What's The Real History Behind Your Favourite Movies & TV Shows? - HistoryExtra

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How true are your favourite historical dramas?

Delve into the real historical stories and people that inspired your favourite period dramas. Find out if the tales told on screen were really true, and where history has been bent out of shape in guise of creative licence...

HMS Bittern on fire and severely damaged after a German air attack in Namsos fjord, 30 April 1940. Both sides sustained heavy losses in the battle of Norway but the German navy was less able to absorb these than its British foe. (Photo by Topfoto)

Second World War

Narvik in context How battle for Norway in 1940 saved Britain

27th April 1946: Miners and steelworkers in Tredegar pay the Workmen's Medical Aid Society twopence out of every pound they earn to go towards their medical, dental and optical services. A nurse bends over a small boy to see to his injuries. Original Publication: Picture Post - 4062 - Where Bevan Got His National Health Plan - pub. 1946

General History

Upcoming in 2023: historical anniversaries, exhibitions & television

Thomas Seymour (Tom Cullen) and Katherine Parr (Jessica Raine) in Becoming Elizabeth

Watch this The best historical movies and TV series streaming now

Paris Police 1905 S2,2,Adolphe Stenheil (FRANCOIS RAISON),Tetra Media Fiction / Canal+,Remy Grandroques

History TV and radio in the UK: what’s on our screens this week?

Conrad Nagel and Dorothy Dalton in movie still from Fool's Paradise, 1921.

Hollywood in the 1920s: stars, scandals and the end of silent films

Amy James-Kelly as Anne Boleyn (right) in Netflix's Blood, Sex & Royalty.

Anne Boleyn’s voice: lost to the past, or louder than ever?

Bridgerton – the real history behind the drama

Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma in Bridgerton, next to a Regency portrait of Kitty Kirkpatrick.

Inspiring Bridgerton: the real South Asian women in Regency-era England

The Featherington sisters (played by Nichola Coughlan, Harriet Cains and Polly Walker) curtsey to Queen Charlotte in Netflix series ‘Bridgerton’ as part of their debutante debut. (Photo by LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX © 2020)

From balls to Bridgerton: a brief history of debutantes and the social season

Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

The real story of Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte: from glittering courts to tragic decline

General Early Modern

Q&A How did people learn to dance in Baroque and Regency times?

How to survive in the Georgian court

Bridgerton: behind the scenes of season 2

The real history of Bridgerton

The Last Kingdom – how real is Uhtred's tale?

Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred of Bebbanburg in The Last Kingdom season 5

The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg The historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero

An early 14th-century portrait of 10th-century leader Edward the Elder

Who was Edward the Elder? A brief guide to the Anglo-Saxon king

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, illustrated sitting on a throne

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians: the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings

Aelfwynn in season 5 of The Last Kingdom, holding the crown of Mercia that belonged to her mother

The real Aelfwynn of Mercia

The real history of The Last Kingdom

Vikings: Valhalla – the myths and the reality

Leif Erikson in Vikings Valhalla

Vikings: Valhalla – the real history behind Netflix’s successor to Vikings

Freydis Eiriksdottir in Vikings Valhalla

Was Freydís Eiríksdóttir a hero or a deranged murderess?

Photo of statue of Leif Erikson

Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland

Depiction of the battle of Stamford Bridge. Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, seen here wielding a battleaxe, was slain at the battle

Harald Hardrada: why there’s more to the last great Viking than his death in 1066

The real history of Vikings: Valhalla

Find out the real history behind your favourite TV shows

Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Diana (Emma Corrin) in 'The Crown', left; and the real royal couple dancing in Sydney

Netflix’s The Crown: the real history behind the royal drama

Aidan Turner as Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo: the real history behind the new Renaissance drama

The Spanish Princess Part II. (Image by Starz)

The real history behind The Spanish Princess

The cast of Downton Abbey in front of Highclere Castle. (Image by Alamy)

The upstairs/downstairs world of Downton Abbey: how true to life is it?

Alex Hogh Andersen as Ivar the Boneless

The real Vikings: the early medieval world behind the hit drama

Louisa Jacobson as Marian Brook & Denée Benton as Peggy Scott in The Gilded Age. (Image by Alison Cohen Rosa © 2021 Heyday Productions, LLC and Universal Television LLC)

The Gilded Age preview: “Entry into a world that really hasn’t been covered on television before”

Claire Foy as the Duchess of Argyll in A Very British Scandal (left); Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll (right)

The Argyll divorce: the society scandal that rocked 1960s Britain

More historical dramas

What's the real history behind your favourite movies?

Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain, in Munich – The Edge of War

Second World War

A martyr and a hero? How Munich – The Edge of War tries to soften Neville Chamberlain’s rotten reputation

AnneBoleyn-Diana

8 historical reasons behind Anne Boleyn’s appearance in Princess Diana film Spencer

Zazie Beetz and Jonathan Majors in the Netflix film The Harder They Fall

The Harder They Fall: the real cowboys who inspired the black Western

“A spotlight on historic societal misogyny and disbelief of women”: what The Last Duel gets right and wrong

“An intoxicating triumph true to the grandeur of the poem”: a historian’s review of The Green Knight

Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla: the history behind The Current War

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