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Roger Moorhouse tells the story of the U-boat war from the perspective of the German crews themselves
"Statistically, they were on a suicide mission." That's Roger Moorhouse's assessment of the odds facing Hitler's U-boat crews in the final years of the Second World War. Speaking with Spencer Mizen, Roger relates the story of these missions from the German perspective – a tale encompassing scurvy, sleep deprivation, terror and acts of astonishing kindness. Roger Moorhouse is the author of Wolfpack: Inside Hitler's U-boat War (William Collins, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones
Did Hitler have sexual relations with Eva Braun? What my research reveals about the Führer's love life
Last year, the results of a groundbreaking study into Adolf Hitler’s DNA were revealed to the world. The project’s senior historical consultant, Alex J Kay, looks at what the findings might be able to tell us about the Führer’s relationship with Eva Braun and the other women in his life
In November 2025, I was lead historian on the television documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, which revealed the results of a world-first analysis of Adolf Hitler’s DNA. The results – as explained by the project’s lead geneticist, Turi King – revealed that Hitler had a disorder known as Kallmann syndrome. Among other things, this condition can result in impaired testosterone production, low libido, underdeveloped reproductive features and, by extension, a disrupted reproductive function. The revelation that Hitler had Kallmann syndrome is intriguing because of the likely implications for his private life. This finding strongly suggests a causal relationship between Hitler’s genetic make-up and particular facets of his behaviour. It complements what we already knew about this part of Hitler’s biography, and it sheds light on aspects of his life that we could previously only speculate about. Born in provincial Austria in 1889, Hitler had a very traumatic childhood, experiencing abuse at the hands of his father and losing four out of five siblings as well as both parents by the time he turned 19. He later wrote in his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf that his mother’s death had been “a dreadful blow, particularly for me”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/2-Traumatic-childhood-248974imagno-5c13625-e1769175795531.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two black and white photos alongside each other. A woman is on the left, wearing a high collar and looking straight at the camera. On the left there is a man, wearing a jacket with several buttons down the middle. He is facing the left, and has a large moustache" title="Hitler’s parents, Klara and Alois, pictured around 1890. The future Nazi leader would go on to describe his mother’s death in 1907 as “a dreadful blow” (Image by Topfoto)" /> The family doctor, Eduard Bloch, subsequently remarked: “While [Hitler] was not a ‘mother’s boy’ in the usual sense, I have never witnessed a closer attachment.” Hitler was at his mother’s bedside when she passed away. Dr Bloch later observed: “In all my career, I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.” Experiencing such loss during his formative years would have had a lasting impact on Hitler’s character. A portrait of adolescence As we have known since the medical file resurfaced at an auction in 2010, a physical examination during Hitler’s time in Landsberg prison in 1923, following his arrest for the failed Munich putsch that November, revealed that he had “right-sided cryptorchidism” – that is, an undescended testicle. This physical abnormality might help to explain the account given by Hitler’s closest (and perhaps only) friend during his adolescence, August Kubizek. While living in Vienna, Hitler and Kubizek shared a room from February to July 1908. Noting Hitler’s “obvious indifference to the opposite sex”, his “strict monk-like asceticism” and the fact that he “refrained from masturbation”, Kubizek observed: “my friend undoubtedly found favour with the opposite sex although, to my amazement, he never took advantage of it”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/4-August-Kubizek-GettyImages-1371458593-bbe65ce-e1769175883617.jpg" width="1500" height="2106" alt="A black and white photograph of a man, wearing a black suit with a black bow tie." title="A photograph of August Kubizek, Hitler’s former roommate. Kubizek would later claim that his friend had shown an “obvious indifference to the opposite sex” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Commenting on the entirety of their friendship from the autumn of 1905 (not 1904, as Kubizek claimed), when they met at the opera in Linz, to the summer of 1908, when their time together in Vienna came to an end, Kubizek concluded: “I think I can say with certainty: Adolf never met a girl, either in Linz or Vienna, who actually gave herself to him.” None of the accounts of Hitler’s remaining years in the Austrian capital suggests anything changed in this regard. Read more | “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp” Tellingly, one of Hitler’s closest confidants during the 1920s and 1930s, Ernst Hanfstaengl, later wrote: “I can never recall having seen him in a bathing costume, nor had anyone else. A story, probably authentic, was frequently told that Hitler’s old army comrades, who had seen him in the wash-house, had noted that his genital organs were almost freakishly underdeveloped, and he doubtless had some sense of shame about displaying himself. It seemed to me that this must all be part of the underlying complex in his physical relations, which was compensated for by the terrifying urge for domination expressed in the field of politics.” According to the historian Ian Kershaw, author of the definitive biography of the Nazi leader: “Kubizek’s account, together with the language Hitler himself used in Mein Kampf, does point at the least to an acutely disturbed and repressed sexual development.” The German historian Peter Longerich, in his own biography of Hitler, goes one step further: “In view of Hitler’s personality, it seems altogether plausible that his life was asexual: any intimate relationship would simply have been incompatible with his arrested emotional development with regard to other people and with his self-perception as a public figure through and through with an extraordinary historic mission.” No room for a wife Rumours that Hitler had been infected with syphilis by a Jewish prostitute were without foundation. Medical tests in 1940 showed that Hitler had not suffered from syphilis. Although the serological tests carried out in 1940 did not exclude neurosyphilis, recent medical research has concluded that the suggestion that Hitler may have had neurosyphilis is unsustainable. The discovery that Hitler had Kallmann syndrome might thus be the key to explaining his seemingly “disturbed and repressed sexual development”. As Hanfstaengl observed, Hitler must have been extremely self-conscious about his body and, for this reason, reluctant to engage in relations of an intimate or sexual nature – and perhaps even uninterested in that side of life. This fact would help to explain Hitler’s absolute devotion to politics to the almost complete exclusion of any kind of private life. Such devotion was exceptional among Nazi leaders. All other senior Nazis – Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, and so on – had wives and children; some even had extramarital affairs. Ian Kershaw once wrote: “There was no ‘private life’ for Hitler. Of course, he could enjoy his escapist films, his daily walk to the Tea-House at the Berghof, his time in his alpine idyll far from government ministries in Berlin. But these were empty routines. There was no retreat to a sphere outside the political, to a deeper existence which conditioned his public reflexes.” The identification and testing of Hitler’s DNA, combined with the historical facts already available to us, may now explain why. The fact that Hitler had Kallmann syndrome surely played a part in his renunciation of any kind of private life or intimate relationships. According to Christa Schroeder, who served as one of Hitler’s secretaries for the entirety of his 12 years in power: “Undoubtedly Hitler enjoyed the company of beautiful women and was inspired by them. He used eroticism, but not sex. Because of the great objective he had set himself and to which he was totally committed, sexual gratification occurred mentally.” Hitler always claimed that his life was devoted to Germany, so that there was no room in it for a wife. It seems this claim might, at least in part, have been a way of covering up his aversion to intimate relationships, and that his genes may have played a bigger part in his decision not to marry and have children than he was willing to admit. Read more | “We need to understand the Nazis as human beings”: Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler’s followers "Saturated with jealousy" It is with two women that Hitler is most closely associated: Geli Raubal and Eva Braun. Geli, born in 1908 (and thus 19 years younger than Hitler), was the daughter of Hitler’s half-sister, Angela Raubal. Geli’s father died two years after her birth, and Hitler became her legal guardian in 1923. Six years later, Geli moved into Hitler’s nine-room apartment in Munich. Hitler was overbearing and jealously possessive of his half-niece. He took her everywhere with him, and if she went out alone, she was chaperoned and had to be home early. To all intents and purposes, Geli was a prisoner. And she resented it bitterly. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/6-Geli-Raubal-GettyImages-541794949-f720675-e1769176093295.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a man in a suit, asleep in a deckchair. To his right, a woman in a patterned dress sits on the floor, looking at him" title="Hitler with his half-niece, Geli Raubal. The former medical student would take her own life in the Nazi leader’s apartment (Image by Getty Images)" /> On 18 September 1931, Geli shot and killed herself in the apartment, using Hitler’s own pistol. According to Ian Kershaw, his emotional relationship with Geli was “more intense than any other human relationship he had before or after”. Anni Winter, Hitler’s housekeeper in Munich from 1929 to 1945, summed it up, according to Christa Schroeder, as “a platonic love saturated with jealousy”. In the autumn of 1929, the same year that Geli Raubal moved into his Munich apartment, Hitler first met Eva Braun at the Munich studio of his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, where she worked as an assistant and, later, as a photographer herself. Eva, born in 1912, was nearly 23 years younger than Hitler. The two began spending more time together from early 1932, after several months had passed since Geli Raubal’s suicide. One of Hitler’s closest political associates, Franz Xaver Schwarz – who had joined the Nazi Party in 1922, taken part in the failed Munich putsch the following November, and then served as treasurer of the Nazi Party from 1925 to 1945 – told Allied officers in July 1945 that Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun since 1931 had been “platonic”. Heike Görtemaker, the biographer of Eva Braun, is right to point out that Schwarz “had absolutely no reason to reveal anything about Hitler’s carefully concealed private life to his American interrogators”. However, many other people who spent years in close proximity to Hitler said the same as Schwarz. Herbert Döhring, Hitler’s caretaker at the Berghof for eight years, claimed that there was never any evidence that the two had sex. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/8-Eva-and-sister-Gretl-GettyImages-109852808-30f2189-e1769176211496.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of two young women sitting on top of a wall, alongside a black dog" title="Eva Braun (right), with her sister, Gretl. Hitler had first met Braun at the Munich studio of his photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, in 1929 (Image by Getty Images)" /> The aforementioned Christa Schroeder insisted in her memoir that “Hitler was not the lover of Eva Braun”. Heinrich Hoffmann, who introduced Hitler – “a personally modest and intensely shy person” – to Eva Braun, wrote in his memoir that she “became the constant companion of his leisure hours and, to the best of my knowledge, that was all there was to it”. He added: “there never was any love story”. While physical intimacy between them cannot be ruled out entirely, all available evidence suggests that Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun was not sexual. In Hitler’s Munich apartment, his suite of rooms in the Reich Chancellery, at the Berghof and, later, in his Berlin bunker, Eva Braun always had her own separate bedroom. Keeping secrets One disturbing fact is worth pointing out here: Geli Raubal was not the only woman intimately associated with Hitler to attempt, or die by, suicide. His brief flirtation with Maria ‘Mimi’ Reiter, born in 1909 (and thus 20 years younger than Hitler), began in the autumn of 1926 when they met in Berchtesgaden. According to Kershaw, Hitler’s letters to her “were affectionate, though in a fatherly, patronising fashion”. Their friendship ended after a few months when Hitler broke off contact. Mimi Reiter unsuccessfully attempted to hang herself the following year. During her relationship with Hitler, Eva Braun attempted suicide not once but twice, in November 1932 and May 1935 (before finally killing herself, alongside Hitler, in the Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945 – less than 40 hours after they had married). A few months after the second suicide attempt, she and her sister Gretl moved into a house that Hoffmann had bought for them on Hitler’s instructions. By the following year, Eva Braun had become a member of the Berghof inner circle around Hitler. Read more | The real Unity Mitford: meet the high society British Nazi who was rumoured to have had Hitler's child Nonetheless, whatever the nature of their relationship, most German people did not know about it until after the war. She was only once caught on camera with Hitler in public, when she sat directly behind him during the women’s skating competition at the 1936 Winter Olympics. Otherwise, Hitler never allowed her to be seen in public with him. Christa Schroeder may have succeeded in explaining both the longevity and Hitler’s true motivation in entering into his long-term companionship with Eva Braun when she wrote that “Hitler as a politician could not afford a second suicide of a young woman in his close circle… This protected him against future suicide attempts and was also a shield against all his other ardent female admirers”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/9-Hitler-and-Eva-GettyImages-514679166-302118e-e1769176611254.jpg" width="1500" height="2461" alt="A black and white photograph of a man standing in a double breasted suit, along side a woman in a dress, sitting in a chair to the right" title="Most German people did not know about Hitler and Braun’s relationship until after the war (Image by Getty Images)" /> Though he was, by all accounts, fond of Mimi Reiter, Geli Raubal and Eva Braun (as well as other women) in his own way, they were all much younger women whom Hitler could – and did – dominate. Heinrich Hoffmann’s assessment of Hitler's view of Eva Braun likely applied to all those women with whom he formed some sort of attachment: “To him, she was just an attractive little thing, in whom, in spite of her inconsequential and feather-brained outlook – or perhaps just because of it – he found the type of relaxation and repose he sought.” Christa Schroeder concludes for all these relationships that “Hitler appears to have kept his love life platonic throughout”. In his own account, August Kubizek leaves the reader in no doubt as to his belief that Hitler was a pronounced misogynist. According to Kershaw: “Probably, he was frightened of women – certainly of their sexuality.” Alex J Kay is a reader in modern history at the University of Potsdam. He recently served as the senior historical consultant and co-lead on the Channel 4 and Blink Films documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator. Alex J Kay and geneticist Turi King spoke to Matt Elton on the HistoryExtra podcast about their involvement in the DNA research. Listen to the full conversation.
The SAS played a vital role in defeating Hitler – so why did Britain disband them?
Britain’s War Office thanked the SAS for its remarkable efforts in WW2 by abolishing it – yet soon realised the error of its ways. Gavin Mortimer tells the story of how the elite unit reinvented itself to confront the challenges of the postwar world
“Light-hearted banditry”, “ruthless pirating”, a “phantom army” – it’s fair to say that the Special Air Service (SAS) didn’t always attract the most complimentary headlines. In the white heat of the Second World War, when this and other British special forces achieved unlikely successes through a series of daring raids, disparaging press reports could be discarded as merely tomorrow’s chip paper. Nonetheless, they fuelled the impression that the SAS operated outside the rules of the regular British army, and were used as ammunition by some who aimed to whip special forces into line – or even shut them down altogether. That threat became a reality after the conflict ended. David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, coined a description – “freemasons of mediocrity” – for a certain kind of staff officer who looked upon his men with suspicion and, in some cases, hostility. These ‘freemasons’ regarded the SAS and other irregular outfits – the Long Range Desert Group and the Chindits – at best as private armies, at worst “café gangsters”. This view extended to the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), which spent the spring of 1944 waging a bloody guerrilla campaign in the Aegean to tie down German troops ahead of the invasion of France. Its actions prompted a sharp exchange between Winston Churchill and Simon Wingfield Digby, the Conservative MP for West Dorset. “Is it true, Mr prime minister,” enquired Wingfield Digby, “that there is a body of men out in the Aegean Islands, fighting under the Union Flag, that are nothing short of being a band of murderous, renegade cut-throats?” “If you do not take your seat and keep quiet, I will send you out to join them,” retorted Churchill. One could argue that Churchill was the founding father of Britain’s special forces. It was he, shortly after coming to office in May 1940, who instructed the formation of a commando force to launch a “vigorous, enterprising and ceaseless offensive” against the Axis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-106756195webready-3acc480-e1769169656193.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Winston Churchill with wife, Clementine, and their son Randolph, in 1940. Randolph served briefly in the SAS in 1942, accounts of which made his father “terribly proud” (Image by Getty Images)" title="Winston Churchill with wife, Clementine, and their son Randolph, in 1940. Randolph served briefly in the SAS in 1942, accounts of which made his father “terribly proud” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Men such as Stirling, Paddy Mayne (Stirling’s second-in command) and George Jellicoe (the commanding officer of the SBS) first learned the art of guerrilla warfare with the commandos. Churchill’s son Randolph served briefly in the SAS in 1942, and wrote to his father describing how they were destroying dozens of enemy aircraft in daring raids – accounts that made the PM “terribly proud”. When Churchill visited Cairo in August 1942 to discuss the next phase of the north African campaign with his generals, he found time to lunch with his son and Stirling. Churchill dined with Stirling again at the end of May 1945, following the latter’s release from Colditz, having been captured in January 1943. Stirling had plans to re-deploy the SAS Brigade to the far east, and he wanted to sound out their principal benefactor. But within weeks Churchill was gone, voted out of office by a British public who believed a new leader was required to rebuild the country. The SAS would soon follow the wartime leader into temporary retirement. Read more | The real SAS Rogue Heroes: the true stories behind the WW2 drama Uncertain future Even if Clement Attlee hadn’t been elected prime minister in July 1945, the SAS and Britain’s special forces might still have faced an uncertain future. The country was practically bankrupt, having spent almost £7bn (a quarter of the national wealth) on the war effort. Defence spending would obviously be slashed, and those ‘private armies’ were an obvious place to start. After all, what was the point in maintaining a guerrilla force now that the war was over? The SAS paraded for the final time at their Essex HQ on 8 October 1945. Four days later, Brigadier Michael Calvert, commanding officer of the SAS Brigade, sent a memo to 12 of the most senior officers of the SAS, SBS and Long Range Desert Group entitled ‘Future of SAS Troops’. He explained that the War Office had asked for his “recommendations for the future of SAS in the next war and its composition in the peace-time army” as part of its review into Britain’s military capabilities. Calvert feared that the bureaucrats within the War Office – those “freemasons of mediocrity” – were determined to disband the SAS. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-154417103webready-51d1025-e1769169399236.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Members of the Long Range Desert Group in 1942. By the end of the Second World War, their new brand of warfare was attracting hostility from some elements of Britain’s military (Image by Getty Images)" title="Members of the Long Range Desert Group in 1942. By the end of the Second World War, their new brand of warfare was attracting hostility from some elements of Britain’s military (Image by Getty Images)" /> One of the most forceful and erudite replies came from Major Roy Farran, DSO and MC, a senior SAS officer who had served in north Africa, Italy and France. He began by stating that, though special forces warfare was still in its infancy, its potential was enormous – particularly because it could exploit the rapid recent developments in air power, communications and motorised transport. “Since it is now so easy to place troops across the enemy lines of communication, I feel that it is important to have a unit of the Special Air Service-type trained to operate individually with the minimum support and with the maximum amount of improvisation,” he wrote. Farran had already identified Britain’s likely next foe and envisaged how special forces could be used in the event of a conflict. “I believe there will be great opportunities for guerrilla troops in the event of a war against the Soviet Union, which I suppose is the only possibility at the moment,” he told Calvert. Such a war would be either a defensive or offensive one. “In the former case a unit like the Special Air Service could inflict damage on the enemy and slow up his advance out of all proportion to its size… In an offensive war the SAS would increase the speed of our advance by spreading panic and confusion in the enemy’s rear.” But the prescient Farran also envisaged that, before a large-scale war with the Soviets, Britain could well find itself entangled in insurgencies as its empire began to break up. Counter-insurgency, he declared, was a role to which the SAS and SBS were ideally suited, adding: “If the principle of the SAS does not continue, I cannot believe that the army is thinking along progressive lines.” Another important figure contacted by the War Office was Lieutenant Colonel Tony Simonds, the commander of MI9’s A Force, who had worked with the SAS in Italy in the autumn of 1943. The main task of MI9 – a secret department within the War Office – was to assist Allied military personnel in enemy territory to evade and escape. Simonds recommended the establishment of three SAS regiments: one for Europe, based in Britain; a second for the Middle East, based in Cyprus; and a third for the far east, based in Singapore. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/standard-3Michael-Calvert-cmykwebready-6c7040b-e1769169955638.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Michael Calvert (left) gives orders after the capture of Mogaung in Burma, June 1944. The following year, as commanding officer of the SAS Brigade, Calvert fought for the unit’s survival (Image supplied by Gavin Mortimer)" title="Michael Calvert (left) gives orders after the capture of Mogaung in Burma, June 1944. The following year, as commanding officer of the SAS Brigade, Calvert fought for the unit’s survival (Image supplied by Gavin Mortimer)" /> Simonds wrote that “the role of guerrilla forces in any future war is to defeat the enemy, behind his defended front lines, while the orthodox forces prevent the enemy from advancing”. However, he also suggested that the SAS should “familiarise themselves topographically, militarily, socially and politically with the area. To know and to study the various factions and elements of their area… and to know which personalities should be eliminated should it become necessary in British interest.” That latter role had been the modus operandi of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War – acting more like secret agents than special forces. Read more | “They changed the way war is run”: Ben Macintyre on the early SAS Ultimately, however, the arguments put forward by Calvert and other senior special forces officers fell on deaf ears, and their regiment and units were disbanded. End of an error It didn’t take long before the War Office realised its mistake. In January 1946, Jewish paramilitaries in Mandatory Palestine derailed a British train – the first serious guerrilla act in an insurgency that grew increasingly violent as the fight for the establishment of a Jewish state intensified. It was the first of many such insurgencies as Britain’s empire began to fracture. In 1947, Major Pat Hart, a staff officer in the SAS during the war, learned that the SAS was going to be revived as a territorial regiment under the command of Colonel Brian Franks. Hart was appointed Franks’ second-in-command of 21 SAS – a designation that merged the 1st and 2nd Regiments of wartime fame. According to Hart’s recollection, a War Office study group had been formed in 1946 to re-examine the future of Britain’s special forces. “The result of the study was the recommendation there should be a continuing presence in the army, so the knowledge gained should not be lost, and whilst it could be called anything, probably the best thing was to call it SAS,” he said. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-79043094webready-e676d4c-e1769170186832.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="At the end of the Second World War, Britain was facing bankruptcy and defence spending needed to be cut. ‘Private armies’ were an obvious place to start (Image by Getty Images)" title="At the end of the Second World War, Britain was facing bankruptcy and defence spending needed to be cut. ‘Private armies’ were an obvious place to start (Image by Getty Images)" /> Recruitment began in September 1947. Of the first 200 soldiers signed up, 59 had served with the SAS during the war. One of those was Pat Duggan. “While the majority in the forces were pleased to return to their former lifestyles [in 1945], many of us, hemmed in by the norms of a peaceful civilisation, felt only frustration and spent our time dreaming of, or searching for, something that resembled our wartime role,” he reflected. “When the SAS was reformed as part of the TA [Territorial Army], we homed in like pigeons – a roll-call of the dispossessed.” Having so many experienced soldiers in their ranks made it easier to train the new recruits in their unorthodox methods. “We were creating an SAS unit that would be available to do any sort of SAS job once it was trained,” explained Hart. “We went off on Nato exercises, as part of the training, and it was very helpful for Nato command to have an SAS unit there.” The first active deployment of 21 SAS was to Malaya (then a British colony, today peninsular Malaysia) to help quell a two-year-long communist insurgency. The uprising – which the British knew as the Malayan Emergency – threatened colonial rubber plantations and tin mines, so the government called on the talents of men skilled in guerrilla fighting. “There were a few contacts,” recalled John Gardner of the SAS. “A few seconds, perhaps minutes, of intense shooting, then silence. Blood trails were followed, and some CT [insurgent] bodies were found and brought in, but many blood trails led to nothing… during these weeks we lived in a general state of alertness, even at night half awake, of dirt and sweat, our blood sucked by the many leeches.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/1.47-CMYKwebready-f500202-e1769170640593.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Rhodesian troops served in the Long Range Desert Group in WW2 and went on to form their own SAS squadron, some of whom are seen here in the 1950s. C (Rhodesia) Squadron operated with the SAS from 1951–53, largely in Malaya (Image supplied by Gavin Mortimer)" title="Rhodesian troops served in the Long Range Desert Group in WW2 and went on to form their own SAS squadron, some of whom are seen here in the 1950s. C (Rhodesia) Squadron operated with the SAS from 1951–53, largely in Malaya (Image supplied by Gavin Mortimer)" /> The SAS remained in Malaya throughout the 1950s – years that proved a crucial learning curve for a regiment that was intent on mastering all environments, whether desert, jungle or Arctic. Johnny Cooper, one of the original 66 recruits to the SAS when the unit was formed by Stirling in 1941, was a squadron commander in Malaya. “We were carrying out trials to develop a two-week ration that was possible for a man to carry,” he recalled. “The object was to avoid the weekly air drops which were a complete give-away and lost us the vital element of surprise.” As a result, the SAS produced a ‘starvation ration’ consisting of dehydrated rice-based food carried in a four-gallon petrol tin. Read more | He shot down 3 planes in 4 minutes: meet the WW2 pilot you won't have heard about A global audience It was no coincidence that in 1952 – shortly after Winston Churchill had been returned to Downing Street – it was decided to raise a regular-army SAS regiment: 22 SAS. Over the following decades, the SAS was sent to fight insurgencies in other remote corners of the British empire and spheres of influence – Aden, Borneo, Oman – before being deployed to Northern Ireland in the 1970s. But perhaps the most high-profile of all its operations occurred in the spring of 1980 when it ended the Iranian embassy siege in London in dramatic style, watched by a global television audience. It was a feat that underlined the regiment’s reputation as the world’s pre-eminent special force. Throughout these operations, one aspect of the SAS was immutable, and that was the temperament of each recruit. In 1956, Dare Newell, the SAS regimental headquarters major, wrote to several wartime special forces officers to ask what characteristics they thought essential for an SAS soldier. From their answers he compiled the selection criteria. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1241653502webready-85c1750-e1769170516483.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Members of the SAS on a training exercise in Hereford, c1970. By now, the regiment was intent on mastering all environments, whether desert, jungle or Arctic (Image by Getty Images)" title="Members of the SAS on a training exercise in Hereford, c1970. By now, the regiment was intent on mastering all environments, whether desert, jungle or Arctic (Image by Getty Images)" /> “A man’s personal qualities and make-up count more than technical efficiency in his own arm of the service. Technical efficiency can be taught; the personal qualities required for long-range, long-term operations in enemy territory, however, are part of a man’s character and, although they may be developed over a period, they must be learnt in childhood.” The qualities deemed essential were initiative, self-discipline, independence of mind, ability to work without supervision, stamina, patience, and a sense of humour. These characteristics continue to underpin the SAS ethos today. Warfare and weaponry evolve, but not human nature. One of the 12 recipients of Mike Calvert’s worried memo in October 1945 was Major John Verney of the SBS. “We came to know one another’s physical and mental capacities, and with them our own,” he said of his wartime service. “Strength and skill were respected, and a fair degree of both were essential, but there were other qualities, such as a cool head, or a good temper, that might well prove more valuable.” CLONE WARS Countries worldwide have established forces based on the British SAS template The reputation of the SAS, encapsulated by its ‘Who Dares Wins’ motto, is global. Its influence is evident in France’s 1er Régiment de Parachutiste d’Infanterie de Marine (1erRPIMa), the US Delta Force and Germany’s GSG 9. New Zealand and Australia have their own SAS regiments, both raised in the 1950s and using the same motto as their British counterpart. It is also alleged that the SAS has trained Ukrainian special forces for many years. The wartime SAS included two regiments of French troops who fought under British command. In June 2024, to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, President Emmanuel Macron visited the French SAS memorial in Plumelec in Brittany. According to France’s Ministry of Defence, the 1erRPIMa “has its roots in the SAS of World War II, [and] is based on daring, determination and endurance”; its motto is Qui ose gagne – a direct translation of that of the British SAS. The founder of Delta Force, Charles Beckwith, was one of America’s most innovative military thinkers in the late 1950s. A member of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Beckwith was posted to 22 SAS as part of an exchange in 1962. During that time, he conceived the idea of an American equivalent. On his return to the US, Beckwith received encouragement from General Sam Wilson, a Second World War veteran who had been trained by the British Chindits in south-east Asia. In a 2016 interview, Wilson explained that he had met David Stirling in the course of helping to establish Delta Force. Like Delta Force, Germany’s counter-terrorism unit GSG 9 was formed in the 1970s in response to a series of high-profile terrorist atrocities. When GSG 9 rescued all hostages from a hijacking at Mogadishu airport in Somalia in 1977, it was assisted by two SAS soldiers. Over the course of three decades, David Stirling’s band of “renegade cut-throats” had become a blueprint for special forces units across the globe. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/NZ-females-CMYKwebready-cdfea04-e1769170865434.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Members of New Zealand’s SAS female engagement team. Along with Australia’s SAS, they use the same motto – ‘Who Dares Wins’ – as their British counterpart (Image by New Zealand Special Air Service)" title="Members of New Zealand’s SAS female engagement team. Along with Australia’s SAS, they use the same motto – ‘Who Dares Wins’ – as their British counterpart (Image by New Zealand Special Air Service)" /> This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Why Belgian agents risked their lives spying for Britain
Helen Fry tells the story of the network of Belgian spies who passed secrets to Britain from deep behind German lines – and helped win the world wars
In the chaotic opening months of the First World War, Britain's intelligence services were desperate to learn where the Germans would attack next. Enter the White Lady. As historian Helen Fry lays out in her new book, this courageous network of Belgian civilians began spying on German troops from behind enemy lines – and, in the process, changed the course of the war. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Helen tells an extraordinary story of massacres, drug dealing, double-crossing and secret messages encased in potatoes. For more on spycraft in the Second World War, don't miss our interview with Helen Fry on the ingenious British intelligence operation to bug German prisoners during the conflict. Go beyond the podcast
Mark Urban chronicles the characters and conflicts that contributed to the dramatic evolution of armoured warfare
From the mud-churned battlefields of the First World War to the high-stakes clashes of the Cold War, the tank has shaped the course of conflict like no other machine. In this episode, Emily Briffett is joined by Mark Urban, as he reveals the dramatic evolution of armoured warfare through its iconic vehicles – and the engineers, commanders and crews who drove them into the history books.
Frank McDonough tells the story of the escalating persecution of the Jews under the Nazis – from Hitler's rise to power to the horror of the death camps
In his latest book, The Hitler Years: Holocaust 1933–1945, Frank McDonough offers a heart-rending year-by-year narrative of the Nazis' escalating persecution of the Jews – from Hitler's rise to power to the death camps. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Frank describes how a campaign of intimidation on the streets of Germany evolved into genocide.
The Bengal Famine was one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies – so why is there no memorial to it?
Kavita Puri on the first event commemorating the 1943 Bengal Famine
In a museum in Manchester, on an autumn evening just a few weeks ago, history was made. I joined a group of people who had gathered to pay their respects to casualties of a long-overlooked episode of the Second World War. Curators, students, interested locals and descendants of those involved milled around, drinking chai, looking at pictures in a temporary exhibition. Organisers believe this was the first event to commemorate the estimated 3 million victims of the 1943 Bengal Famine. Those who died were Indians, but they were also British subjects. It’s one of the largest losses of civilian life among the Allies – yet there isn’t a memorial, a museum or even a plaque to them anywhere in the world. So that night – organised by the University of Manchester, Manchester Museum and the Imperial War Museum North, and inspired by my BBC podcast Three Million – marked a very special moment. Read more | The 1943 Bengal famine: "People began collapsing in the streets and dying on the pavements" The exhibition featured portraits of some of the survivors I had interviewed in the Bengal countryside. There was Jamuna Purkayeth, who had travelled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) as a little girl with her father in search of charity. When I spoke to her, she told me that she believed that if she had stayed in her village she would have died of hunger. Also on display were extracts of letters to and from Indian soldiers stationed in the Middle East, censored by colonial authorities for mentioning the extent of the food crisis. Now those letters – uncensored – were presented in a public space. There were also Japanese propaganda pamphlets encouraging the Indian population to rise up against the British. In one cartoon, the wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, is pictured feasting on a sumptuous roast chicken, while underneath the dining table are emaciated, dead Bengalis. The message is clear: Japan will feed you, but the British won’t. Also on display were evocative photographs of Sunil Janah, who documented the human cost of the famine in the communist newspaper People’s War. Among the speakers that evening was the narrative director from the Imperial War Museum, who talked of the silences in that museum’s war archive, and discussed what can be done to remedy the situation. Another was an eyewitness to the famine, Partha Mitter. He told how, as a little boy, he would look through the iron gates of his grand house and see starving mothers clutching their babies, begging for phan dao, water in which rice had been cooked. They never asked for the rice – Bengal’s staple food – because that would be too much to hope for. Read more | Who was to blame for the Irish famine? Eighty years since the end of the Second World War, it’s about time that these 3 million lives are remembered. They cannot be a mere footnote in history. They are part of Britain’s wartime story, and its colonial legacy, that has become contentious – but this night showed that it need not be so. History is never static. Time allows people to speak, and ask, and collectively to acknowledge and remember. Forgetting need not be permanent. There will be a time to ask some difficult questions – about how this was allowed to happen, and who was responsible – but this night was dedicated to those who died. There is a dignity in remembering them – a dignity they were not afforded in life. Who knows whether this will become an annual event, or if a more permanent memorial to the victims will be established. But something is changing – and I learned this night that history can be redemptive. Everyone who gathered felt it, and it was an unexpectedly uplifting experience. This column was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Life in the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain
Aviation historian Dr Victoria Taylor explores the experiences of the Luftwaffe as they faced the perils and pressure of the Battle of Britain
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Christopher Harding explores the life story of the emperor who reigned over Japan during the Second World War and the decades of postwar transition that followed
While most of the other surviving Axis leaders were put on trial following the end of the Second World War, Japan's Emperor Hirohito never faced justice and, instead, continued to reign until his death in 1989. Debate continues about how far he was personally responsible for Japanese aggression in the 1930s and 40s, and in today's Life of the Week episode, Dr Christopher Harding guides Rob Attar through those arguments – and explores Hirohito's role in Japan's hugely successful postwar transition.
Keep calm and carry on singing: why Britons fell in love with opera during World War Two
As the conflict with Nazi Germany raged on, British tram drivers tuned in to Tchaikovsky and waitresses revelled in Wagner. But why? Alexandra Wilson explores the surprising Second World War obsession with opera
Glasgow, 1942. The Carl Rosa Opera Company was in town to perform Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Tickets had been snapped up by local people – including many who didn’t really know what an opera was. The soprano Joan Hammond, who sang the title role that night, later recalled that there were always newcomers in the audience wherever the Carl Rosa performed, searching for something different to do – but also for some kind of transcendental escapism. Invariably, they cheered the singers to the rafters. Surprising though it may seem to us today, opera was hugely popular during the Second World War. This was part of a broader surge of interest among the British in the so-called high arts – a sudden and rather urgent desire to ‘become cultured’ and to enjoy the best that life had to offer – when every day might be your last. Guy Ramsey reported in the Daily Mail in 1943 that “every day in every way Britain’s musical and dramatic taste is becoming more and more ‘highbrow’”. Tram drivers were listening to Tchaikovsky, waitresses were revelling in Wagner, and operas were drawing large audiences at provincial theatres. This war, Ramsey wrote, was more personal than any before it, and felt closer to home. Serious times called for serious art, and popular variety shows no longer seemed in step with the national mood. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/2X2FXR2webready-9f2accf-e1767623285427.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph shows a man in a cap with round glasses and a cigarette in his mouth sitting on one of many stools outside a theatre. In front of him to the right, a billboard advertises the Sadler's Wells Opera" title="Stools for hire by people queueing for Sadler’s Wells Opera Company performances at the New Theatre, 1943. Tickets started at just 1/6 (about £4 today) (Image by Alamy)" /> Workers’ playtime Opera had already enjoyed reasonably wide popularity in Britain during the interwar years. In London, the enterprising impresario Lilian Baylis had set up companies at the Old Vic in the 1920s and Sadler’s Wells in the 1930s that were explicitly aimed at fostering a love of opera among local working-class communities. And over in the East End, people could regularly watch operas at the People’s Palace, a large entertainment complex on the Mile End Road. Touring opera companies regularly visited towns and cities around the country, and were eagerly anticipated by people of all social classes. Operatic music could also be widely heard in restaurants, hotel foyers and cinemas, and broadcasting and gramophone records had done a great deal to popularise and democratise the art form. But the opera boom of the early 1940s was in a different league. It would have been logical if opera had ground to a halt during the war, given the large resources conventionally needed to stage performances. To be sure, the most prominent venues did close: the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden was turned into one of the most popular wartime dance halls, and Glyndebourne in East Sussex became a home for evacuees from London. Read more | The War of the Operas: new money vs old in The Gilded Age Sadler’s Wells soldiered on during the early months of the war, staging matinees to get around the problem of blackouts, but soon enough the Blitz put paid to this, and the theatre became a refuge for the newly homeless. However, the company moved its operations to Burnley and toured extensively from there, putting on works including The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, Rigoletto and La bohème with a scaled-down cast, piano accompaniment, a simple painted backcloth and a sofa. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/La-Traviata-9c942fb-e1767623963300.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing two women sharing an afternoon tea on a tray, in a theatre auditorium" title="Audience members sip tea during the interval in a 1943 matinee performance of La Traviata at the New Theatre in London’s West End. The soaring appetite for opera among all classes fuelled a wartime renaissance in Britain (Image by Imperial War Museum)" /> The Times praised Sadler’s Wells for “Making converts to the art of music-drama” in places such as Oldham, Accrington and Stockport. Performances were so popular that theatres were desperate to book the company. The manager of the Hull New Theatre reported that his postbag was constantly full of letters from audience members “representing a cross-section of the community” who wanted to see the troupe. Periodically, when it was safe to do so – and even when it wasn’t – the company returned to London to perform in the West End. The soprano Elisabeth Parry recalled a performance at the Haymarket Theatre in 1944 when the show went on even while alarms rang and ‘Doodlebugs’ (V1 flying bombs) could be heard buzzing overhead. Audience members remained in their seats, and the singers and orchestra carried on as if nothing was happening. The success of the Sadler’s Wells tours showed that the British would happily embrace opera if only they were given the opportunity. Journalists expressed frustration that there had never been a move to set up a similar opera company in every major city around the country, because there was clearly plenty of demand. “No doubt there are as many busmen as there are butchers, bakers, baronets and bankers who enjoy a good opera when they can get it,” argued The Times. And the Times Literary Supplement proposed that, with a dozen more companies along the lines of Sadler’s Wells, “we should have a genuine art of opera in England as we already have a genuine public for it”. Sadler’s Wells worked in partnership with the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), which also arranged concerts in which professional musicians, including opera singers, performed in factories, air-raid shelters and hospitals. CEMA’s broad aim was to “carry music, drama and pictures to places which otherwise would be cut off from all contact with the masterpieces of happier days and times”. Operatic performances also featured in the Holidays at Home initiative organised by the Ministry of Labour, which turned open areas in cities into makeshift seaside resorts, and put on a wide range of entertainments. One such scheme in Liverpool, which included performances of opera, ran for 11 weeks in 1942 and attracted an audience of three quarters of a million. Arias on the airwaves Of course, there was also plenty of opera on the radio. In 1941, regular monthly broadcasts of studio operas resumed for the first time since the outbreak of war. The emphasis was primarily on well-known classics such as La Traviata and The Barber of Seville because, as the conductor Sir Adrian Boult said, “The evidence is general that the musical public turns to these sources for mental and spiritual recreation more eagerly than ever today.” BBC listener research from 1943 revealed that the numbers listening to variety shows were down by 20 per cent, whereas audiences for classical music and serious drama were on the rise. Read more | The biggest misconceptions about WW2 evacuees? This historian has the answers Victor Hely-Hutchinson, the BBC’s director of music from 1944, wrote that one of the few benefits of the war was the rise of an immense public enthusiasm for good music. “Go to an orchestral concert, or a fine operatic performance,” he said, “and you will find a corporate appreciation and desire for music of a kind, and on a scale, that has never been seen in Britain before.” Radio broadcasts allowed audiences to enjoy the highest standards of singing, which were not always evident in rough-and-ready touring productions. “Stayed at home tonight to listen to Faust – complete – on the wireless,” wrote one unnamed office worker in a diary submission for Mass Observation in 1942. “Feel very grateful to the BBC for giving us first-class opera; it is not often we get first-rate opera in Manchester, and there is nothing worse than good music badly executed.” Many people, men in particular, first encountered opera in the forces. Some took part in amateur operatic productions of works such as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at military bases in Britain. Others stationed in the Middle East with Paiforce (the Persia and Iraq force) had the opportunity to hear operatic arias in concerts organised by the Entertainments National Service Association. Some of the most respected British opera singers of the day, such as Walter Widdop, Dennis Noble and Miriam Licette, toured that region. But by far the most significant boom in enthusiasm for opera among soldiers was seen in Italy. In 1944, the Daily Express reported that “one of the biggest surprises of our ‘invasion’ of Italy has been the way the men have become opera fans”. Some enterprising army captains reformed the mothballed opera company at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. Word soon spread that watching opera was a good way to spend an evening, and British troops took to queueing around the block to get tickets. The 1,600-seat theatre was always full to capacity, and two performances a day had to be scheduled to meet demand. A similar enterprise was also set up at the bomb-damaged and abandoned Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily and, as the Allies moved north, more companies were founded in major cities across the country. Naomi Jacob, who in 1948 wrote a book about opera aimed specifically at the soldiers who had come to love it in Italy, recalled that when the idea had first been mooted, there had been a lot of scepticism about whether British and American troops would be willing to listen to opera. But houses sold out in advance, and audience members often came back several times. Jacob reported that “no better audience ever existed… they were punctual, they gave rapt attention, and their appreciation was unstinted”. From September 1943 to the end of the war, countless British servicemen watched performances of opera in Italy. The composer and broadcaster Spike Hughes reported that “in every town the same thing happened: the British soldier took to grand opera as if it were in his blood”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1754686839webready-9635b10-e1767623396598.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a stage show. A large ensemble crowd stands at the back of the stage, while one man stands at the front, crouched down with his arm held backwards" title="A 1940s opera performance in Rome. Many British servicemen first experienced – and came to love – opera while stationed in Italy during the war (Image by Getty Images)" /> Exposure to Italian opera in Italy helped soldiers to become more discerning listeners. In Britain before the war, opera was performed in English translation everywhere except Covent Garden and Glyndebourne, two ‘luxurious’ venues that sat apart from the national norm. But here, suddenly, was an audience that had shown itself perfectly capable of appreciating opera in the original language. The Rome correspondent for the Sunday Express reported that “an ‘opera-conscious’ audience is being created for Britain after the war, but if any theatre magnate wants to cater for them he must offer something better than a third-rate touring company”. Optimism for opera Hopes were high, then, for what Britain’s operatic landscape might look like in the postwar period. Even the most sceptical commentators were coming round to opera: the Daily Express reported that “the most ridiculous art-form ever invented” was “proving more popular than anybody ever imagined”. Of course, many people who had encountered opera in pared-back productions during the war had no idea what it really could be. The public was, as The Liverpool Daily Post put it, “as ignorant of the real taste of opera as a wartime infant is of the taste of bananas”. But appetites had been whetted, and Britons emerged from the war wanting to see not only more opera but better opera. To a large extent, these expectations were met. The theatre director Tyrone Guthrie argued after the war that London was becoming the musical centre of the world, with opera at its heart. In the autumn of 1947, audiences in the capital had the opportunity to watch no fewer than 23 different operas performed by five companies. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1360190650webready-ae6a690-e1767623509642.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing five women dancing on a stage, in front of a large crowd of men in military uniform, who are all sitting on the floor" title="Servicemen watch a wartime rehearsal by the Entertainments National Service Association, which toured combat zones (Image by Getty Images)" /> A new company based at the Cambridge Theatre in Seven Dials performed Italian opera in Italian to groups of former servicemen and West End shopworkers. For a while, even glamorous Covent Garden presented a form of “opera for the people”, running regional auditions and recruiting talented opera-singing coalminers, secretaries and milkmen as soloists for a new company. Read more | "Hooray! The war is ended": 5 people's recollections of VE Day Some of these initiatives were only short-lived. Even so, there was very much a buzz in the air around opera after the war, with the Musicians’ Union declaring in 1947 that classical music had become “a necessary part of the life of the people”. The wider acceptance of opera as bona fide popular entertainment seemed to be summed up by the fact that when the San Carlo Opera Company from Naples visited just after the war, it performed not only at Covent Garden but also at Butlin’s holiday camps in Filey and Skegness. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/San-Carlo-Opera-Companywebready-ce0beda-e1767624438971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a crowd of women, dressed in dresses and frilly white pinafores. One sits at a piano, surrounded by the others" title="Members of the San Carlo Opera Company of Naples perform at a Butlin’s holiday camp in the mid-1940s. Classical music was now, so the Musicians’ Union declared, “a necessary part of the life of the people” (Image by The Butlin’s Heritage Collection, History of Advertising Trust Archive (HAT))" /> Sadler’s Wells, meanwhile, made a triumphant return to its Islington home, where on 7 June 1945 it staged the premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes – a rapturously received work that seemed to signal a hopeful new beginning for British operatic composition. New troupes formed to take touring opera around the country in the late 1940s. The 1940s also saw the foundation of Welsh National Opera – a group of talented amateurs at the outset but later a major player on the British operatic scene. Perhaps most importantly, thanks to the huge explosion of interest in the high arts that had taken place during the war, the nation was far more open-minded towards the possibility of funding it afterwards. Up to this point, public subsidy had only ever been a pipe dream. Now CEMA provided a model for the new Arts Council of Great Britain, which leaned heavily towards favouring opera. Thanks to subsidies, opera could be staged at Covent Garden year-round rather than just for a three-month summer season, and prices could be kept low. The Arts Council also undertook local measures to foster music-making and music appreciation, setting up clubs in workplaces and lending gramophone records. Meanwhile, opera featured prominently on the BBC’s new Third Programme. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/WNO-Chorus-in-Ebenezer-Chapel-1946-Idloes-Owen-front-6th-from-the-leftwebready-12658e1-e1767624255173.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph of a large crowd of men and women, sitting in rows" title="Singers with the Welsh National Opera in the 1940s. The company made its debut with a double-bill of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci in 1946 (Image by Welsh National Opera)" /> “Fifteen years ago I should have felt obliged to defend opera as a form of art,” said the critic and academic Edward J Dent in a lecture delivered at Liverpool University in 1945, “but that is no longer necessary.” Opera continued to be enjoyed by large, socially mixed audiences through the 1950s, sixties and seventies, and was drawing record audiences in the eighties and nineties. But by those later decades, the media had begun to circulate a simplistic idea that opera was elitist, and by the turn of the millennium the idea was so entrenched that it was deterring newcomers to the genre. Opera was also becoming more expensive, declining on television and disappearing from the school curriculum. Today, opera still has something for everyone, but it has receded from the mainstream cultural conversation. Regrettably, it has become necessary, once again, to defend it as a form of art. Alexandra Wilson is a senior research fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Her latest book is Someone Else’s Music: Opera and the British (Oxford University Press), published in September 2025 This article was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine