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Is the Bayeux Tapestry in "mortal danger"? I think that's the wrong question to ask
Rather than focusing on the risk to the Bayeux Tapestry in its forthcoming loan to the British Museum, David Musgrove argues that we should be talking about how the massive media interest in the exhibition will surely be a huge reward for the venerable embroidery – and guarantee its long-term survival
It’s not often that a medieval embroidery gets broadcast across the huge electronic billboards at Piccadilly Circus. But that’s what happened on the morning of 26 February, as the British Museum made its first big splash to announce details of its forthcoming blockbuster Bayeux Tapestry exhibition (tickets go on sale 1 July). I was there to enjoy the experience, and it was a delight to see an artefact that I’ve spent a long time thinking about getting the full film-star treatment (I’m co-author of The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry). The exhibition is not without controversy. Questions have been raised by French campaigners and one celebrated English artist (David Hockney) on how fit the Bayeux Tapestry is to travel, and whether it’s right to subject this venerable artefact to the rigours of a trip from Normandy to London. These are reasonable concerns, but they miss the point. Yes, there is risk, but what about the reward? What does the Tapestry gain from being transported and displayed in such a high-profile way? I’d argue that, rather than putting the Tapestry at mortal danger of destruction, the loan guarantees its long-term survival and will be a boon for the tourist business in Bayeux to boot. What other medieval artwork or contemporary documentary source could hope to receive the wall-to-wall media exposure that the Tapestry is currently receiving? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/20260226090016-92f3207-rotated-e1772119755759.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A busy city street with pedestrians and vehicles passes beneath a large digital billboard mounted on the side of a modern building. The billboard displays an advertisement for the British Museum, featuring a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, with figures in period clothing and the words “REX,” “HAROLD,” and “The British Museum – From Egypt to…”. Surrounding buildings include shops with street‑level storefronts, and a white truck and van are visible in the foreground" title="The Bayeux Tapestry is broadcast across Piccadilly Circus, 26 February 2026. It has received the “full film-star treatment”, says David Musgrove (Image by David Musgrove)" /> When the exhibition opens in London in the autumn, there surely won’t be many people who haven’t heard of the Tapestry, the story it tells and the many mysteries it still contains. The queues will be round the block to see it. And when it returns to its newly revamped museum back in Bayeux in 2027, in time for the millennial commemorations of the birth of William the Conqueror, the press interest will be just as high: people will be keen to see how it will be displayed in its new permanent home. This is priceless PR, and it will keep a steady flood of visitors heading to Normandy for years to come, paying the museum entrance fee and spending their tourist money in the town and region. That is the long-term reward for the risk of the loan. Surviving against the odds The Bayeux Tapestry is likely around 950 years old (we don’t actually know when it was made, but most experts would agree that it was shortly after the event it depicts, the Norman Conquest of 1066). It was designed to be displayed, and probably to be moved around. Whether it was made for secular great halls or to be hung around the naves of churches, it was meant for show. The artefact offers a specific, partial and male-heavy telling of the Conquest story, positioning the Norman invasion as a straight clash between two worthy military men – England’s Harold and Normandy’s William – and excluding other important figures from the narrative (women generally, Norway’s Hardrada, Harold’s brother Tostig and Edgar Ætheling, the closest blood relative to the old king Edward the Confessor). I imagine that the designers would be delighted to see that, almost a thousand years on, the Tapestry is being displayed once more to such fanfare and is still able to get its message across. Read more | The strange story of the Nazi obsession with this legendary artefact still isn't over Given the Tapestry’s age, it’s not surprising that it’s a fragile artefact. It’s been through some tough times, having nearly been chopped up in the frenzied years of the French Revolution, wound and unwound for visitors on a rolling mechanism in the 19th century, soldered into a cylindrical zinc case during the Franco-Prussian War, and manhandled by the Nazis in the 1940s. These various depredations explain why it seems to be lacking its final panel, fraying into oblivion as the defeated Anglo-Saxon troops flee the field after William’s great victory at the battle of Hastings. It’s been patched up over the years, and wears some of this repair work pretty obviously. It’s fair to say that the 19th-century restoration it underwent wasn’t always particularly sensitively done. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/Coll.ections-Musee-Tapisserie-de-Bayeux-Fonds-documentaire-H.-Jeschke-Cliche-Rolf-Alber-FT-746.44-JESPHO09-a34a40a-e1772122650745.jpg" width="613" height="429" alt="A group of high‑ranking German military officers from the World War II era stand around a large table studying the Bayeux Tapestry. They wear dark uniforms with insignia and medals, and several lean in closely as if discussing strategy. The room is formal and dimly lit, with the tapestry dominating the centre of the scene." title="Coll.ections Musée Tapisserie de Bayeux - Fonds documentaire H. Jeschke -Cliché Rolf Alber - FT 746.44 JES_PHO09" /> So yes, the Tapestry demands careful attention and handling, and yes, we need to be mindful of potholes on the roads from Bayeux to Bloomsbury. But as Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, has pointed out, the business of moving priceless and fragile historical artefacts around the world is precisely what museums do on a regular basis. French and British experts are working together to ensure that the move and redisplay in London is carried out to the highest standards. Lessons from the Ladies of Leek To see what impact the loan exhibition will have, we need only look a little to the west of London and consider the story of its fabulous full-size 19th-century replica, housed today in Reading Museum. It was made by the Ladies of the Leek Embroidery Society 140 years ago, under the strenuous stewardship of Mrs Elizabeth Wardle. Almost immediately after they’d completed their work, Mrs Wardle and the stitching Ladies of Leek allowed their labour of love to go on tour, around the UK, and as far afield as Germany and the US. At a time when international travel was more challenging than today, the replica gave crowds on both sides of the Atlantic a first-hand view of this celebrated medieval artwork. Read more | Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry Five times in the 20th century, requests were made from the UK for a loan of the original Bayeux Tapestry: in 1931, 1953, 1966, 1972 and 1980. All these attempts to secure a loan came to nought. In 1953, staff at the V&A were so confident that the Tapestry was coming that they prepared an introductory guidebook, and, as I reported in a recent article for HistoryExtra, in 1980 officials even considered whether a trip to Bayeux by the Queen Mother might have helped seal a deal. In 1966, negotiations faltered because it wasn’t clear to the British delegates whether they should be talking to the French state or the municipality of Bayeux to make progress. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-2236196240-7778166-e1772120361828.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A person in a white protective suit and blue gloves adjusts a large historic tapestry that hangs from a metal rail system in a controlled conservation workspace. The tapestry shows intricate woven patterns and text, and the individual is carefully supporting its surface with both hands, highlighting the delicate, detailed work of preserving cultural artefacts" title="A worker prepares the Bayeux Tapestry for transfer to the British Museum, September 2025. There were five attempts at securing a loan of this kind in the 20th century, all of which failed (Image by Getty Images)" /> In that year, the 900th anniversary of the battle of Hastings, though the original did not cross the Channel, the Reading replica sated the interest in Britain for a Bayeux Tapestry tour. It was sent on an extensive exhibition circuit around the UK from 1965 to 1967. From Aberdeen to Bournemouth, via Gateshead, Anglesey, Doncaster, Hereford and many other stops between, the replica was on show to anyone who wanted to have a look at this recreation of the medieval marvel. It was this sort of exposure that helped to cement the Tapestry’s place in our national consciousness as the archetypal artwork of the Middle Ages. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry: a political football for 900 years From Tutmania to Tapmania If the Reading replica’s extensive touring schedule through the 19th and 20th centuries has helped to drive awareness of the Bayeux Tapestry, that is nothing to what the loan of the original 11th-century embroidery will do when it comes to London this year. Interest will be stratospheric. As Helena Dollimore, MP for Hastings and Rye, noted in a parliamentary debate on the Tapestry on 25 February, “The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum will be the exhibition of a generation”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/K08G5Y-3103f6b-e1772120781998.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A section of the Bayeux Tapestry showing mounted soldiers in chainmail riding horses and holding spears, arranged in a dynamic battle scene. Decorative animals and motifs run along the top and bottom borders, and a line of Latin text appears above the riders." title="A section of Reading Museum’s replica Bayeux Tapestry. This facsimile toured the UK after requests for the original to be loaned were rejected (Image by Alamy)" /> She’s right, based on the recent polling carried out on behalf of the British Museum that says that 71 per cent of parents want their child to learn more about the story of the Tapestry whilst it is in the UK. Those children will, in time, want to share the memory of this experience with their offspring, and so the Tapestry will indeed get a generational boost from this. According to the British Museum’s chair of trustees, George Osborne, 7.5 million visitors are expected to flock to see the Tapestry. This loan will do for early medieval history what the mighty Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum in 1972 did for Egyptology. Tutmania blossomed then, and Tapmania will bloom among us this year. The ongoing visitor flow to Bayeux will mean that it will be amply financially supported for decades to come. That’s the reward to balance the risk, and that’s why the forthcoming loan to the British Museum is something we should celebrate and be immensely excited about.
The real women behind Europe's greatest legends
Janina Ramirez considers the lives of some of history's most celebrated women to unfurl the legends that have shaped nations
National icons aren’t born – they’re engineered. But how were historical figures such as Joan of Arc and Isabella of Castile transformed into political symbols, their real lives lost beneath centuries of myth-making? In this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Janina Ramirez tells Danny Bird about some of the women – from Byzantine empresses to religious fanatics and revolutionary martyrs – that have been elevated to such pedestals, and how these legends are created, re-created and repurposed for nationalist mythologies.
Magna Carta: why didn't King John keep his word?
Nicholas Vincent explores the chaos, negotiations, and broken promises that followed King John’s sealing of Magna Carta
As King John was poised to press his seal into the wax of a document whose impact would reverberate for centuries, did he understand the ramifications it would have? And what were the chances he would keep his word? In this penultimate episode of HistoryExtra's Sunday Series on Magna Carta, Emily Briffett and historian Nicholas Vincent follow the tumultuous events of the years immediately after 1215, from war to negotiation. If you’re curious to learn more about Magna Carta and the world in which it originated, Emily Briffett has put together some essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archive to help deepen your understanding. Go beyond the podcast.
Nicholas Vincent strips away the mythology to uncover the political reality behind Magna Carta and medieval life in the early 13th century
Magna Carta may be associated today with power, liberty and freedom – but those weren’t quite the concerns back in 1215. So what did the barons really demand of King John? And what can this document tell us about the lives of people in medieval England? In this second episode of HistoryExtra's Sunday Series on Magna Carta, Emily Briffett and historian Nicholas Vincent delve into the archive to uncover the real charter – and reveal why it’s not quite the liberty manifesto of legend. If you’re curious to learn more about Magna Carta and the world in which it originated, Emily Briffett has put together some essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archive to help deepen your understanding. Go beyond the podcast.
The overlooked history of Muslims in Europe
Tharik Hussain speaks to Danny Bird about the long but often overlooked and distorted history of Muslims in Europe – and the enduring resistance to its reappraisal
Danny Bird: You open your book by recounting a chance visit to an old mosque in Cyprus. What was so significant about that moment? Tharik Hussain: Nothing changed for me on the day itself, because I knew very little about Islam’s history in Europe at that time. On a long, cheap layover in Larnaca – a place I’d never heard of – I was simply looking for a way to pass the time with a toddler in tow. I’d found a brief reference to a nearby mosque, and decided to visit. At the time (2003), I was preparing to make hijrah – to leave Britain, because I felt that I no longer belonged. My education had led me to believe that there was no meaningful Muslim history in Europe. So when we arrived at this neglected Ottoman-era mosque at the Hala Sultan Tekke, I had no framework for understanding it. The elderly guide didn’t speak English, and neither of us knew what we were looking at. What unsettled me was a tomb inside the mosque, which clashed with the theological outlook my wife and I held at the time. We left, dismissing the place, though the guide handed us a small booklet as we went. Two years later, while working as an English language teacher in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I rediscovered the booklet. To my shock, it claimed that the tomb belonged to a relative of the Prophet Muhammad – his maternal aunt, Umm Harâm. That completely overturned my belief that Europe had no real Islamic history, let alone connections reaching back to the Prophet’s own family. When did Islam first come to Europe? If we look at the very beginnings of Muslim presence in Europe, it’s striking how quickly it arrived. Within 20 years of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in AD 632, Muslims were present in places such as Cyprus and, later, Sicily, establishing themselves far more quickly than Christian or Jewish communities had done in the continent. Some of these early arrivals, including members of the Prophet’s family, were then buried in Europe, their tombs becoming sites of ziyara (pilgrimage), holding great spiritual significance. Medieval sources document these tombs as being attached to a mosque, and highly revered. That period also marked the creation of the first Muslim navy. Initially, ambitions to launch a maritime expedition to Cyprus were met with caution, because Muslims had previously conquered only overland territories. After persistence and strategic negotiation, the naval expedition was allowed. Umm Harâm accompanied her husband on that mission, and she died during the campaign. This acquisition of Cyprus and establishment of a naval presence were pivotal, securing Muslim control of the eastern Mediterranean and enabling subsequent campaigns across Greek islands, Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain. Far from being minor raids, these early campaigns were foundational to the long-lasting Muslim presence in Europe. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/CR65R8webready-ae14d6f-e1770821971435.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An 18th-century painting showing a bearded man in red and gold robes sitting atop a white horse. Under the horse are several men being trampled. The background shows a blue and white sky" title="An 18th-century painting of Saint James ‘the Moor-slayer’ turning the tide in the legendary battle of Clavijo – a myth created centuries after the supposed clash (Image by Alamy)" /> Why do you think that the history of Islam’s presence in Europe has for so long been hidden or even denied? There are several factors, as I suggest throughout the book. Put simply, in the long contest between Christendom and Islam in Europe, Muslim powers – the Umayyads in Iberia, later dynasties in the south and, latterly, the Ottomans – eventually ‘lost’. As the aphorism goes, winners write history. From the crusades onwards, anti-Muslim narratives grew in tandem with a developing exclusionary ‘European’ identity in Christendom. In the regions I discuss, these later fed into the Spanish Reconquista story and anti-Ottoman rhetoric to develop what I call an anti-Muslim DNA that runs through western European identity. National legends such as Santiago Matamoros [‘Saint James the Moor-slayer’, patron saint of Spain] or the ‘tribute of 100 virgins’ myth [the false narrative that the Christian kingdom of Asturias had to pay such a tribute annually to the Muslim emirate of Córdoba] helped cement these attitudes, as did countless local stories in areas that once had Muslim communities. This isn’t always the result of deliberate design – it’s a common human pattern – but the effect is undeniable. I also refer to the erasure and neglect of Islamic heritage – sometimes through omission from history books, sometimes through archaeological indifference, and at other times through misrepresentation. In places such as the Alhambra in Spain, later European romanticism or orientalist projections have distorted how that history is presented. Even today, popular historians often reinforce these old tropes. Read more | Step onto the medieval Silk Road and you'll witness its intense wonders – and its hidden horror That’s why, after I first visited Larnaca, I was shocked to realise how much had been excluded from the history I’d grown up with. Even academic works often reflected a strongly Eurocentric perspective. To counter this, I draw heavily on Muslim sources, and occasionally Jewish ones, which offer a very different picture: richer, more nuanced and far more appreciative of these moments in European history. Ultimately, whether we are comfortable admitting it or not – and I include myself as someone educated within this system – an anti-Muslim thread shapes our sense of European identity. Take the Balkans: this region is full of indigenous European Muslims, full of Islamic heritage, yet we instinctively place it outside ‘real’ Europe and label it ‘eastern’. People often blame the Iron Curtain, but the region was being othered long before communism, largely because it was the heart of Ottoman – and, therefore, Muslim – Europe until quite recently. All of this is part of the same 1,400-year story. In telling it, I use the Islamic calendar intentionally, beginning with the first Muslim presence within Europe around AD 647. How does the historical record debunk the notion that Islam, rather than being ‘foreign’, has in fact been an integral part of European history? What’s striking is that, regardless of the period, long Muslim presences in Europe – 800 years in Spain, 500 in Portugal, more than 200 in Sicily – are still described as ‘invasions’. It’s an odd way to characterise communities who, over centuries, became as Spanish or Portuguese as anyone else. We would never describe the European presence in modern America as an ongoing ‘invasion’, yet traditional historians have spoken this way about Muslims in Iberia and, later, the Balkans. Whether the initial arrival of Muslim armies is seen as invasive or not, the people who lived there afterwards, and whose descendants still live there, were not invaders. When I began examining these histories from alternative perspectives, especially Muslim and Jewish sources, a more complex picture emerged. Take the Muslim arrival in Iberia. When Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed into the Visigothic territories from north Africa in 711, one neglected factor is the role of the local Jewish population [in Iberia], who were enduring severe persecution. Some Jewish historians suggest that those people actively sought Muslim support. There is certainly evidence that Muslims and Jews cooperated: the 17th-century scholar Ahmad al-Maqqari records that, when Muslim forces captured major cities such as Córdoba, Granada and Toledo, they often left the local Jewish community in charge – a sign of both trust and local collaboration. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/P9GMRXwebready-c14b821-e1770821776100.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Medieval-style illustration showing two seated figures beneath stone arches. On the left, a bearded figure in purple and red robes sits on a throne with a small dove near his shoulder; on the right, another bearded figure in tan clothing sits holding a sheathed sword across his lap, both facing slightly toward each other against a pale parchment background." title="A 14th-century miniature depicts Roderic, the usurper Visigothic king of Spain, and Tariq ibn Ziyad, who led the Muslim forces against him in 711 (Image by Alamy)" /> From Jewish and Muslim perspectives, the arrival of Muslim rule could legitimately be seen as a liberation, given the conditions the Jewish communities had endured under Christian Visigothic rule. What followed was a celebrated period of coexistence – even a Jewish ‘Golden Age’ – in what became known as al-Andalus. Yet conventional European history insists on framing this as a conquest, which later justified the narrative of the Reconquista created by northern Iberian Christian realms – a narrative made even more curious by the fact that many leading figures of the so-called reconquest were descended from people who came from outside Iberia altogether. One of the most evocative parts of your book deals with what you term the ‘Córdoban Caliphate Culture’ – a world of poetry, architecture and science. What was this civilisation really like? It’s hard to summarise briefly, but this was a period of extraordinary scientific, philosophical and cultural achievement unlike anything Europe had seen. Lost Hellenic works returned to Europe through Muslim scholars who flourished in centres such as Córdoba, Palermo, Kairouan [in what’s now Tunisia] and, later, Cairo. Córdoba, in particular, became the intellectual heart of this vast cultural sphere. What’s remarkable is how widely these advances spread. They shaped not only Muslim societies but also Europe long after the caliphate fragmented. Yet this influence is still rarely acknowledged. Figures such as Ibn Sina [known in the west as Avicenna], al-Razi and al-Zahrawi were central to this transformation. Al-Zahrawi’s Kitab al-Tasrif (The Method of Medicine), published around the year 1000, described sophisticated surgical procedures, including draining fluid from an infant’s brain and treating migraines, at a time when England was still relying on remedies from ‘leechbooks’ and folk cures. His work covered surgery, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, dentistry, pathology and childbirth, and remained authoritative for centuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL3085389webready-fe4d4ea-e1770822370370.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An 18th-century miniature depicting three men wearing white and red turbans sitting together. On the left is a man with a long beard wearing a green robe, sitting crossed legged on a wooden bench. Behind him, another man wearing a blue robe stands, looking over the scene. To the right, another man dressed in red robe holding a horizontal stick with a basket on each end" title="An 18th-century miniature from what’s now Turkey shows treatment for smallpox based on Ibn Sina’s earlier writing (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Equally influential was Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine, which synthesised Greek knowledge with Arabic scholarship and became a foundation of European medical education. In philosophy, Ibn Rushd [Averroes] made Aristotle accessible, earning the byname ‘the Commentator’. Muslim scholars didn’t simply preserve knowledge – they expanded it and pushed it forward. Read more | Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think The cultural impact was just as striking. Ziryab (Abu al-Hasan ’Ali ibn Nafi), arriving in Córdoba from Baghdad like a rock star in 822, revolutionised etiquette, cuisine and music. Under his influence, Europeans adopted table coverings, cutlery, crystal glassware, three-course meals and refined dining customs. These innovations spread across the continent. All of this helped sow the seeds of the Renaissance, from which the Enlightenment eventually emerged. When you trace the intellectual lineage backwards, you find it leads directly to this era. Comparing medieval Córdoba to the cities of northern Europe, the 20th-century author Victor Robinson captured the contrast perfectly: “Europe was darkened at sunset, Cordova [sic] shone with public lamps; Europe was dirty, Cordova built a thousand baths; Europe was covered with vermin, Cordova changed its undergarments daily; Europe lay in mud, Cordova’s streets were paved; Europe’s palaces had smoke-holes in the ceiling, Cordova’s arabesques were exquisite; Europe’s nobility could not sign its name, Cordova’s children went to school; Europe’s monks could not read the baptismal service, Cordova’s teachers created a library of Alexandrian dimensions.” It’s a vivid reminder of just how brilliant this period truly was. When did Europe’s erasure of its Islamic past begin – and what drove it? The construction of an anti-Muslim identity in Europe began with the crusades, when papal calls urged Christians to unite against what was depicted as an infidel presence. In Spain, this sentiment gained momentum with narratives such as that of Santiago Matamoros, who was said to have miraculously appeared on a white horse to help Christians defeat Muslims at the mythical ninth-century battle of Clavijo. This legend emerged only in the late 12th century – long after the supposed battle. Another powerful myth was the aforementioned ‘tribute of 100 virgins’, in which the king of Asturias allegedly sent 50 noble and 50 common virgin girls to Umayyad rulers each year. Both narratives became central to emerging Spanish cultural identity, appearing in festivals and plays. To this day, many Spanish churches have statues depicting Saint James slaying Muslims. Through such myths, imagery and ritual, these narratives reinforced anti-Muslim sentiment and helped shape what became a modern Spanish identity. If you could sneak a few more pages into every European history textbook, which stories or people would you add first, and why? One of the most fascinating figures is Abd al-Rahman III, the first Umayyad ruler in Iberia to declare himself caliph. His story begins with the massacre of the Umayyads by the Abbasids in the Middle East in 750, in which his great ancestor Abd al-Rahman I was the sole heir to survive. Abd al-Rahman I fled first to north Africa, where he gathered support, crossing into southern Iberia a few years later. Drawing on the legacy of his family, in 755 he defeated the governor of al-Andalus and then established himself as emir Abd al-Rahman I, with Córdoba as his capital. Over subsequent generations, his descendants gradually extended Umayyad control over most of the Iberian peninsula. By 929, his great-great-great-great-grandson Abd al-Rahman III felt powerful enough to declare himself caliph – a bold move in a period when the Abbasids in Baghdad and the Shia Fatimids in Tunisia also claimed that title. He built the magnificent city-palace of Madinat al-Zahra – sometimes called the ‘Versailles of Muslim Spain’ – as a statement of his caliphate. He was of European descent, with white skin, blue eyes and reddish-blonde hair – so much so that he reportedly dyed it black to appear more ‘Arab’. His personality and appearance add another layer to his intriguing character. Read more | Divided they fell: how war, revolution and sectarianism led to the end of the Ottoman empire Are you optimistic that both Muslim and non-Muslim readers in Europe can embrace this shared heritage together and foster a fuller understanding of its past? I’m tentatively hopeful because more people today are willing to revisit accepted historical narratives. The challenge is undoing 1,400 years of anti-Muslim European storytelling and recognising the Muslim contribution to European culture often mislabelled as ‘Judaeo-Christian’. That term itself is misleading, given the repeated persecution of Jewish communities by historical European Christians while many found safety in parts of Muslim Europe. Acknowledging these shared histories could slowly shift perceptions, but it will take immense effort, courage and time. Many are uncomfortable with the idea that Europe is as Muslim as it is Christian or Jewish, reflecting the deep-rooted othering of Islam in European identity. Historians who challenge widely held narratives, such as David Olusoga or Sathnam Sanghera, often face significant hostility. Speaking openly about these histories requires resilience because it challenges beliefs central to people’s sense of identity. It’s urgent, though, because leaving Muslim contributions out of mainstream European history has allowed Islamophobic sentiment to flourish, giving contemporary far-right rhetoric room to portray Islam and Muslims as a ‘foreign’, invasive presence rather than a long-standing part of European culture – a myth repeated even in recent public demonstrations. Tharik Hussain is an author, historian and travel writer. His latest book is Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History (Viking, 2025) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Nicholas Vincent describes how the chaos of King John’s reign drove England toward rebellion – and the fateful confrontation that gave birth to Magna Carta
In the early 13th century, England was a kingdom under pressure, as the challenges posed by King John’s reign had left the realm restless. By 1215, tensions had reached boiling point. What began as isolated grumblings among nobles soon evolved into an organised challenge to royal authority – all building up to a showdown at Runnymede in 1215. In this first episode of HistoryExtra's Sunday Series on Magna Carta, Emily Briffett is joined by Nicholas Vincent to explore how John's disastrous reign set the stage for the charter. Want to learn more about Magna Carta and the world in which it originated? Emily Briffett has put together some essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archive to help deepen your understanding. Go beyond the podcast.
Want to dig into the drama behind Magna Carta? HistoryExtra’s Emily Briffett gathers together a shelf of essential reads to explore the crisis of King John’s reign, what was really hammered out at Runnymede in 1215, and why this medieval peace treaty grew into one of the most influential documents in the history of rights and government – and much more...
The sealing of Magna Carta at Runneymede in 1215 stands as one of the most iconic political showdowns in English history; a high-stakes confrontation between an untrustworthy monarch and a coalition of restless, rebellious barons that forced the Crown, however briefly and imperfectly, to acknowledge some limits on royal power. In a new four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, available weekly from Sunday 8 February 2026, I spoke to Professor Nicholas Vincent to bring this tense moment in 1215 into sharp focus, exploring the grievances, brinkmanship and fragile compromises behind a document that was less a birth certificate of liberty and more a peace treaty hammered out under pressure. Below I have selected some essential further reading, watching and listening from the HistoryExtra archive designed to broaden your understanding of the political crisis, the world in which it originated as well as the long afterlife of Magna Carta. Whether you want to unpack the hidden history in the clauses, trace how and why the charter almost immediately collapsed into civil war, or follow its transformation (rightly or wrongly) into a global symbol of rights and the rule of law, these articles, podcasts and videos will guide you further into one of medieval England’s most consequential dramas.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is much more historically accurate than you think – here's why
Dr Hugh Doherty worked as the historical consultant on HBO’s new Game of Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Speaking to HistoryExtra, he sets out how the series got closer to reality than many historical dramas
Some works of fiction feel startlingly close to reality. Perhaps surprisingly, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – HBO’s latest Game of Thrones spin-off series – might be one such example. “I was astonished. I had never seen anything like it,” says Dr Hugh Doherty, the show’s historical consultant, in an interview with HistoryExtra. Doherty is a medievalist and lecturer in medieval history at the University of East Anglia. He has worked as a historical consultant on – among other projects – Netflix’s robust historical drama The King, a loose adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henriad starring Timothée Chalamet as Hal (seen more recently in Marty Supreme). Based on author George RR Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the adventures of the titular knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his strange squire, Egg. Unlike Thrones and its other spin-off, House of the Dragon, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms largely eschews its fantasy trappings to instead zero in on the trials of a lowly, aspiring knight wandering the fictional land of Westeros in search of prestige. It’s a less ‘epic’ story in its scope and scale – without a dragon or White Walker to be seen. It focusses on a smaller stage, rooted in hard landscapes and their even harder inhabitants. However, much like its progenitor series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is defiantly enmeshed in medieval history. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series took significant inspiration from the late medieval Wars of the Roses of the 15th century, a series of real conflicts saw England ripped apart by the distended ambitions of dynasties that grappled for the crown. The real history that inspired A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Being a prequel to Game of Thrones, it makes sense that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms draws from slightly earlier inspirations. That’s where Doherty came in. He was tasked with ensuring that the series’ depiction of the daily cut-and-thrust of chivalric knighthood, and making sure that the “gripping, compelling nature of 14th-century tournaments” retained some basis in reality. “What period was George RR Martin thinking of here? He’s thinking the 1360s, 1370s. And I thought: wonderful. That is the apogee of the tournament in the late Middle Ages,” says Doherty. In other words: the series had the perfect canvas to explore knighthood at its peak. But while it’s flashy tournaments that take much of the centre stage in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Doherty wanted to ensure that the on-screen knights who perform at them also felt real. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-142085899-1-cab8f00-e1770053806838.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 14th-century detail from the Entrée d’Espagne manuscript shows a lone knight setting out on his journey, capturing the moment when an individual warrior left the safety of court or camp to seek glory on the battlefield or in distant lands." title="The departure of lone knight" /> What medieval knighthood was really like “Knights like Ser Duncan the Tall were much more common than we tend to think.” Knighthood in the later Middle Ages was an active profession rather than a static title. A knight needed equipment, horses, servants, and money – all of which required steady income and the right connections. He needed patrons to recommend him, and opportunities to prove that he was worth keeping. Tournaments were one way to demonstrate that worth. They were arenas of reputation and networking where knights could demonstrate their skill before powerful patrons, win money, and secure connections that might lead to their employment. But they weren’t the most important way for a knight to show his worth. The real engine of advancement was war. Prolonged conflicts including the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War created constant demand for experienced military men, and gave ambitious knights a chance to distinguish themselves in real campaigns. That’s why “figures like Henry V want good soldiers first and foremost,” Doherty explains. Read more | Who were the Knights of the Round Table? “Tournaments are important, but the emphasis here must be on the business of warfare. And not just soldiering, but organising money and logistics. That’s what makes or breaks men.” So, successful knights were often effective administrators as much as fierce fighters. They had to raise men, secure supplies, manage pay, and keep companies together under extreme stress. Kings and princes might have valued knights who could joust well, but they almost certainly valued well-organised competence, and battlefield nous, much more. That presents something of a paradox, says Doherty. “At one level, this society is so hierarchical and aristocratic. But it also values and rewards military talent, courage, and ambition. The Middle Ages was a very complex world.” This tension between inherited status and earned reputation was central to medieval knighthood. This was a society that celebrated lineage, but still made room for men who could prove their capability. One of the sources Doherty used to underline this culture was The Life of the Black Prince by Chandos Herald, a medieval poetic biographical chronicle composed c1385. The chronicle celebrated the life and military career of Edward of Woodstock, the English heir to the throne, also known as the Black Prince. Read more | 7 medieval kings of England you should know about Herald’s work is “very detailed, and evokes knightly culture so powerfully,” says Doherty. “It is so moving. You get a sense of a brotherhood. It’s this celebration of martial values; of derring-do and courage. And the Black Prince’s household was staffed with men who had risen through the ranks. They were achieving huge amounts of success and enrichment through the application of warfare.” Nevertheless, tournaments still remained a vivid and important part of this social landscape. What were medieval tournaments really like? Much of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is centred around a great tournament – and the accompanying feasts, side-performances, and merriment – as Dunk heads to the tournament at the fictional Ashford Meadow in the hope of making a name for himself. Tournaments were part of what sustained and maintained knightly culture. But they’re often misrepresented. “Tournaments were not gladiatorial combat. There’s a tournament in the very first episode of House of the Dragon, and it’s too violent,” Doherty says. “This was an incredibly violent world. Violence is always just under the surface. That’s true not just of the later Middle Ages; it’s true of antiquity, the early Middle Ages, and the early modern period. Violence can break out at any moment. “But the violence of the tournament was different. It was contained, most of the time. In fact, tournaments shunned violence. Violent death, murder, and mutilation do happen, of course – but they’re rare.” These were spaces where rivalries could be decided without the threat of death. It was a form of catharsis, where knights could display their skills without intending to kill one another. And, in some cases, they even coexisted with active diplomacy, as was the case with the tournament at Saint-Inglevert in France in 1390. Read more | Was Agincourt medieval England's finest hour? “This was one of the great tournaments of the late 14th century, drawing knights from across Europe,” says Doherty. “It took place at the very same moment when teams of negotiators from the courts of Charles VI of France and Richard II of England were negotiating a peace [during a stage of the conflict known as the Hundred Years’ War] just up the road. They were tourneying during the day, and then politicking at night.” This duality of ritualised violence by day, and political negotiation by night, evokes the reality of knighthood. Knights were professional soldiers and masters of the arts of war. And, when the time came, they were also performers of spectacle for cheering crowds. For Doherty, this is the authentic historical reality that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms taps into without having to pull from ‘real’ history. A wandering, working knight was a familiar figure of the later Middle Ages: a man in search of reputation, and all of its bountiful rewards. “This is what they’ve done brilliantly,” he says. “They’ve recreated that world; they’ve given it a texture that is absorbing, compelling, and believable. And it makes it so much more enjoyable than many very broad medieval films.” A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is streaming now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week.
How England’s first king used an unexpected weapon to defeat the Vikings
When England’s first true king confronted Viking power in the north, one of his most effective weapons became his manipulation of loyalty
By the early 10th century, the concept of a unified England was still an unfinished project. Despite Alfred the Great’s victories against the Vikings – and the consolidating achievements of his children Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd – the power of the Norse raiders hadn’t simply disappeared. The Vikings had adapted to this new political landscape and embedded themselves within it, remaining the greatest threat to any ruler hoping to govern a unified English kingdom. Æthelstan was forced to grip this problem when he became king of the Anglo-Saxons in AD 924. As Professor David Woodman explains, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, it wasn’t until AD 927 that he was able to make moves against the Vikings that proved decisive, using an unexpected weapon to his advantage. England before Æthelstan The huge Viking invasions of the late ninth century had left much of eastern and northern England under Norse control. Later writers would call this region the Danelaw, but at the time it was simply a patchwork of settlements, armies and allegiances tied into a wider Viking world across the sea. Æthelstan’s grandfather, Alfred the Great, had stopped the Vikings from conquering the Anglo-Saxons completely. But he wasn’t able to restore the land to how it had been before the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in AD 865. Instead, in the decades that followed, Anglo-Saxon rulers learned to exist uneasily alongside Viking power, albeit with frequent bouts of violence and through tribute. Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd expanded English control, but by the time of Æthelstan’s reign, Anglo-Saxon authority still depended on vigilance against the Vikings. When he took the throne, his lands were surrounded by rivals: Norse settlers in the north, the kings of the Scots, and a constellation of Welsh rulers to the west. Any one of them might ally with future Viking attackers if the balance of advantage shifted, and no place demonstrated that danger more clearly than York. How Æthelstan responded to Viking pressure For decades, Scandinavian rulers had controlled York while forging alliances with neighbouring Anglo-Saxon and Scottish kings. That is why events moved so quickly when the Viking ruler of York, Sihtric died in AD 927. “Æthelstan marches quickly north and takes over in York,” says Woodman. “Contemporary narrative accounts don’t give much detail about how he did that, but we have detail from William of Malmesbury, who’s writing in the 12th century. “He talks about the fact that Æthelstan had to raze the Viking fortress at York to the ground. He had to burn it in order to take control there.” York had been the political and symbolic heart of Scandinavian power in Britain, linked into networks that stretched west toward the Irish Sea and east toward the wider Viking world. Seizing it bolstered Æthelstan’s position. But it also created new risks. Once York was taken, the question was no longer whether Æthelstan ruled a united England. For all intents and purposes, he did. But would his neighbours accept this new reality? “Quickly afterwards, he moves on to Eamont Bridge,” says Woodman. “And we have this remarkable occasion on which Æthelstan receives the submission of various kings.” The meeting at Eamont Bridge At Eamont Bridge, in what is now Cumbria, in the north west of England, Æthelstan summoned rulers who, until recently, had been his potential enemies. “King Constantine of the Scots, two Welsh kings, and the king of Strathclyde and Cumbria submit to Æthelstan at Eamont Bridge,” Woodman explains. “And they all seem to recognise his authority at this juncture. “Eamont Bridge is a really interesting place for Æthelstan to have selected,” he adds. “It’s at the very limits of his territory, so he’s right at the boundary of his extended kingdom at this moment.” There were also practical advantages to his choice of location. “Logistically speaking, it’s very interesting, in the sense that we have Roman roads converging in the area, from Scotland, Wales and York.” It was undoubtedly an easy place – relatively – for these disparate kings to converge. But it held another allure: it was a place of ancient monuments. “There’s a Roman fort there, there’s Mayburgh henge and there’s King Arthur’s Round Table henge,” says Woodfood. “There’s a sort of landscape of authority, a landscape of kingly power here that Æthelstan is using and harnessing to his own benefit.” ‘Devil money’ and the fear of Viking alliances The agreements made there were recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and one phrase in particular stands out to Woodman. “It says that they all agreed with Æthelstan that they would stop idolatry,” says Woodman. “The Old English word used is diobolgeldæ, which is a compound made up of ‘devil’ and ‘money’. It literally means ‘devil money’.” That phrase points to how Viking power was conceptualised in Æthelstan’s England. Paganism, violence and silver were closely linked in Anglo-Saxon thinking. Viking leaders were known for using silver acquired through raiding, tribute and trade, to secure loyalty and bind together shifting coalitions of allies. The Vikings | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Join Professor Ryan Lavelle for our four-week course on the Viking period, covering everything from trading and raiding, to daily life. Explore the course now From an English Christian perspective, this made Viking wealth deeply suspect. Silver used to purchase military support or political allegiance was portrayed as morally corrupting: wealth tainted by paganism and bloodshed, deployed to undermine Christian kingship from within. By weaponising these payments and describing them as ‘devil money’, Æthelstan and his supporters were attempting to delegitimise a key Viking strategy and cut off its effectiveness. “It raises an interesting possibility that, actually, part of the agreement at Eamont Bridge was that none of these kings would side with the Vikings against Æthelstan, who were thought of as a kind of plague sent by the devil,” says Woodman. Why AD 927 mattered For Æthelstan, taking York had created new opportunities and new risks. If his various regional rivals accepted Viking money and support, his newly expanded kingdom could be destabilised in an instant. “And I think that would have been a big fear of his,” Woodman concludes. But instead, by forcing neighbouring kings to renounce those connections, Æthelstan was isolating Viking power not only militarily, but diplomatically and economically, while strengthening his own hand. From AD 927 onwards, Æthelstan would transform from a powerful ruler into a recognised overlord of England. In the years ahead, Viking coalitions would still rise against him – not least in the decisive battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, where they were roundly defeated. But they would do so without the same web of British allies. Æthelstan had successfully turned one of the Vikings’ most potent weapons – silver – against them, transforming it into ‘devil money’ that no Christian ruler could accept. David Woodman was speaking to Dr David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Medieval vampire slayers: why did our ancestors dig up and dismember the dead?
At the turn of the 12th century, two men from a Staffordshire village died suddenly. A few days after they were solemnly laid to rest, they were spotted walking around the village, with their coffins on their backs. John Blair investigates the medieval terror of the living dead
In the last decades of the 12th century, the townsfolk of Annan in the Scottish borders were terrified by a sinister nocturnal revenant that stalked the dark byways. “Each night his corpse, driven by Satan, left his grave and wandered through the streets” accompanied by howling dogs and spreading sickness and death, according to the contemporary chronicler William of Newburgh. Desperate to put an end to the unholy scourge, two brothers whose father had been carried off by the plague opened the grave and “exposed the corpse, which was distended to a huge corpulence, with a swollen, livid face. It was observed that the shroud, which had been wound around it, was completely shredded up. Too angry to be frightened, the young men struck a blow at the lifeless corpse, whereupon such a flow of blood gushed out that they understood it to be a sucker of many people’s blood. Dragging it out of the town, they quickly built a pyre.” Recalling the accepted wisdom that such a being would burn only after they’d cut out its heart, the brothers took their shovels and hacked out the organ – after which the cadaver was immolated. The curse was finally over. Walking corpses To modern ears, this story stretches credulity far beyond breaking point. Not so to William of Newburgh: he recorded another three such tales, and hinted at many more. There are “numerous modern cases and abundant reports”, he wrote, but “it would be just too laborious and burdensome to write down all episodes of this kind that I have heard to have happened in our own times”. Yet though walking corpses were boringly commonplace in the 1190s, they had almost vanished from the English scene only a few decades later. Apparently they retreated northwards, leaving only occasional traces south of the border with Scotland. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/W45702webready-05b1689-e1769699879666.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration shows two people standing over a cut up body, with the person on the left handing the decapitated head of the body to the person on the right" title="A corpse is dismembered in a medieval illustration. During the Middle Ages, mutilation was inflicted on cadavers believed to be restless (Image by Alamy)" /> This spotlight on high medieval Britain illustrates a basic fact about ‘vampire’ beliefs in many periods and places across the globe: they tend to come and go. Though some societies retained low-level fears about dangerous corpses over many centuries, there have also been many short, sharp episodes of corpse-killing that reached an intensity justifying the label ‘epidemic’. Some are described in medieval texts such as William of Newburgh’s, covering a period from about 1050 to 1200. Others leave no written evidence, and must be inferred from distinctive patterns of mutilation found in excavated burials: corpses turned upside-down, hearts pierced or removed, limbs broken or bound, heads removed, craniums and jaws separated. Read more | Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires Why do communities suddenly erupt into frenzies of corpse-killing? Fundamentally, the act reflects fear of social disruption, fear of political or religious change, or fear of disease. In fact, it can be defined as a form of persecution mania – that tragic, paranoid reaction that makes people turn against minority groups in their midst. But there is a crucial difference: unlike witches or heretics, corpses cannot suffer because they are dead already. Killing the dead is better than killing the living. Archaeological evidence from late Roman and early Anglo-Saxon England suggests several persuasive cases of posthumously ‘killed’ corpses. There are too few of them to suggest clear patterns – until we reach a group of distinctive female burials in Yorkshire and County Durham from c550–80 AD. These women were buried face-down – often accompanied by charms and other ritual items – in strange, contorted attitudes, often with one leg or arm raised so that it almost touched the surface of the grave. It looks as though these were traditional healers or ‘wise women’ – powerful in life and potentially troublesome after death, so measures to restrain them were necessary. In that society, as in many others, the dangerous dead were mainly female. Unholy nuns From around 650, that perception carried over to the new world of royal nunneries that dominated early Christian England. Traditionally powerful women could reinvent themselves as holy nuns and abbesses, exercising something like their erstwhile supernatural powers within the new belief system. One narrative from Wimborne nunnery in the 720s hints at corpse fears. It recounts the story of a sadistic prioress who died unreconciled with the young nuns whom she had tormented. They gleefully danced on her grave – but then, to the abbess’s horror, the grave-earth sunk, a phenomenon explained in later eastern European folklore as a sign that the corpse has climbed out. In England around 650–700, a series of non-monastic burials – almost entirely of young women – were mutilated in a consistent way: the corpse was pulled over onto its front, the heart was possibly removed or pierced, the head was removed, and the cranium and lower jaw were thrown back in different parts of the grave. Read more | Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think The seventh century was a period of rapid religious change and social transformation, so it is unsurprising that people felt disorientated, and that their fears focussed on certain ‘special’ women who were perceived to be reservoirs of supernatural power. Corpse anxieties seem to have died down across the eighth century, but did not disappear entirely. Young women were still sometimes targeted, their trussed and mutilated corpses laid face-down in boundary ditches. The gender balance then shifted. In a ninth to 10th-century cemetery at Godalming in Surrey, it was mostly male corpses that had nails and iron spikes driven into their shoulders, necks and knees. The age of castles, military power and ‘feudal’ dominance was approaching in northern Europe, and there was no lack of disruption and psychological trauma to breed paranoid fears. In this increasingly man’s world, as traditional wise women declined in power and status, violent corpses were increasingly envisaged as male. That brings us back to the lurid prose of William of Newburgh and his contemporaries. The high medieval British epidemic coincided with a period of greater theological sophistication in north-western Europe (including, for instance, the elaboration of the idea of purgatory), more complex scholastic thought, and higher levels of literacy. Accordingly, there was more questioning of received doctrine, and more concern by the clerical establishment to define, stigmatise and punish ‘heresy’. It is very interesting that, whereas the French persecuted heretics and not corpses, England saw virtually no heresy trials but widespread corpse-killing – an excellent illustration of how attacks on the dead can help to spare the living. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL1278768webready-497e003-e1769698475877.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A red, blue and black stained glass window showing four people sitting alongside one another, praying" title="Souls in purgatory, shown in a 14th-century French stained-glass window. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory may have shaped medieval concepts about the dead who had not moved on (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Noxious corpses Ten stories survive from 12th-century England, all concerning noxious male corpses: excommunicates, oath-breakers, corrupt judges, dissolute priests. One Buckinghamshire man paid unwelcome night-time visits to his widow, “took to dancing around wildly among the animals”, and finally “started wandering around by day, frightening everyone though visible only to some”. For sheer excitement, a story recorded by a monk of Burton-upon-Trent, and set in a nearby village around 1100, is in a class of its own. Two perjured villagers died suddenly and were buried. They then appeared walking around the village, sometimes carrying their coffins on their backs and sometimes in the shape of animals. They behaved threateningly and spread disease, causing many deaths. When their graves were opened, the corpses proved to have resisted natural decay, and the cloths over their faces were “very horribly bloody”. Their heads were cut off and placed between their thighs, and their hearts were cut out and burned on a hilltop, where they crackled with a loud noise; a black crow flew up from the flames. Read more | “Ghoul-like beyond nightmare dream, they were the living dead”: belief in Vampires through history After 1200, most of the British evidence comes from Scotland. A story set in the Clyde Valley west of Glasgow in 1295 describes how an evil-living monk returned from his grave to visit a knight’s house. “Having assumed a body – it is uncertain whether natural or aerial, but it was dank, gross and tangible” – he appeared in broad daylight in his monastic habit, and took to climbing around on the roofs. People tried to shoot and stab him, but anything penetrating “that damned substance” immediately burned up. No later Scottish stories are quite so lurid, but a resilient substratum of belief can be seen in the many post-medieval oral ballads that describe dead relatives and lovers coming home in bodily form. A strand survived the Reformation and was assimilated into Calvinist theology in the idea that the devil could occupy the corpse of even a virtuous person. In his Daemonologie of 1597, King James VI (later I of England) observed reassuringly “that the Devil may use as well the ministry of the bodies of the faithful in these cases as of the unfaithful, there is no inconvenient: for his haunting with their bodies after they are dead can no-ways defile them, in respect of the soul’s absence”. Beliefs about the dangerous dead didn’t disappear from England entirely. There seems to have been an undercurrent of low-level but persistent anxiety that surfaced at different times and in different places. A 14th-century story from Byland Abbey in Yorkshire recounts that a local rector who died and was buried near the abbey’s chapter house developed “the habit of going out by night, and one night he put out the eye of his concubine”. His body was dug up and dumped in a local lake – though the oxen pulling the cart carrying the corpse “almost sank through fear”. Stone dead Some suggestively mutilated bodies from later periods have also been discovered. Perhaps the latest and strangest was a victim of the 1665–66 plague who was buried in a London church. He was later found to have a large stone in his mouth – a mode of corpse-killing that was standard in Lutheran Germany at the time but unknown in England. Was he a member of the immigrant mercantile community? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL5864439webready-7cd79c8-e1769698055247.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white engraving showing a man standing facing a skeleton, representing Death." title="Death meets a German mercenary in an engraving. Beliefs in the dangerous dead led to stones being placed in the mouths of corpses to quell them (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> It’s not entirely clear why such beliefs were so rare in late medieval and early modern England at times when they assumed epidemic proportions in some parts of central Europe. For instance, the Black Death plague pandemic of 1347–51 seems to have whipped up corpse fears in Greece and Serbia – so why did it have no such effect in England? It may be because the people of England now widely believed in the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which offered a different framework for conceptualising the dead who had not quite moved on. Another factor could be the English enthusiasm for persecuting witches at points in the 16th and 17th centuries. Except in a few locations – Scotland and Moravia, for example – witch-killing and corpse-killing tended to occupy different spaces in early modern Europe, and seem to have provided alternative outlets for the same anxieties. European beliefs in the dangerous dead were never the same again after a series of lurid corpse-killings in Serbia in 1725–32 were widely reported for the first time in the western press. These reports brought with them a new word – vampire – that quickly drove out all synonyms. From that moment, folklore and fiction became inextricably entwined. Sensational novelists embroidered what they read, and their own readers in turn assimilated their work into popular beliefs. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871–72 novella Carmilla sensitively reworked the idea of a loving but predatory dead female derived ultimately from ancient Chinese tradition. But it was of course Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) that imposed an indelible – if highly misleading – image of the ‘European vampire’, overlaying and ultimately obliterating the last traces of genuine English popular belief. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/RJGAYDwebready-0963212-e1769700002267.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white engraving of a woman creeping towards a person laying in a bed, with her arm reached out towards them" title="An illustration from the 1871–72 Gothic novella Carmilla shows the eponymous bloodsucker approaching her victim. Sheridan Le Fanu’s tale drew on ancient stories of predatory dead women (Image by Alamy)" /> Remarkably, the idea of turning a potentially dangerous corpse upside-down survived a decade or two longer. In rural Devonshire sometime around the turn of the 20th century, a farmer was recorded telling the tale of a wicked local woman who had recently died “cussin’ and dam’in”, and whose coffin had been turned over. “Her ’ont be troublesome then, ’cause if her do begin to diggy her can on’y diggy downwards,” he claimed. The grim finale to this particular English superstition was acted out during the First World War, after a slim English youth had killed a “huge, scowling” German soldier. “Later,” an officer observed, “I found our men burying him most carefully – face downwards. You know why. If he began digging his way out, he would only go deeper.” Epidemics of the undead Five periods when fears of living corpses terrified societies around the world Ancient Mesopotamia: eternal non-sleeping Fears of the dead plagued inhabitants of the neo-Assyrian empire in the near east between c911 and c605 BC. An inscription (left) in the tomb of eighth-century BC queen Yabâ of Nineveh curses any robber by imposing “eternal non-sleeping on his corpse and ghost”. And an omen text of the mid-seventh century BC describes what will happen if one sees “a dead person restrained with cloths, uprising, complaining”. The silence of earlier and later sources suggests that this may have been an epidemic generated by the violence and trauma of imperial expansion in the provinces. Early 18th-century Serbia: dawn of Dracula In the western Balkans after 1700, the central European tradition of dangerous-dead beliefs converged with a Caucasian one. This highly coloured mixture of fantasies reached an epidemic scale on the violent, unstable military frontier between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Cases in 1725–26 and again in the 1730s came to the attention of the Habsburg authorities, whose reports created a Europe-wide sensation. The details were actually rather atypical – for example, in their emphasis on bloodsucking – but inspired a series of fictional works culminating in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. 16th-century Saxony: rise of the chomping dead Devastated by plague and destabilised by the Lutheran Reformation, after 1540 the German electorate of Saxony suffered the strange visitation of the ‘chomping dead’. It was widely believed that some corpses lay in their graves noisily eating their own shrouds, and that they spread plague among the living. This idea had older roots, but it reached epidemic levels in this traumatised society. The remedy was to open the grave to check for shroud-eating and, if evidence mandated action, to behead the corpse with a spade. Martin Luther himself spoke out against the belief, but it endured for several decades before dying away naturally around 1600. 19th-century New England: a war on organs As tuberculosis swept the US between the 1780s and 1890s, the strange idea developed that internal organs of buried victims were spreading the disease. Between 1784 and 1892, at least 70 exhumations are known to have been undertaken in New England, mostly involving turning the corpse face-down, extracting the heart, liver and lungs, and occasionally burning the body. At Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1949, the exhumation of a soldier to burn his uniform represents the last known ‘corpse-killing’ in any non-Balkan and non-Aegean western society. Independent Haiti: zombie slaves In the 19th and 20th centuries, many Haitians believed that some apparently ‘dead’ people had actually been poisoned by sorcerers to induce a death-like trance. The ‘corpses’ were then reputedly stolen from their graves, revived and made to work on sugar plantations. Famously, Clairvius Narcisse (1922–94), who claimed to have escaped from such a plantation, was photographed sitting on his own tomb (above). This strangest of variants – walking ‘corpses’ that had never died – had roots in African beliefs, but developed a unique twist in this fragile republic with its tragic origins, where the unquiet dead were enslaved. Professor John Blair is emeritus fellow in medieval history at Queen’s College, University of Oxford. His latest book is Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine