HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-22T11:31:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Nato is in crisis. Can history predict what happens next?
items: Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it?
items: 16 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars
items: "Forget AI – never has the role of the historian been more urgent"
items: “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp”
items: When was the White House built – and why is it white?
items: “A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history
items: The spy next door: Moscow's century-long plot to infiltrate the west
items: Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
items: "If you represent Pinochet in this case, I will divorce you”: the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator

Nato is in crisis. Can history predict what happens next?
type: item
date: 2026-03-22T11:30:56.000Z
creator: Sam Edwards
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: As tensions build between the US and its long-term allies, historian Sam Edwards examines how the international military organisation has withstood moments of turbulence in the past – and whether we can glean any lessons for the future
encoded: “If there's no response – or if it's a negative response – I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.” So said US President Donald Trump in March 2026, after asking European allies for their help in securing the Strait of Hormuz. This primary export route for most of the world's largest oil and gas fields had lately been declared closed by Iran as a response to US-Israeli military operations. However, the response to the president’s call to aid to his European allies has, so far, been distinctly muted. No doubt this is in part because much of Europe is still reeling from the events at the start of the year. Back in January, the American-led alliance was thrown into disarray by the president’s desire to assert control over Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of Nato member Denmark. At the height of the crisis, with Trump adamant that the US “needed” Greenland “very badly”, the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen went so far as to say that "if the United States chooses to attack another Nato country militarily, then everything stops. That includes Nato, and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War." Now, amid renewed transatlantic tensions stemming from the US–Israeli war with Iran, those key questions provoked by the recent Greenland debacle have resurfaced again: is Nato in crisis, and can it endure? Read more | Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it? On the latter, history does at least provide some reassurance. In fact, surviving crises is something of a Nato speciality. Nato’s troubled origins The alliance initially coalesced in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a period characterised by growing concern in the west about the expanding influence and power of the Soviet Union. In March 1946, Winston Churchill warned that an “Iron Curtain” had descended “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic”. A year later, in an effort to “contain” the threa…

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Winston Churchill created the special relationship. Could Donald Trump kill it?
type: item
date: 2026-03-16T16:29:41.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: From the Suez Crisis and Vietnam, to 21st-century political tensions, the alliance between Britain and the United States has been declared dead – or dying – many times
encoded: Few diplomatic partnerships have been declared to be on life support quite as often as the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the United Kingdom and the United States. The phrase refers to the theoretically unique presumption of shared understanding and cooperation that has existed between the two countries in the decades since the Second World War. But did the special relationship ever actually exist? And if it does, what exactly does it mean in the cold light of day? “This is a perennial subject of discussion,” says historian Sam Edwards, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “You could probably go back to the 1960s to find the first obituary of the special relationship – the first moment where commentators were asking the question: is the special relationship done and dusted, or can it survive?” Those debates have resurfaced repeatedly whenever London and Washington DC have had public differences over foreign policy or military strategy. It’s a question that has arisen once again in March 2026, as President Trump has instigated a new wave of military operations in the Middle East, albeit without Downing Street’s unconditional support. Winston Churchill coins the phrase The term ‘special relationship’ has been in the political vocabulary for 80 years, making an entrance in the early days of the Cold War. In March 1946, Winston Churchill travelled to Fulton, Missouri to deliver a speech formally titled Sinews of Peace. Churchill was no longer the UK’s prime minister at the time – he had lost the 1945 British general election – but he remained one of the most influential political figures of the era. The Second World War had ended less than a year earlier, but tensions between the Soviet Union and western powers were already hardening along ideological faultlines. Churchill used the speech to warn about Soviet expansion across eastern Europe, and what he saw as the impending threat of communism. As Sam Edwards explains, the speech is “famous for two evocative …

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16 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars
type: item
date: 2026-03-15T19:00:13.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: TV interest
description: When was the first Academy Awards? How many Oscars did Titanic win in 1998? Why did Will Smith slap Chris Rock? Here's everything you needed to know about the history of the most notable event in the film industry calendar...
encoded: The Academy Awards were first held in 1929, and each year the film industry awards gold-plated statuettes – commonly called Oscars – in a glittering and star-studded ceremony. Officially the Academy Award of Merit, everyone knows the golden knight holding a sword and standing on a reel of film as Oscar. Cedric Gibbons, art director at movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, gets the credit for designing the statuette but not for naming it. Read more | The best historical movies of all time There are three theories. Hollywood journalist Sidney Skolsky always maintained he thought it up as a less-grandiose antidote to the pretentiousness of the award ceremony. Meanwhile, actor Bette Davis claimed she once remarked the statuette’s backside resembled that of her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. The most likely winner, however, is Margaret Herrick, a librarian at the Academy, who said the knight (not just his rear) looked like her uncle Oscar. But how much do you really know about the history of the awards themselves, and the dramatic moments that have played out on the biggest night of the Hollywood calendar? The history of the Oscars: 16 key moments 1929: The first ceremony takes place Founded by Louis B Mayer, head of MGM studios, in 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was intended as a non-profit organisation with the goal of advancing the film industry. The first Academy Award ceremony took place two years later at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, on 16 May 1929. Tickets for the private dinner cost $5 and the presentation ceremony hosted by Douglas Fairbanks (actor and first president of the Academy) lasted just 15 minutes. The film industry was undergoing a dramatic change at the time, with the revolutionary introduction of new sound technology. Although hugely popular ‘talkies’ such as The Jazz Singer (1927) had been released before the first Academy Awards, they were not considered, because it was seen as unfair to compare them to silent movies. Read more …

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"Forget AI – never has the role of the historian been more urgent"
type: item
date: 2026-02-27T15:30:44.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Column
description: "Great histories have been written under the intense pressure of events", writes Michael Wood
encoded: Recently, I read a news item about the jobs most likely to disappear because of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). And first among them, along with translators, are historians! Now I’m biased of course, but in times like these, when the president of the United States himself can tell the world that Ukraine started the war with Russia, it seems to me we need historians more than ever. In the face of spreading authoritarian rule and growing rightwing populism, good history is a refuge and a beacon. Complicating matters further, it often seems as if the owners of the mass media, billionaires who wish to shape debates, don’t want historians any more than they want independent journalists. It seems that from their perspective, the less historically literate the people are, the better. But in an open democratic society, we need informed historical perspectives, the painstaking interrogation of sources, and public explanation and interpretation. History is not only entertainment. In an age of lies and disinformation, history acts as our reality check. Read more | Artificial intelligence: a modern advance or an ancient nightmare? And history, don’t forget, is not a fireside job. Great histories have been written under the intense pressure of events, in the moment. Think of Thucydides writing as the Peloponnesian War raged, or Ibn Khaldun, lowered down a wall in a basket to parley with the monstrous Timur (Tamerlane) at the siege of Damascus. Or what about the heroic Emanuel Ringelblum? Samuel D Kassow’s account of Ringelblum’s efforts to record the experiences of those trapped in the Warsaw ghetto – Who Will Write Our History? – is surely one of the most staggering books about why we write. To be a true historian is to make a kind of pact with the living and the dead – and with future generations. We have a duty to tell the truth. A new book brings all this into sharp relief. Jean-Pierre Filiu is a distinguished French historian, the author of The Middle East: A Po…

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“We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp”
type: item
date: 2025-11-15T22:00:52.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Trends-News
description: Turi King and Alex J Kay have married genetics with history to study a sample of DNA from Adolf Hitler – and, as they reveal, their research has thrown up some extraordinary insights into the Nazi dictator’s private life
encoded: Few historical figures have been discussed and debated as much as Adolf Hitler. We have a wealth of primary source material available to us about his life, including his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, personal correspondence, political directives and military orders, recordings and transcripts of his countless speeches, eyewitness accounts, photographs and film footage. Now, 80 years after his death, Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, a groundbreaking documentary produced by Blink Films and currently airing on Channel 4, has unlocked a new source by presenting the results of a world-first analysis of a sample of Hitler’s DNA. The DNA was taken from the blood on a small piece of fabric cut from the sofa on which Hitler died after shooting himself in his Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945 We have the privilege of being part of this documentary – both as lead investigators and in our separate roles as senior historical consultant (Alex) and the person leading the genetic analysis (Turi). The background to the documentary was a multi-stage process, each step a powerful marrying of genetics with history. It probably goes without saying that the first step was to confirm that the blood sample was actually that of Hitler. With this in mind, it’s important to remember that, as in any forensic case, DNA evidence cannot be taken in isolation. It has to be combined with other types of evidence, in this case reaching back into the past for information first about Hitler’s suicide and then about how the piece of fabric came to be available for DNA testing. The Führer’s family tree So, what does the history tell us? With the Red Army closing in, Hitler killed himself in his Berlin bunker on the afternoon of 30 April 1945. In the days following his death, the Soviets controlled access, and few people were allowed in. Among those who were permitted to enter was Lieutenant Colonel Roswell P Rosengren, public information officer for General Dwight D Eisenhower, the supreme Al…

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When was the White House built – and why is it white?
type: item
date: 2025-10-27T17:06:42.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: How much do you know about the history of the White House in Washington, DC, which has been home to all US presidents since John Adams in 1800?
encoded: Inscribed on the stone fireplace of the State Dining Room of the White House are the words: “I pray to Heaven bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” The blessing, which was engraved there in 1945, came from a letter written by John Adams to his wife Abigail in 1800. He was the second man to be president of the United States, but the first to reside in the world-famous home of the presidency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, in Washington, DC. A decade earlier, there had been no such place as Washington, DC, on the Potomac River. Founded by the Residence Act of 1790, the new capital would be a modern metropolis laid out in a grid system and with grand boulevards and public spaces everywhere. In the short term, though, it was not a promising place to live: if not hectic with the constant building works, there was nothing around but forests and some wetlands, where sanitation was poor and conditions were cold to freezing. Still, this would be the home of the president. George Washington, the first man elected to the office, personally chose the site for what would be the White House along with city planner Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and launched a competition for the building’s design. When was the White House built? Construction of the White House got underway with the laying of the cornerstone on 13 October 1792. But the the so-called ‘Presidential Palace' would not be finished until after Washington had left office. Even by 1800, when Adams moved in, the building was far from complete. It would be added to, repaired and extended many times throughout the years, not least when it had to be reconstructed following the War of 1812. The photogenic South Portico was added in 1824, followed by the North Portico, completed in 1830. The West Wing was added in 1902 and within, in 1909, the first iteration of the Oval Office. The East Wing was developed in 1942 – it is the fo…

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“A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history
type: item
date: 2025-10-27T15:00:09.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
description: If you’ve ever posted a comment on social media, you’ve created a potential source for future historians. But what problems does this mass of new material pose? Matt Elton asked historians Jane Winters and John Wills about how recent archives differ from those of the past – and how experts might make sense of them
encoded: Matt Elton: How do the kinds of records created now and in the recent past differ from those left in previous centuries? Jane Winters: Records and sources now come in a whole range of formats. In some cases, they are very familiar analogue sources that have become digital, whereas in others they are in a completely new format. Newspapers offer a great example of how this has changed: we used to read them only in physical form. Then those physical newspapers were digitised, keeping essentially the same structure. We now have both physical and digital newspapers, which differ in both form and content. An issue of The Guardian published in print today will not contain the same information as the online version: there will also be multimedia material and lots of online comments and conversations, whereas in the past you would have had only letters to the editor, for instance. And to take the example of people’s reflective writing, that’s a type of source that has also moved into new formats. A diary is not exactly the same as a blog entry or a post on social media, for instance. John Wills: One example that offers an interesting way of thinking about some of these issues is the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon – the point in 2023 when the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer were released at the same time. That’s a very recent instance of the kind of cultural moment that’s really interesting to research – but doing so is not easy, because you’re dealing not just with the films themselves but also the digital content produced by the films’ fandoms, the actors’ response to that content, and the wider public responses to those two movies, in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/2RKFGYE-8d3d650.jpg" width="4475" height="2983" alt="A movie poster shows characters from the films Oppenheimer and Barbie, creating a layered montage to promote "Barbenheimer". That word is written in pink across the bottom" t…

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The spy next door: Moscow's century-long plot to infiltrate the west
type: item
date: 2025-08-27T07:00:19.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Shaun Walker casts light on Moscow's shocking 'illegals' programme - a daring feat of espionage that saw Russian spies going deep undercover
encoded: In 2010, the world was stunned when the United States exposed a covert Russian spy network operating on its soil. Seemingly all-American families living in white-picket-fenced suburbia were in fact deep undercover Russian agents. Many had been living under assumed identities for decades, lying even to their own children. In this episode, journalist Shaun Walker speaks to Danny Bird about Moscow’s longlasting ‘illegals’ programme – perhaps the most audacious chapter in the history of espionage. He reveals how the roots of the operation reached back more than a century to before the Bolshevik Revolution; how the Soviet Union deployed it against supposedly ‘friendly’ states; and how today’s Russia reveres these spies as patriotic heroes. Shaun Walker is the author of The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West (Profile Books, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
type: item
date: 2025-06-18T08:00:37.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: To celebrate a quarter-century of BBC History Magazine, we asked 25 expert contributors to nominate the most important historical discoveries and revelations since the publication launched in 2000
encoded: 1. Women played major roles in the Viking Age Just 25 years ago, there seemed to be little new to say about the Vikings – and that was particularly the case for Viking women. The centuries-old consensus was that Viking wives and daughters stayed at home, passively watching as the Viking Age unfolded around them. New technologies have forced a rethink, though, completely revolutionising what we know about Viking women. The first significant discovery came from a systematic survey of a nationwide database of metal-detected female dress jewellery. This demonstrated for the first time that Scandinavian women migrated to England in substantial numbers. Next, isotope analysis of teeth from the graves of Viking women showed that they had formed a key part of the migration process elsewhere, too, moving across the Viking world alongside their families. The most dramatic and most debated discovery, however, came through analysis of ancient DNA. In Birka, Sweden, an individual buried in a high-status warrior grave turned out to be biologically female. This led to a worldwide discussion of the roles of Viking women: we now agree that, though many certainly did stay at home, some played active roles in trade, craft and manufacturing processes, and even held military positions. Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, author and TV presenter. Her books include The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons (William Collins, 2023) 2. Britain has been culturally diverse for far longer than most believed The murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 signalled a turning point in the way the histories of people of African descent were taught and perceived across Europe. From that moment, the British press and institutions felt that they had to engage better with narratives about minority ethnic communities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1292414316-CMYK-6ff23f7.jpg" width="1451" height="967" alt="…

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"If you represent Pinochet in this case, I will divorce you”: the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator
type: item
date: 2025-05-27T08:00:52.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
description: Philippe Sands tells Rob Attar about his involvement in the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator, and how it connects to a Nazi on the run
encoded: Rob Attar: In 1998, the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London. How seismic a moment was this? Philippe Sands: I remember the moment of learning of Pinochet’s arrest. It was a Saturday afternoon. It happened to be my birthday, and I was settling down to watch the football results at five o’clock when the news came on and they announced that Augusto Pinochet had been arrested for murder and crimes against humanity. It was huge. It was the first time that a former head of state, while travelling abroad, had been arrested on international crimes. Someone not familiar with the story might wonder why this was happening in London, not Santiago. What can you tell us about the geography of these events? By way of background, in September 1973 Augusto Pinochet, head of the Chilean military, seized power in a coup d’etat and remained there for 17 years. Over that period, hundreds of thousands were arrested, tens of thousands were tortured and ‘disappeared’, and many remain so to this day. There are about 1,300 people unaccounted for. This had attracted considerable interest around the world, because these are actions that would be characterised as international crimes within the meaning of the 1945 Nuremberg trials and definitions. And that is coupled with a principle known as universal jurisdiction, where when certain crimes take place, the courts of any country in the world may exercise jurisdiction. In October 1998 a Spanish judge named Baltasar Garzón decided to issue an arrest warrant for Senator Pinochet, while he was in London receiving medical treatment, for international crimes. That was the start of this part of the story. The connection with Spain is interesting because Pinochet’s relationship with the west was quite complex. He had a lot of friends in western countries, particularly America and Britain, for example. Pinochet did indeed have friends, on the political right, in the United States and in Britain. He was a good friend of Mar…

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