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

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...

(l-r): Thomas Turgoose, Charlotte Ockelton, Sophie McShera and Michael Socha star as members of the Hartley clan in BBC Two series The Gallows Pole (Photo by BBC Pictures)

The Gallows PoleThe true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners

Are Bertha and George Russell real? Inside the real Vanderbilt divorces that rocked the Gilded Age

Arthur Hughes as Matthew Shardlake in Disney+ drama Shardlake

Watch thisThe best historical movies and TV series streaming now

Cast of 'The Gold' (Picture by BBC Pictures)

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

Composite image of the historical Talleyrand and his portrayal in Apple TV+ drama Carême

The master of political survival: Talleyrand, the cunning foreign minister of Carême

Was Carême a spy? The true story of the world’s first celebrity chef

Bridgerton & Queen Charlotte: 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

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

Regé-Jean Page and Phoebe Dynevor meet for a dance in Bridgerton

Q&AHow did people learn to dance in Baroque and Regency times?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Choreographer Jack Murphy with Sam Phillips as Lord Debling, and Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington.

How to recreate a Regency ballInsider secrets from Bridgerton's choreographer. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

La Belle Assemblee - British women's magazine published 1806-1837, founded by John Bell (1745-1831), now best known for its Regency era fashion plates from "Fashions and Fashion Plates 1800-1900", by James Laver. [Penguin Books Limited, London and New York, 1943]. Artist Unknown.

Was the Regency era a good time to be a woman?The truth not seen in Bridgerton

The real history of Bridgerton

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

King Æthelstan shown in a manuscript dated to before 1399 (Photo by incamerastock/Alamy Stock Photo)

Æthelstan: why is writing a biography of one of England's greatest kings so difficult?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Stained glass in Exeter Cathedral depicting King Æthelstan. (Dreamstime)

The astonishing Æthelstan. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A memorial tomb to King Æthelstan, in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. (Photo by Geography Photos/UIG via Getty Images)

If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Ewan Horrocks as Aelfweard and Adrian Schiller as Aethelhelm in The Last Kingdom season 5

Ælfweard and Æthelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex?

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

Frida Gustavsson as Freydís Eiríksdóttir in season 3 of Vikings: Valhalla

Was Freydís Eiríksdóttir a hero or a deranged murderess?

Statue of Leif Erikson (Leifur Erikssonn) in front of Eric the Red's home. (Photo by Draper White, Getty Images)

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

Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, and the real Queen Elizabeth II

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

Video podcastMasters of the Air: the real history behind the show. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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

TV and film on the HistoryExtra podcast

Listen to our interviews about the latest historical movies and TV…

The real Lady Whistledown & the golden age of gossip. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Jonah Hauer-King in The Tattooist of Auschwitz series

The Tattooist of Auschwitz: is it ok to fictionalise the Holocaust?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Shardlake: bringing the Tudor murder mystery to the screen. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Horrible Histories: 15 years of death, poo and talking rats. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Quizzes

Vintage illustration from the poem 'The Night Before Christmas, or a Visit from St Nicholas' of Santa tacking stockings of gifts on the mantle on Christmas Eve; color lithograph by William Roger Snow.

The ultimate Christmas quiz. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Week three quiz: education and school in Victorian Britain. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Cicero denounces plot organised by Catiline to take the power, mural painting by Cesare Maccari.

The ultimate Romans quiz. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Late-medieval England course: week four quiz. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.