacy to a wider number of Athenians. Yet others would have preferred that the system change as little as possible, sticking close to the system of tyranny – one bad apple doesn’t make a bad tree, and all that.

Black-and-white print engraving of a classical bust depicting an elderly man with a long beard, receding hair, and a furrowed brow.

An engraving of a bust of Cleisthenes, Greek ‘father of democracy’ | Credit: Alamy

In 508 BC, matters came to a head when the Athenian noble Isagoras, arguing for keeping the system as it had been, invited the Spartan forces back to Athens – this time to enforce his view. Many Athenian families were exiled, and power was restricted to a very small circle.

The Athenians eventually rose up in mass revolt, cornering the Spartan soldiers and the politicians leading this new tyrannical system on the Acropolis, the sacred hill at the centre of Athens. The siege continued for three days till the Spartans and the pro-tyrant politicians agreed to leave Athens.

The people then turned to another politician who had advocated wider political recognition and legitimacy for more of Athens’ people. Cleisthenes’ proposed system epitomised what he called isonomia – equality before the law. I’d like to have been there to see the beginning of a political system that, roughly 40 years later, following a number of refinements, the Athenians would start to call demokratia – ‘people power’.

Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914

...to head off the assassination that sparked the First World War

Perhaps the most impactful use I could make of a time machine would involve steering it to Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on a sunny summer’s day more than a century ago. The place: Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen on Franz Joseph Street. The time: shortly before 11am on Sunday 28 June 1914. That was the moment when the Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip stepped into the road and fired two shots at the car carrying Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

Sepia-toned historical photograph showing police officers and officials wrestling with and arresting a man outside a building amidst a crowd.

A suspect is arrested in Sarajevo after the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – which, says Keith Lowe, set in train the bloodshed of the 20th century | Credit: Getty Images

Princip was a member of a terrorist group called the Black Hand. His aim was to destabilise the Austro-Hungarian empire just enough to allow a Serbian state to break free. But the fallout from this assassination was far more destructive than anything Princip and his co-conspirators could have imagined.

It started a chain reaction, the consequences of which are still being felt today: the First World War, the collapse of the European and Middle Eastern empires, the Russian Revolution, the rise of communism, the corresponding rise of Fascism and ultra-nationalism, and the Second World War and all of its terrible after-effects throughout the world.

Of course, there is no guarantee that these things would not have happened even if Princip hadn’t fired those shots at Franz Ferdinand on that fateful day in 1914. Nor is it certain that an alternative version of the 20th century wouldn’t have been bloody and terrible in other ways. But if I had the chance to take Princip to one side and reason with him – or, failing that, wrestle him to the ground – the temptation to intervene would surely be impossible to resist.

Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

New York City, 1927

...to soak up the music, ideas, energy and optimism of the Harlem Renaissance

Between the destruction of the First World War and the devastation of the Great Depression, Jazz-Age New York was almost feverishly generative – and nowhere more so than Harlem. Migrants and sojourners poured into the neighbourhood: black Southerners escaping the violence of Jim Crow repression; Caribbean migrants in search of jobs or education; Pan-Africanists who made Harlem one stop on their journey moving between various nodes in the black Atlantic. These travellers and immigrants joined other folks – Italian-American, Creole, Bengali and more – who had long called this ethnically diverse district home.

Vintage illustrated cover of The Crisis magazine featuring a black silhouette of a robed figure kneeling in grief or prayer beside an angelic figure and patriotic star motifs

The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded by civil rights activists including WEB Du Bois | Credit: Alamy

There they made magic and labelled it a Renaissance. Through the novels of Afro-Danish writer Nella Larsen, the conventions of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, the art of Laura Wheeler Waring, and many other cultural and creative endeavours, the Harlem Renaissance sparked, sustained and canonised black intellectual and artistic production.

If I had a time machine, I would send myself right into this vital heart of American modernism. I would attend salons and discuss the post-First-World-War landscape, pausing to listen to sidewalk orators extemporising on civil rights and black pride. I would sneak into the Cotton Club to hear the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and into the offices of The Crisis magazine to contrive an audience with its editor, the sociologist, writer and civil rights activist WEB Du Bois.

In short, I would burn my candle at both ends, knowing that the artists, activists and thinkers surrounding me were crafting a movement and a legacy.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University

Stonehenge, 2500 BC

...to observe Neolithic rituals at the megalithic circle in its pomp

I’ll start my answer by stating where I would not go. I sure as hell would not travel back to the time periods that I research – the eras of the Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and so on – or at least not without establishing that there was a fully functioning button labelled ‘Take Me Home Right Now’ installed in my time machine. Modern healthcare is nothing short of miraculous and, despite their many sterling qualities, there are few historical periods that have attractions that outweigh the benefits of vaccinations, anaesthesia and antibiotics.

Once I’d checked that big red safety button, though, I’d be an absolute time machine menace. First, I’d whizz back to the last Ice Age to watch some mammoths lumbering across the landscape. Then I’d swing by fifth-century Britain to see for myself what really happened after the fall of the Roman province of Britannia.

Close-up night photograph of the ancient stone monoliths at Stonehenge standing under a bright, starry blue sky

Why were these huge megaliths erected at Stonehenge? Eleanor Barraclough wants to know | Credit: Getty Images

But if I had only one shot before I was dragged away from the control panel of my time machine, I’d be heading right back to Stonehenge at midwinter to witness it in its original glow-up era around 2500 BC – the time when the larger sarsens were erected in the centre of the much earlier earthwork circle.

What was actually going on there? What was the real purpose of the monument – how was it used? What rituals were being performed, and why? Depending on the answers to those questions, I might not want a front row seat – but I’d be happy to lurk at the back for a while...

Eleanor Barraclough, historian and author of Embers of the Hands (Profile, 2024)

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This article was first published in the November 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

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