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The First World War’s deadliest battle was stalling, but everything changed when Little Willie arrived
As trench warfare paralysed the Western Front, an experimental vehicle pointed the way toward a different type of warfare – and a century of armoured combat
By late 1915, the First World War had entered an entirely new phase of combat. What had been expected to be a short, decisive conflict had hardened into a grinding stalemate. On the Western Front, opposing armies were locked into trench systems stretching from the Channel coast to the Swiss border. What little advances were made were measured in yards; the loss of life to claim those yards was measured in the tens of thousands. The First World War had become one of endless attrition, dominated by artillery barrages and machine-gun fire. Both sides understood that while their troops could reach enemy trenches, they couldn’t cross the killing ground in between without being cut down. Traditional solutions were no longer working. Cavalry couldn’t operate in cratered terrain, and infantry couldn’t survive sustained fire. But a new weapon of war was designed to solve this deadlock: the tank. As historian and journalist Mark Urban explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the tank began as a practical experiment – an attempt to answer this specific battlefield problem. Why the Western Front needed something new What armies needed was something that could move forward under fire, protect its crew, crush barbed wire and cross trenches. The idea of an armoured vehicle wasn’t new (an armoured warhorse served a not-too-distant function), but only recent technological developments made it feasible. Internal combustion engines, steel armour plates and continuous tracks finally made the machines possible. The first of these was Little Willie. Built by Foster & Co in Lincoln, Little Willie wasn’t intended to see combat. Instead, it was an idea that was designed to answer one crucial question: could a tracked vehicle move across shattered ground and trenches without breaking down? Read more | Life in the trenches during WWI “That is the first tank. It’s a prototype,” Urban says. Little Willie had obvious shortcomings. It struggled to cross wide trenches, had no turret, and had numerous mechanical weaknesses. But it proved that a tracked, armoured vehicle could operate on a modern battlefield. From that experiment emerged a completely redesigned machine with a distinctive rhomboid shape, long tracks running around its body. This would become Mark I – the first tank actively used in combat. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-73001000-1-1e44f82-e1769688725157.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A British Mark I tank moves across the Western Front in France in November 1916, marking the first use of tanks in warfare. Introduced during the Battle of the Somme, the armoured vehicle was designed to break the deadlock of trench warfare." title="Mark I Tank" /> Rushed into battle The Mark I was slow, mechanically fragile and, resultantly, hazardous. Crews received minimal training and breakdowns on the battlefield were the norm. But despite its many flaws, the Mark I represented something genuinely new to warfare: a mobile armoured platform capable of advancing with infantry through no man’s land. By September 1916, the battle of the Somme had been raging for months. While casualties were enormous, gains were painfully small. And new offensives weren’t making any progress. “General Haig [of the British Army] had launched his offensive a few weeks before,” Urban explains. “It had gone pretty disastrously, as we know. And at the end of it, he was looking for something to try and improve the result very late in the battle.” Britain had only a few dozen machines available and, once revealed, the Germans would adapt quickly. Haig was warned of these concerns but, as Urban says, he “didn’t listen”. 49 tanks were committed, scattered along the front in small groups. Many broke down before reaching the enemy. Others were hit by artillery or bogged down in mud so deep that even tracks could not cope. “And the result was pretty unimpressive. The whole thing was, to be honest, a damp squib.” Read more | What caused the First World War? Learning from failure The disappointing debut prompted serious reassessment of how to use these new weapons. Engineers worked to improve reliability, while crews gained experience. Most importantly, planners began to understand that tanks needed to be used in a more coordinated way. By late 1917, the British were ready to deploy them properly. In November 1917, at the battle of Cambrai, tanks were used on an unprecedented scale. More than 476 were concentrated along a narrow sector, supported by artillery and infantry. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-2165728800-8f5be97-e1769688904608.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="British soldiers of the Leicester Regiment inspect the Mark IV tank Hyacinth, ditched in a German trench during the battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. The battle marked the first large-scale, coordinated use of tanks." title="World War One: 1917 Battle of Cambrai" /> But the Germans weren’t complacent. They had studied earlier tank attacks and redesigned their trenches, widening them beyond the known crossing ability of British machines. “They thought this would stop the tanks,” Urban explains. “But the British had an answer.” Each tank carried a massive bundle of brushwood – a fascine – which could be dropped into a trench to create a temporary bridge. When the attack began, tanks rolled forward, fascines were deployed, and trenches were crossed. “When the German soldiers realised what was happening, there was mass panic,” Urban explains. “They were shooting rifles, machine guns, and everything at these big metal machines. The bullets were bouncing off.” For the first time since 1914, a significant breakthrough was achieved without catastrophic loss. What tanks really changed “This was the thing that, through all the suffering of those first three years of the war in France, everyone had been longing for and waiting for,” Urban says: proof that stalemate could be broken. It was a psychological turning point, as much as a military one. From this point on, tanks became a permanent feature of modern warfare, integrated with infantry, artillery and aircraft. Little Willie itself never left Britain and never fired a shot. But it provided an idea that helped to end a devastating war. Mark Urban was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Long before Cleopatra, another female pharaoh redefined ancient Egyptian power
More than a millennium before Cleopatra, the female ruler Hatshepsut blazed a trail for powerful women in the ancient civilisation
Cleopatra’s story is often seen through a prism of great drama, romance and spectacle, her rule coming at the very end of pharaonic history. But her position as the definitive image of the ‘female pharaoh’ obscures a much earlier ancient Egyptian experiment in female power – one that is arguably much more revealing. More than 1,400 years before Cleopatra, another woman ruled ancient Egypt as pharaoh, operating within one of the most conservative political systems the ancient world produced. She was Hatshepsut. Speaking about her life on the HistoryExtra podcast, Egyptologist Campbell Price explains what her period of rule means for how power in ancient Egypt has been understood, and how she paved the way for the rulers who followed. An ancient civilisation with a long history Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from around 1479 to 1458 BC, nearly fifteen centuries before Cleopatra’s death in 30 BC. Her power base was the city of Thebes in southern Egypt, which at the time served as the religious and political heart of the kingdom. From there, she governed a state that stretched from the Nile Delta in the north, deep into Nubia in the south, overseeing one of the most expansive and stable empires Egypt had yet known. Read more | Cleopatra: what is the real legacy of the last pharaoh? “With Hatshepsut, we’re talking about the Eighteenth Dynasty, and that is the first of several dynasties in what Egyptologists call the New Kingdom,” explains Campbell Price. Egypt, at this point was anything but new, and had already transitioned through distinct phases of cultural transformation, including the Old Kingdom. “The Old Kingdom is the time of the pyramids,” Price notes. “The pyramids are already a thousand years old by this point.” So, Hatshepsut inherited a civilisation that was already ancient. In its long history, it had already survived periods of war, collapse, fragmentation and foreign rule during the Second Intermediate Period. The role of kingship was to maintain a cosmic order in a world that Egyptians knew could easily fall apart. This was, therefore, not a culture inclined to experiment with authority. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-122221432-30893b7-e1769531290322.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This fresco from the tomb of Sennedjem at Deir el-Medina depicts agricultural labour in the Fields of Ialu – the Egyptian paradise of the afterlife. Painted during the New Kingdom’s 19th Dynasty, the scene reflects the belief that eternal life mirrored the best aspects of earthly existence, with abundant harvests promised to the righteous." title="Egypt, Thebes, village of state labourers at Dayr al-Madinah (Deir el-Medina), tomb of Sennedjem, fresco depicting agricultural scenes in the fields of Ialu, New Kingdom, Dynasty XIX" /> What it meant to be an ancient Egyptian pharaoh The Egyptian pharaohs upheld maat – the notion of balance, justice and order. The ruler was a mediator between gods and humans, who commanded armies and embodied Egypt itself. The visual language of this role was rigid, and defiantly masculine. Although royal women could hold immense influence in ancient Egypt, formal kingship was almost always male. Before Hatshepsut, no woman had ruled for long as a fully recognised pharaoh in her own right. Queens could act as regents, especially for young heirs, but stepping beyond that role meant crossing a deeply embedded cultural boundary. That’s why imagery of Hatshepsut shows her in a “male-coded” way, says Price. “It’s not that Hatshepsut is necessarily dressing up as a man,” Price explains. “It’s that the only way to be shown as a legitimate pharaoh is to be shown in a male guise. That’s how she has to appear in statues and in reliefs.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-463908373-33236aa-e1769532932297.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This relief shows Hatshepsut, queen of Egypt, presenting an offering to the falcon-headed god Horus. Although a woman, Hatshepsut is depicted in male form, adopting the visual language of kingship to legitimise her rule." title="Hatshepsut, Queen of Egypt, presenting an offering to the god Horus." /> But how, exactly, did Hatshepsut rise to power in this system? Hatshepsut began her rule as regent for her young stepson, Thutmose III. This was a role that fit comfortably within established norms. But what followed was a series of escalations that went beyond the regular role of a regent. Thutmose III, the boy for whom Hatshepsut initially ruled, remained alive and present at court throughout her reign. He was trained as a king, led military campaigns, and was never formally removed from the line of succession. But all the while, Hatshepsut seemed to consolidate power toward herself. Read more | Did the ancient Egyptians really love cats? The dark truth might break your heart “There seems to be a bit of experimentation,” Price explains. “But by, say, year seven of her rule, she is fully declaring that she is a pharaoh.” Legitimacy in ancient Egypt was decided by a small, powerful network of priests, officials and court elites who controlled administration. By securing their support through religious donations and favourable building projects, Hatshepsut ensured that her rule functioned smoothly at every level of the state. As long as order was maintained and prosperity continued, she was allowed to retain her power. “And then a bit later on, she is shown [in iconography as] completely male, with essentially a man’s body,” Price adds. In Egyptian terms this was not a denial of her sex, but an affirmation of her role as pharaoh. Kingship had fixed visual rules that couldn’t be tampered with. If she wanted power, Hatshepsut had to bend to fit those rules. The innovation behind Hatshepsut’s rise Hatshepsut’s authority rested on the success of the regime over which she ruled. Her reign coincided with a period of ancient Egyptian confidence and power. “She is very good at, and very interested in, combining tradition and innovation,” Price says. “And undoubtedly there is an interest in doing things in a slightly different, slightly new way.” Her construction regime made that clear. Across Egypt, temples rose that echoed earlier models while pushing architectural styles onward. Her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, cut into the cliffs of western Thebes, was unlike anything that had come before. Also key to her success; her government looked outward, building relationships with other regions and leaders. “She sends out these extraordinary international trading missions,” Price notes, including the famous expedition to a region called Punt, which returned with incense trees, exotic animals and luxury goods. “She does keep her hand in with warfare,” he says. “And again, there’s this presumption that because she’s a woman, she must be meek and mild.” But that wasn’t the case. Egyptian kingship required the credible projection of violence – which Hatshepsut understood. “She is pretty mean,” Price says. “She shows herself as a sphinx, trampling foreigners. And she also – as all pharaohs have to do – threatens people,” Price adds. “She says, ‘Anyone who doubts my power, bad things are going to happen to them.’ She means business as king.” These assertions of Egyptian dominance and strength were spearheaded by Hatshepsut. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-113491794-511b21f-e1769531009439.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This relief from the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri depicts members of her celebrated trading expedition to the fabled Land of Punt." title="Relief showing members of Queen Hatshepsut's trading expedition to the mysterious 'Land of Punt' from this pharaoh's elegant mortuary temple at Deir El-Bahri. Hatshepsut, 18th Dynasty, reigned 1503-1482 BC." /> The power behind the throne But Hatshepsut didn’t rule in a vacuum. Her reign was a coordinated project, supported by elite administrators who understood how to secure her legitimacy. “I have to mention someone very important,” Price says. “A key member of her inner circle at the royal court – a man called Senenmut.” “Senenmut holds over ninety titles,” says Price. “A very important guy. He seems to be the spin doctor-in-chief, if you like. It seems fairly clear to me that he is personally responsible for creating the iconography of her kingship. So Senenmut is the person who really promotes this idea of her as the great pharaoh.” It wasn’t an entirely benevolent move. Senenmut’s own power depended entirely on Hatshepsut’s success, giving him every incentive to craft a compelling vision of her kingship. Was Hatshepsut’s reign successful? Hatshepsut’s success didn’t bring permanent change to the rules of Egyptian kingship. After her death, efforts were made to remove her name and image from monuments, and later kings returned to exclusively male rule. Nevertheless, by the measures that ancient Egyptians valued most, Hatshepsut’s reign worked. Read more | The face of Cleopatra: what did she look like, and was she really so beautiful? “I would say that the time we know of her on the throne is a prosperous one for Egypt,” Price concludes. While maintaining internal stability, Hatshepsut’s rule also saw the continued progress of trade, and the expansion of monument building. Cleopatra would, more than a millennium later, wield power in a radically different cultural context. She ruled as a Hellenistic monarch in a world now defined by Greek politics and Roman power. Unlike Hatshepsut, she didn’t need to present herself as male, but she also lacked the sacred framework that made Hatshepsut’s rule stable. Their shared label as ‘female pharaohs’ hides the fact that they were solving entirely different political problems. It was Hatshepsut who demonstrated that even the rigid systems of divine kingship could be ruled over by a woman, if given the chance to master those systems. Cambpell Price was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Humble Victorian heroes: the ordinary Britons who sacrificed their lives for others
Statues celebrate monarchs, rulers and conquerors – but who remembers the brave folk who gave their lives to save others? Anna Maria Barry recounts stories of self-sacrificing but otherwise ordinary people from the 19th and 20th centuries who are commemorated in one London park
Tucked away in the City of London, a short walk north of St Paul’s Cathedral, lies a curious, oddly-shaped, leafy little sanctuary. Opened in 1880, Postman’s Park is named for the workers at the nearby General Post Office who liked to visit during their breaks. Today, though, it’s best known as the home of the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, honouring dozens of heroic Londoners who lost their lives while trying to save others, most in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Unusually, the memorial describes the details of each tragic death, from drownings and carriage accidents to house fires and poisonings. No wonder this moving, if somewhat macabre, celebration of bravery continues to fascinate. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1411624515webready-b2b4c26-e1769529632536.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a low, long wooden and brick structure against a building. In front of it there is a garden with a stone font in the middle" title="The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice honours ordinary people (Image by Getty Images)" /> Flames faced with fortitude One such quietly heroic Londoner was Alice Ayres. During the night of 24 April 1885, the 26-year-old lay asleep in her bedroom on Union Street, in the home of her older sister and brother-in-law, who employed her as a nursemaid and household assistant. Sharing this room were her nieces Edith, Ellen and Elizabeth, aged five, four and three, respectively. Shortly after 2am, Alice was jolted awake by the crackling of flames, and quickly realised that something was very wrong. Her brother-in-law’s oil and paint shop on the ground floor was on fire, and his wares were rapidly accelerating the flames. Alice had to think fast. Unable to exit the bedroom, she rushed to the window and threw it open to scream for help. She grabbed two bedsheets to tie together before realising that this makeshift rope wouldn’t enable her to lower her nieces to safety. Instead, she heaved a feather mattress out of the window to create a soft landing. By now, several neighbours had rushed to the property, and they suspended the mattress between them. First, Alice threw Edith out; next up was Ellen, who clung to her aunt in fear. Finally, Alice dropped Elizabeth down to the waiting neighbours before letting herself drop. Tragically, the fire claimed five lives: neither Elizabeth nor Alice survived their injuries, and Alice’s sister, brother-in-law and young nephew also perished. This sad episode was not soon forgotten, though, and created a sensation in the press, with articles focused firmly on the heroic actions of this brave young woman. “Death of the heroine Alice Ayres,” reported one paper, while another led with “A Heroine in Humble Life”. Alice’s courage was potent: many people were moved deeply by this story of a lowly nursemaid – a young, working-class woman who lost her life in the process of saving others. As historian John Price pointed out, many of these reports erased Alice’s familial relationship to the young girls. It seems that the story of a devoted employee giving her life to save her charges was perceived as more poignant than that of a frantic woman trying to save her own family. On the day of Alice’s funeral, as her coffin was carried by firefighters to its final resting place, admiring Londoners came out to line the streets in their hundreds. A memorial fund raised a significant sum, eventually paying for a large memorial that still stands over Alice’s grave in Isleworth Cemetery. And these were not the only tributes: in the months and years after her death, Alice underwent a process that historian Lara Perry has described as a “secular canonisation”. She became something of a folk hero, her act inspiring poets and writers and being cited as an example of everyday heroism among working people. Read more | For ordinary Tudors, death lurked around every corner with these surprising ways to die This impact even spread overseas: six years after Alice’s death, a poem published in a Toronto newspaper ended with the lines: She did not die. Such names as hers will never, never die; They make our British blood run hot, our British hearts beat high. And as we linger near her tomb, by grateful laurels crown’d, We ask, “What braver act than hers could on the earth be found?” On battle-fields, where strong men fight, what hero’s deed compares With the noble true, self-sacrifice of this nursemaid, Alice Ayres? Among the many people inspired by Alice’s story was George Frederic Watts. One of the most celebrated artists of the Victorian age, dubbed ‘England’s Michelangelo’, Watts was a gifted painter and sculptor known for his symbolist works, public sculptures and many portraits of the era’s great and good. His most famous work is the allegorical Hope (1886), which took on a new significance at the peak of the 20th-century civil rights movement in the US, when Martin Luther King Jr discussed the painting in a sermon. Much later, after hearing about it in another sermon given by pastor Jeremiah Wright, a young Barack Obama took inspiration from its message, later writing the 2006 book The Audacity of Hope. In 1887, two years after Alice’s death, Watts wrote a letter to The Times proposing a novel way to mark the forthcoming golden jubilee of Queen Victoria. “[I]t would surely be of national interest,” he suggested, “to collect a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life.” This would, he mooted, take the form of a memorial in London and, to illustrate his argument, he reminded readers of Alice Ayres: such “forgotten heroes”, he argued, should be remembered. “The material prosperity of a nation is not an abiding possession,” Watts concluded. “The deeds of its people are.” Inspiring other Britons This idea of celebrating heroism was very much in keeping with Victorian sensibilities. In 1841, Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle had published his influential On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, championing the importance of heroic individuals – typically, the ‘great men’ of history. There was also a widely held belief in improvement through example – the idea that studying great lives helped an individual to better themselves. Watts’ suggestion was very much in this spirit: he hoped that his memorial would articulate a type of selfless conduct that other Britons would be inspired to emulate through their own good deeds. Although Watts’ idea was not picked up immediately, it resurfaced in 1898 when the vicar of St Botolph’s offered him a site to bring his vision to life – a public park that had once been the parish churchyard and burial ground. It was here that the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice was finally unveiled by the lord mayor on 30 July 1900. Initially, just four people were commemorated, but batches of names were added steadily over the following years. After Watts’ death in 1904, the project was taken over by his wife, Mary, a talented designer, social reformer and (later) suffragette. Today, the memorial consists of 54 plaques celebrating a total of 62 individuals. Most of them are men, though nine women and eight children are honoured. The vast majority of those named were either Londoners or people who died in the capital. Though many of the subjects were working class – labourers and railway workers – there are also members of the middle class, including managers and medical men. The memorial takes the form of a wall bearing ornate ceramic plaques covered by a red-tiled roof, supported by columns. Each plaque records a name, dates and – most movingly – a short summary of the circumstances under which the subject died. A typical entry reads: Soloman Galaman aged 11 died of injuries Sept 6 1901 after saving his little brother from being run over in Commercial Street “Mother I saved him but I could not save myself” Another commemorates: Frederick Alfred Croft Inspector aged 31 saved a lunatic woman from suicide at Woolwich Arsenal Station but was himself run over by the train Jan 11 1878 <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-144844808webready-2d9e5af-e1769530315297.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="plaque tile dedicated to a man named Frederick Alfred Croft. The tile is beige with an orange outline and has a green and cream floral pattern around it. The words are written in blue" title="A plaque dedicated to Frederick Alfred Croft, who saved a woman from suicide at Woolwich Arsenal station, before being hit by the train himself (Image by Getty Images)" /> Each plaque tells a vivid story in a few short lines, offering a glimpse into everyday people’s experiences of life in the metropolis. The extraordinary nature of these ordinary Londoners’ deaths means that they generated a deposit in the historic record in the form of newspaper stories and inquest reports. These, along with the information given on the memorial – dates and sometimes even addresses – yields much historical material. Read more | The Bengal Famine was one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies – so why is there no memorial to it? Many of those commemorated suffered accidents at work. One plaque commemorates Walter Peart and Harry Dean, driver and fireman, respectively, on Great Western Railway’s Windsor Express. On 18 July 1898, they were both working on the 4.15pm service from Windsor to London Paddington when a rod in the engine broke, engulfing the boiler in flames. Though they were severely scalded and later died from their injuries, the two men succeeded in bringing the train to a safe stop, preventing further casualties. Both were married, and Walter left five children. One grateful passenger on the train was George Goschen, First Lord of the Admiralty, who wrote a letter to the Great Western Railway expressing his admiration for the men’s bravery and enclosing a donation for their families. Lost at sea Another plaque honours 44-year-old Mary Rogers, a stewardess on the passenger ferry Stella. On 30 March 1899, Mary was working on a voyage from Southampton to Guernsey with 147 passengers on board, many of whom were starting an Easter holiday. In heavy fog, the ship hit rocks, sinking just eight minutes later. Although some escaped in lifeboats, 86 passengers and 19 crew members were lost. One who made it safely off the ship was the famous opera singer Greta Williams, who sang hymns to calm survivors as they waited in lifeboats for rescue. Rogers, though, was not among them: she had given up her life jacket and refused a seat in a lifeboat, choosing instead to save a passenger. This story touched many, including writer Frances Power Cobbe, who penned an inscription for a monument to Mary containing the lines: Urged by the sailors to make sure her escape, she refused, lest she might endanger the heavily-laden boat. Cheering the departing crew with the friendly cry of “Good-bye, good-bye” she was seen, a few moments later, as the Stella went down, lifting her arms upwards with the prayer “Lord have me” then sank in the waters with the sinking ship. A monument to Mary’s bravery still stands in Southampton. It was funded by donations from an admiring public, who also raised a significant sum to support her elderly father and the two young children she left behind. Mary is one of the few heroes commemorated at Postman’s Park who did not die in London. Another plaque commemorates Sarah Smith, a “pantomime artiste” (real name Sarah Gibson) who reportedly performed an act of bravery during a show at the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford Street on 23 January 1863. She was on stage when the dress of her friend Anne Hunt began burning, set alight by a pan of fire that was being used in the performance. According to the plaque, Sarah rushed over to extinguish the flames but was so badly burned that she later died of her injuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/dreamstime98653751webready-8fe05fe-e1769530060418.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A plaque tile dedicated to a woman named Sarah Smith. The tile is beige with an orange outline and has a green and cream floral pattern around it. The words are written in blue" title="One plaque commemorates Sarah Smith, who sustained fatal burns when saving her friend from a fire in 1863 (Image by Dreamtime)" /> At the inquest into her death, the jury reprimanded the theatre for its insufficient fire precautions, and the coroner raised his concern about the flammable nature of women’s dress. “He thought it quite impossible by any amount of reasoning or warning to produce any effect on fashion,” reported one newspaper, concluding that “[h]e did not know how many women would be required to be burnt to death before any of their fair sex would give up wearing an article of fashion.” Read more | Why we should be better about talking about death, with Dr Helen Gittos Courageous children Some of the most moving plaques on the memorial honour children who died trying to save friends or siblings. One of these was 10-year-old John Clinton. On 16 July 1894, he was playing on the foreshore of the Thames, close to London Bridge, with another boy called Campbell Mortimer. When Campbell waded into the water and found himself out of his depth, John succeeded in rescuing him, but fell back into the river and drowned. Newspaper reports noted that John had saved another life not long before his death. His baby brother had accidentally started a fire while playing with matches, and John had had the presence of mind to roll him on the carpet to extinguish the flames while also removing a set of curtains that had been set alight. The son of a “struggling carpenter”, John was praised in the press as a “boy hero” and “a most dutiful and affectionate child”. At his funeral, the coffin was “almost hidden with wreaths”; one, reporters noted, “bore the simple words ‘He saved me.’” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-2169595312webready-b75a2d2-e1769529775392.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a green heart with the word GRENFELL written across it in yellow" title="The Grenfell Tower Memorial is one of many "attempts to ensure that the lives of ordinary people who made extraordinary sacrifices are not forgotten" (Image by Getty Images)" /> Though 120 tiles were originally planned, after GF Watts’ death the addition of new tablets became sporadic, and effectively ceased after 1931. The final plaque fixed to the memorial, in 2009, honours Leigh Pitt. He was 30 when he died in 2007 while saving a drowning boy from a canal in Thamesmead. In 2010, the group that looks after the Watts memorial decided that no more plaques would be added. In recent years, monuments have become focal points for political debate, and the wisdom of commemorating certain figures has been interrogated. Watts’ Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice seems to speak to the moment: it doesn’t celebrate military generals, politicians or monarchs, but instead pays tribute to the bravery and humanity of everyday people who were prepared to risk their lives for others. We might recognise echoes of this sentiment in the National Covid Memorial Wall on the South Bank or the Grenfell Tower Memorial Wall. All are attempts to ensure that the lives of ordinary people who made extraordinary sacrifices are not forgotten. Anna Maria Berry is a historian and writer This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
History's Greatest Scandals: secrets of the Georgian era
Join us for series two of History’s Greatest Scandals, where Ellie Cawthorne and Professor Hannah Greig are uncovering the secrets of the Georgian era
In this podcast series, Ellie Cawthorne and Professor Hannah Greig follow on the trail of forgers, expose illicit liaisons, meet cross-dressing celebrity spies and get involved in some high-stakes gambling, as they search out some of the most salacious stories of the day, and explore what they can reveal about this fascinating period of history.
The MILLION pound forgery | Mrs Rudd vs the Perreaus
In 1775, a respectable lady, a mild-mannered apothecary and his fast-living identical twin stood accused of pulling off a scam that had earned them a grand fortune of £7,500 – roughly £1.5m in today's money
In 1775, a respectable lady, a mild-mannered apothecary and his fast-living identical twin stood accused of pulling off a scam that had earned them a grand fortune of £7,500 – roughly £1.5m in today's money. But as the trial of Mrs Rudd and the Perreaus unfolded, the defendants turned on one another, and the plot thickened – who was the real orchestrator of the scheme, and who would hang for it? In this episode of History’s Greatest Scandals, Professor Hannah Greig and Ellie Cawthorne revisit this sensational courtroom drama, and consider what it can tell us about the Georgian age. Watch the full episode, or listen ad-free at the link below: View Green Video on the source website
Garry J Shaw explores the history of the world's most mysterious manuscripts
What do exploding bats and amphibious galleons have in common? They're both fascinating features of some of the world's most mysterious manuscripts, as revealed by journalist and author Garry J Shaw in his book, Cryptic. From Hildegard of Bingen’s secret language to the hoaxes of Renaissance Spain, and from John Dee’s angelic communications to the peculiar Voynich Manuscript, Shaw unravels the allure and enigma of texts shrouded in secrecy.
Giles Tremlett discusses the life of General Franco, whose nearly four decades of brutal dictatorship over Spain continues to divide Spaniards half a century after his death
Emerging in the early 20th century as Europe's youngest general since Napoleon Bonaparte, Francisco Franco was destined to make waves. But how did this uncharismatic reactionary become Spain’s dictator, dominating the country for nearly four decades? Danny Bird speaks to journalist Giles Tremlett about the life of the man who continues to haunt Spain more than 50 years after his death in 1975.
Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066
1066 is synonymous with the battle of Hastings. Yet while Duke William was launching his conquest of England, the rest of Europe had its own crises to contend with. Charles West takes us on a tour of the continent during a dramatic year
It was the summer of 1066 and two powerful leaders were rallying their supporters behind them and preparing for war. Their clash would result in political chaos, the spilling of much blood, and one of those leader’s violent deaths. Yet the people of England barely noticed. That’s because the clash took place hundreds of miles to the south-east on the Italian peninsula, and it involved two figures – a renegade cleric named Arialdo and Guido da Velate, the archbishop of Milan – who have rarely troubled British history books. These two men had been butting heads since the 1050s and, by 1066, their intense rivalry had pitched the city-state of Milan into chaos. The trouble started when Arialdo and his supporters began accusing Milan’s formidable clerical elite of corruption, chiefly because the city’s priests were married – a longstanding local practice that many non-Milanese found deeply shocking. Things quickly turned violent: armed skirmishes erupted on the streets. The showdown was soon heading for a bloody denouement. We might suppose that the pope in Rome would take a dim view of an open rebellion against the clerical hierarchy in a major Italian city. But from the middle of the 11th century, the papacy was occupied by men who agreed that the Catholic church was in desperate need of an overhaul, and so they sided with Arialdo. In March 1066, Pope Alexander II went so far as to excommunicate Archbishop da Velate because of the charges Arialdo laid against him. It was a radical move. And it backfired spectacularly. The canny archbishop was able to spin his excommunication to his benefit by positioning himself as the champion of Milanese traditions against toxic ‘external’ interference. An enraged local populace turned on Arialdo and chased him out of the city. In June 1066, while he was making his way to Rome, emissaries of da Velate hunted down Arialdo and murdered him. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-931173370webready-9665804-e1769423234953.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting shows four men sitting at a table covered with glasses of wine. Three of them are dressed in red cloaks with gold trimming, and wide red hats. The other man is dressed all in gold and wears a tall, layered gold and white crowned hat" title="In 1066 Pope Alexander II (second from left) excommunicated the Archbishop of Milan, who was accused of corruption (Image by Getty Images)" /> Mob power 1066 is surely the most famous date in all of English history, synonymous with one event: Harold II and William of Normandy’s bitter struggle for the throne of England. We think of charging Norman knights and Anglo-Saxon foot soldiers, of the battle of Hastings and a famous arrow in the eye – all recorded in exquisite detail by the Bayeux Tapestry. Yet as Arialdo’s fate on the road to Rome proves, the Norman conquest was far from the only significant event to occur in Europe in 1066. In fact, while Norman and Anglo-Saxon forces slugged it out at Hastings, people from Spain to Scandinavia, Kyiv to Constantinople were embroiled in events every bit as momentous as those unfolding in England. By exploring those events in the round, we can build a better picture of the currents convulsing the lives of the people of Europe in the late 11th century. Read more | 1066: who was the rightful king? Take Arialdo’s uprising in Milan as an example. This wasn’t just an urban revolt, but also a sign of how western Europe was being shaped by its growing economy in the late 11th century. After the fall of the Roman empire, many western European towns had shrunk to a shadow of their former selves. But from the ninth century, or perhaps earlier, they had been steadily growing again. In 1066, Milan’s population had grown large enough for urban mobs to prove seriously troublesome for governing elites – as Archbishop da Velate discovered. This posed a problem that had not been encountered in the Christian west for centuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-146324414webready-77668b0-e1769423035894.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A knight is purified in a medieval relief from a holy-water font in northern Italy. By the late 11th century, urban mobs were increasingly challenging clerical elites in cities such as Milan (Image by Getty Images)" title="A knight is purified in a medieval relief from a holy-water font in northern Italy. By the late 11th century, urban mobs were increasingly challenging clerical elites in cities such as Milan (Image by Getty Images)" /> Life on the frontline Milan wasn’t the only conurbation to be rocked by significant violence in 1066. The city of Barbastro is located in what’s now north-eastern Spain, but in the 1060s it was on the frontier between Muslim Iberia – also known as Al-Andalus – and the Christian kingdoms of the north. That placed it right on the frontline of one of the most contested swathes of territory in 11th-century Europe. Barbastro had been in Muslim hands since the Arab conquest of Iberia in the eighth century. All that was to change dramatically in 1064. For, two years before the Norman conquest of England, a Christian force besieged and conquered the city. The composition of this army was varied – and even included some Normans – but it was probably led by Sancho Ramírez, ruler of the kingdom of Aragon. Pope Alexander II – the same pontiff who would go on to excommunicate the archbishop of Milan – was involved, actively encouraging the siege. In a letter referring to the troops participating in the attack on Barbastro, he wrote that, “by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, we both lift their penance and make a remission of their sins”. Exactly what he meant by this terse statement has been widely debated. But on the face of it, it sounds a lot like the terms given by Pope Urban II to participants of the First Crusade three decades later in 1095. Yet, for all Alexander’s words of encouragement, the Christian triumph in Barbastro was short-lived. Thanks to the efforts of Ahmad al-Muqtadir, the emir of Zaragoza, by 1066 Barbastro was back in Muslim hands – and would remain so for nearly four decades. While kingdoms in the north of Spain, such as Castile and Aragon, did make major territorial gains late in the 11th century, the fate of Barbastro proves that there was nothing inevitable about the Christian reconquest of Iberia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL555342webready-65c8ded-e1769423374470.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful manuscript illustration shows large groups of soldiers mounted on horses fighting one another" title="The Christian reconquest of Spain, depicted in a 13th-century manuscript. Events in Barbastro in the mid-11th century suggest this was a messy, contested affair (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Pagans v Christians Most of Europe in 1066 lay under Muslim or Christian control. But this was not the case everywhere. In the far north, the Sámi peoples, who lived chiefly from their reindeer herds, steadfastly resisted efforts to convert them to Christianity. So, too, did Slavic-speaking peoples around the Baltic coastline, including a group in present-day north-eastern Germany known as the Wends, who fended off various invasions from Saxony in the east. In the summer of 1066, this resistance crystallised into an uprising against a man called Gottschalk, one of the Wends’ own rulers. Gottschalk had converted to Christianity and wanted the pagan populace to follow suit, but they took a different view. The uprising claimed the lives of not only Gottschalk but also, in November that year, John Scotus, a missionary from Scotland or Ireland, who had become bishop of Mecklenburg in modern-day Germany. Read more | The crusade against the odds: how the First Crusade succeeded despite the obstacles If a contemporary chronicler named Adam of Bremen is to be believed, John’s murder was particularly grisly. “And because [John] confessed Christ, he was beaten with cudgels and then was led in mockery through one city of the Slavs after another,” Adam tells us. “Since he could not be turned from the profession of Christ, his hands and feet were lopped off and his body was thrown upon the road. Cutting off his head, the barbarians fixed it on a spear and offered it to their god Radegast in token of their victory.” Debate has gone back and forth as to how literally we should take Adam’s account, since Christian monks’ descriptions of pagan practice were always heavily layered with their presumptions. What can’t be disputed, however, is that this part of Europe remained pagan for nearly another century. The allure of monotheism was not irresistible. Families at war To the east of the pagan people of the Baltic coastline lay Kyivan Rus. This was medieval Europe’s largest territory – stretching from the Gulf of Finland down to modern-day Ukraine – and, from 978 until his death in 1015, it was dominated by Volodymyr the Great. He was a formidable ruler who had converted to Orthodox Christianity in 988 as part of an alliance with the Byzantine empire, fought wars of conquest, and sired many children. That was all well and good, but four decades later, Volodymyr’s propensity for producing offspring was causing problems. In the 1060s, Rus was ruled over by one of Volodymyr’s grandsons, Iziaslav I, and his wife, Gertrude of Poland. Iziaslav had reigned as Grand Prince of Kyiv since 1054 but, by the middle of the following decade, his position was increasingly being challenged by rival relatives. By 1068, such was the intensity of the dynastic struggles, that Iziaslav and Gertrude were forced to flee into exile in Poland. There they sought help from Gertrude’s family. Her nephew agreed to help and, with a contingent of Polish warriors behind him, Iziaslav returned to power in Kyiv in 1069. We have some insight into Gertrude’s state of mind at this perilous moment in her life, thanks to the survival of a remarkable manuscript, now in the town of Cividale in northern Italy. It’s a psalter – a book of psalms – and was originally made in the 10th century. Yet it somehow ended up in Gertrude’s hands. While the book was by this point perhaps a century old, Gertrude made adjustments to it, including copying personal prayers into its margins and blank spaces. These heartfelt additions give a sense of her anxieties as she resided in a foreign, turbulent country: “O holy Helena, most Christian of queens… I beg you humbly … that you may deign to turn the hearts of your servants to peace and love and affection towards me, as our Lord Jesus Christ opened the heart of your emperor [Constantine] to remember you, and filled it with love.” Even though this piece of evidence is unique to Gertrude, she was hardly the first elite woman in 11th-century Europe to find herself in a country with which she was no longer familiar. At that point, kings tended to prefer marrying women from abroad, just as William the Conqueror chose the daughter of the Count of Flanders as his wife. The result was a criss-crossing of dynasties taking place over several generations. A proud teacher If the examples on these pages teach us anything, it’s that 1066 witnessed no shortage of wars and rebellions. Yet there’s much more to the late 11th century than violence and unrest. To illustrate this point, let us turn to a letter from a scholar named Goswin, schoolmaster in the cathedral in Mainz, to a former student called Walcher. In the letter, Goswin thanked his former pupil for sending him a book, which Walcher had personally copied after reading. Strikingly for the modern reader, Goswin suggested that the excellent quality of the scribal work justified the corporal punishment he had inflicted upon Walcher when he taught him as a child. For most of the letter, though, Goswin reminisces about his younger days studying and teaching in Liège. He compared the educational environment of the city favourably to Plato’s academy, while festooning the letter with learned quotations from Horace, Cicero and other classical writers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL4619329webready-f17b02e-e1769423807871.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a man dressed in a long red shift, holding a book and reading it to a small group of men sitting around him" title="Peter Abelard was an important French theologian and philosopher, shown here teaching at the school he established on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> But Goswin didn’t only reminisce on past times. He also commented on new trends – unfavourably. These days, he claimed, avarice had taken over everywhere, and he and his fellow scholars were not suitably remunerated for their efforts. The biggest target of his ire, though, was the new generation of students: “Fleeing instruction in the gravity of moral discipline, they are blown about like light chaff in every wind of doctrine… They do homage to vain and pestiferous novelties of phrasings and questions… Also if they gather some scrap of arcane or verbose knowledge, they wander like vagabonds through the fields of learning, discoursing to no one’s satisfaction.” This might read very much like the complaint of an ageing academic about the frivolities of the young, but it’s been argued that Goswin was actually putting his finger on a genuine development in educational practice. In the mid-11th century, intellectual energy was beginning to drain away from the old and rather conservative cathedral schools such as Mainz or Liège, heirs to the Carolingian Renaissance, and into the more disputatious classes held by a new generation of charismatic teachers. This new wave of educators was epitomised by men such as Peter Abelard of Paris, a firebrand whom, we can safely surmise, Goswin would have disliked immensely. Read more | Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates? Heavyweight battles For all Goswin’s musings on intellectual decay in the continent’s greatest seats of learning, we have to conclude our tour of 1066 Europe by returning to a more visceral theme: conflict. This particular outbreak of bloodletting was on a such a scale that it put even the Norman conquest in the shade. At the heart of the conflict was one of the world’s great polities: the Byzantine empire. This had dominated much of the Mediterranean world since the fourth century AD when it had emerged as a continuation of the Roman empire (which is why it is often referred to as the Eastern Roman empire). In 1066, with the mighty city of Constantinople as its capital, it stretched from the Adriatic in the west to Antioch on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. However, by the middle of the 1060s, the empire was coming under pressure from multiple external forces. Turkic-speaking nomads were launching raids across the river Danube in the Balkans, with a particularly large incursion taking place in 1065. Meanwhile, in the eastern provinces, Byzantine forces had to contend with the Seljuk Turks, a powerful nomadic consortium who had converted to Islam, conquered Baghdad, and were now regularly unleashing raids in Anatolia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL4778974webready-1ede7f5-e1769423696271.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two ships with groups of men on them, facing each other on the sea. Below the boats, a naked man is swimming in the water" title="A soldier swims to attack an enemy ship in a Byzantine treatise from the conflict-ridden 11th century (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Byzantine historians who recorded these events tended to see them as premonitions of the disaster that would befall the empire a few years later. At the battle of Manzikert in 1071, Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was defeated and taken prisoner by a Turk force led by Alp Arslan, sultan of the Seljuk empire. Romanos was treated honourably by his captors and soon released, but his humiliation unleashed a civil war. On his return to Constantinople, Romanos was brutally blinded by internal enemies and died from his injuries. For Byzantine historians of the time such as John Skylitzes, the seeds of this defeat were visible years before, because emperors failed to pay enough attention to the military threats menacing their borders. Skylitzes reserved some of his most stinging criticisms for Romanos’s predecessor, Constantine X, observing that: “Far more than anything else, the emperor yearned and desired to increase state revenues and to hear private law cases… while having less to do with other imperial duties, by which I mean maintaining military superiority and the fighting prowess of our soldiers.” We should beware the hindsight on display here, though. As King Harold and Duke William both discovered at Hastings, battles were unpredictable affairs, and the outcome of Manzikert was never a foregone conclusion. If, in 1066, Constantine X had devoted himself chiefly to the running of his empire, that was because it was, quite reasonably, the top priority. Although there were military problems, he could draw on enormous financial and ideological resources to overcome them. Indeed, these resources allowed Byzantium to effect a recovery and it remained a mighty state into the later 11th century, as the crusaders discovered when they surged east from 1095. Meanwhile, back in England, the country was reeling from the battle of 1066, and some contemporaries elsewhere in Europe acknowledged its drama. In Bavaria, the chronicler Frutolf of Michelsberg devoted his entire entry for the year 1066 to it. “England was pitifully attacked and eventually conquered by the Norman William, who was made king. Soon afterwards he sent virtually all the bishops of that kingdom into exile and the nobles to their deaths. Those of the middle rank he forced into the service of his knights, and all the wives of the indigenous people into marriage with the newcomers.” There’s no doubt that the Norman Conquest was an extraordinary event for the English and Normans alike. Yet, taking a wide view, it was just one of the ways in which the tectonic plates of European politics and society were dramatically shifting in the 11th century. Charles West is a professor of medieval history at the University of Edinburgh and author of Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Why did Maggie O'Farrell write about Shakespeare's son?
The life of young Hamnet and the effect that his premature death had on his parents is reimagined by Maggie O’Farrell in her 2020 historical fiction Hamnet, which has since been made into a major film starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. What inspired the writer to focus on such a moment?
Very little is known about the only son of playwright William Shakespeare, except that he died at the age of 11. The life of young Hamnet and the effect that his premature death had on his father is reimagined by Maggie O’Farrell in an emotional departure from her previous works. Did the young boy’s death influence the bard’s later writing? And is the name of one of his most famous plays, Hamlet, a coincidence – was Shakespeare trying to tell us something? What inspired you to focus on Hamnet Shakespeare, and how much do we actually know about his life? We know he was born, and we know he died but apart from that, pretty much nothing. I have always been struck by how little space Hamnet was given in biographies. There's usually a paragraph about how common child mortality was in the late-16th century, but the implication was that it wasn’t that upsetting to lose a child because it happened a lot. It seemed preposterous to me because it must have been devastating to lose your only son, at age 11. Hamnet’s mother [Anne Hathaway] has also been unfairly maligned as an older woman who tricked a younger man into marriage. I think we need to look at her with fresh eyes which is why I gave her back her actual name. Her father named her Agnes, which raises a question: why all these years do we refer to her as Anne? I wanted to write a novel that gave voice to these people who've been silenced by history. Read more | What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? This is quite a departure from your previous novels. How different did you find writing this book? When writing historically there's a lot of library-based research you can do, but the author has to inhabit the lives of these people. For example, when writing the first chapter, I had this young boy falling on the floor. I stopped because I had no idea what the floor of a Tudor kitchen would be made of. I went to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw the flagstone Tudor floors for myself. I cultivated my own Elizabethan garden and learnt how to make traditional medicines. In terms of the writing, it was like going back to the start of my writing career. All the metaphors and techniques you become used to don't work when you’re writing with the minds of 16th-century people. Did knowing so little about Hamnet allow you more creative licence? This is a fictional interpretation of what might have happened; the name Shakespeare never appears because I am taking the lives of real people who lived and breathed. No one really knows why the real Hamnet Shakespeare died. I've also always wondered why there's no mention in Shakespeare’s works of the plague. It seems extraordinary for it to have been such an ever-present terror, killing swathes of people, yet he never reached for it when constructing his plays. I sort of answer that for myself in the novel.
What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? A guide to the playwright's family life and descendants
The story of the Shakespeares was one of social advancement, says Stanley Wells, reflected in dwellings that rose from rural farmstead to manorial splendour. Along the way were some family upsets: pregnant brides, lawsuits and excommunication. Find out more about when William married Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, when their children were born, and what became of the Shakespeare family after the playwright's death…
He is one of the greatest writers of all time, and our longing to know as much as we can about him continues. We know that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to John and Mary Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and that he was their first child to survive past infancy. During the Elizabethan period, infant mortality was very high, and his parents had already lost two daughters before young William was born. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but his baptismal record survives, showing that Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare (William, son of John Shakespeare) was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church on 26 April 1564. His birthday is now celebrated on 23 April, since it was common for baptisms to be held three days after a birth. William Shakespeare's birth family: who were his parents? The story of Shakespeare’s family – one of upward social mobility – is reflected in their homes. Start in the small village of Wilmcote, three miles north of Stratford-upon-Avon, where the playwright’s mother, Mary Arden, grew up in a small farmhouse built around 1514 by her father, Robert. Mary was the youngest of eight daughters by his first wife; his second, Agnes Hill, brought with her two sons and two daughters. When Robert made his will in 1556, he named young Mary as one of his two executors and left her a substantial amount of land and money, which suggests that she was a woman of exceptional ability. Mary Arden married the up-and-coming glover (and later wool dealer and money-lender) John Shakespeare, probably in 1557. Before long they moved into his substantial double-house in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, now known as Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Mary had eight children, but only six survived infancy. John gave the town loyal service, rising through the ranks from the relatively humble role of ale-taster to become alderman and, in 1568, bailiff (or mayor.) His application for a coat of arms was unsuccessful in 1576, but he was granted one 20 years later, when he was said to be worth £500 – a sum not to be sneezed at. He died in 1601. In 1594 John’s eldest son, William, had become a shareholder in the troupe of players called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, based in London. Three years later William demonstrated his commitment to his home town of Stratford by buying New Place, the largest house in the borough. Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway In 1582, at the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway (also known as Agnes), who was already around three months pregnant with their daughter Susanna. The Hathaways – tenant farmers with 90 acres of land in the nearby village of Shottery – were acquaintances of the Shakespeares, and William may have met Anne while helping with the local harvest. To ensure the pregnancy didn’t cause a scandal, Shakespeare had to apply to the Bishop’s Court in Worcester for permission to hold a wedding at short notice. Between 1570 and 1630 the records show that only three men in Stratford-upon-Avon were married below the age of 20 (the average age to marry was 26). Shakespeare was the only one of those whose wife was already pregnant. William and Anne also had three children, an elder daughter, Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet. Shakespeare's family at New Place New Place in Stratford was demolished in the 18th century but archaeological excavations carried out under the auspices of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust have added to our knowledge about the size and layout of the property. It had five gables, a courtyard, three floors, and between 20 and 30 rooms – more than enough to accommodate the entire extended family, if necessary. Indeed, Thomas Greene, Town Clerk from 1603 to 1617 and a member of the Middle Temple, who described himself as William’s cousin – the word could be flexibly used – lodged there with his family. There would also have been ample space for William’s unmarried brothers, Richard, Gilbert and Edmund, of whom little is known. We do know that Edmund, 16 years younger than William, became an actor in London like his brother, had a bastard child, and died when he was only 27. He was buried in what is now Southwark Cathedral on the last day of 1607 to the sound of the ‘great bell’ – the tolling of which cost someone, probably William, £1. Gilbert, who witnessed the deed of purchase for New Place in William’s absence, worked at one time as a haberdasher in London. Of Richard we know only that he was baptised in Stratford on 11 March 1574 and buried there on 4 February 1613. William’s sister Joan, born in 1569, married a hatter, William Hart, some time before 1600. They had four children: William, Mary, Thomas and Michael. Joan’s husband died in 1616 only a week before his famous brother-in-law, who left Joan life tenancy of part of the Henley Street house, along with £20 and “all his wearing apparel”. She lived there until her death in 1646 when the house, along with the adjoining dwelling, passed to her son Thomas, and then to his son, another Thomas, by the will of Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Barnard. The property, identified as the Birthplace on the earliest surviving map of the town (dated 1759), remained in the family till 1806. The line continued; John Shakespeare Hart, a chair-maker, was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey in 1800 with a memorial that mistakenly described him as “the sixth descendant from the poet Shakespeare”. Subsequent family members emigrated to Australia. When Shakespeare died in 1616, the bulk of Shakespeare’s estate went to his daughter, Susanna, who, with her husband John Hall, moved into New Place while Anne was still there. Anne lived at New Place for another seven years until her death in 1623. What happened to William Shakespeare's children? Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet – the name a variant of Hamlet – died in 1596, aged only 11. Presumably, like his father, he had been a pupil at the free grammar school, though its records from this period don’t survive. Susanna, born six months after her parents married, seems to have been an accomplished woman with a mind of her own. She was reported to the Ecclesiastical Court for refusing to take communion at Easter 1606 when, in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the authorities were especially anxious to round up possible Roman Catholic sympathisers. The case was dismissed. The following year she married the strongly Protestant physician John Hall, and her father gave her the substantial gift of 107 acres of land in Old Stratford as a marriage settlement, while apparently retaining a life interest. In 1613 her marriage was afflicted by scandal when one John Lane claimed that Susanna had caught a sexually transmitted infection from a married hatter and haberdasher named Ralph Smith. She successfully sued Lane for defamation of character in Worcester Consistory Court. Lane, who did not turn up to defend himself, was excommunicated. These events are dramatised in Peter Whelan’s successful play The Herbal Bed (1996). The Halls are believed to have lived in the large and handsome house on the outskirts of the town now known as Hall’s Croft, which dates from 1613 and may have been built for them; when Shakespeare died in 1616 they moved into New Place. Shakespeare left most of his property to Susanna and appointed the Halls as his executors. Susanna lived until 1649. Her epitaph reads “Witty” – that is, intelligent – “beyond her sex, but that’s not all, / Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.” In this period, education for girls lagged far behind that for boys, but there were petty schools in the town where both boys and girls could learn to read, write and do their sums. Susanna’s signature survives in the records of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Shakespeare’s younger daughter, Judith, seems to have been a bit of a handful. At the age of 31, less than two months before her father died, she married Thomas Quiney, son of a prominent townsman, in Holy Trinity Church – but was excommunicated because they had not obtained the special licence required for marriage in Lent. There was reason to marry in a hurry: soon afterwards Quiney was accused of “incontinence” with Margaret Wheeler, who had been buried with their illegitimate child. He pleaded guilty. Shakespeare made changes to his will seemingly designed to protect Judith’s interests. She and Thomas went on to have three sons, all of whom died young; they called the eldest, born soon after his grandfather died, Shakespeare. Judith lived until 1662. Shakespeare’s last direct descendant was Elizabeth, born to Susanna and John Hall in 1608. He left her most of his silver plate (easily convertible into cash if she wished). She married Thomas Nash and they lived in New Place. After he died she married John Barnard, a prosperous widower with several children, in 1649. When her mother died soon afterwards the couple moved into New Place. A staunch Royalist, Barnard was made a baronet in 1661. Later they moved back into his ancestral home, Abington Manor in Northamptonshire, an even more splendid house than New Place, where Elizabeth died childless in 1670. So a family story that began in a modest farmhouse ended with Shakespeare’s granddaughter in a great manor house. What would Mary Arden have made of that? Does Shakespeare have any living descendants? Shakespeare has no direct living descendants, but there are still descendants of his sister Joan and her husband William Hart. His childhood home on Henley Street in Stratford remains in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Stanley Wells is a leading authority on Shakespeare. He is honorary president of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and professor emeritus at the University of Birmingham