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Pageantry and politics: a history of British royal visits to the US
As transatlantic tensions swirled about King Charles III’s visit to Washington DC in 2026, Sam Edwards reveals how past royal tours have steadied the ‘special relationship’ in times of crisis
The April 2026 royal visit to the United States came at a particularly challenging moment for the US-UK ‘special relationship’. In the preceding months, President Donald Trump had repeatedly singled out prime minister Keir Starmer for blunt criticism, even going so far as to declare that Starmer as “no Churchill”. Meanwhile, the royal family similarly found itself caught up in transatlantic controversy: the Epstein scandal. If all that wasn’t challenging enough, King Charles’s visit to America also came at a time when the US-UK relationship was drawing even more scrutiny than usual. 2026 is year is the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, which popularised the phrase ‘special relationship’, and it’s also the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The latter was of course the event that severed the connection between the American colonies and the British Crown and thereby put the transatlantic relationship onto a very different trajectory. In short, the visit came at a time of significant turbulence in the US-UK relationship. King Charles, however, might have been able to take some reassurance from the fact that several of his predecessors had similarly travelled to the United States during moments of challenge, change and upheaval... <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2GettyImages-1320405043big-566d798-e1777245347971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large group of men and women in formal 19th-century dress gather outside a red-brick tomb set within a leafy landscape, their attention focused on a central meeting of figures. Women wear layered gowns with bonnets, while men in dark suits and top hats stand in lines, with trees and a distant sky framing the scene." title="A painting by Thomas Pritchard Rossiter captures the Prince of Wales’s historic visit to George Washington’s tomb in 1860. The young prince, who later ruled as Edward VII, can be seen standing with President James Buchanan to the right of the tomb’s entrance (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1860: The first royal visit The very first visit to the United States by a British royal came in 1860 and involved Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. Its origins lay in an invitation received by Queen Victoria from Canadian leaders keen that she see for herself “the progress and prosperity of this distant part of your dominions”. Citing duty, the queen declined. But she despatched her eldest son in her place. When President James Buchanan got wind of the situation, he then saw an opportunity and so extended an invitation for the prince to journey south of the border. The royal household happily accepted, and the man destined to become Edward VII thereby became the first British royal to visit the United States. Conscious of diplomatic protocol, his visit to the US was billed as ‘private’, and so he travelled under one of his many other titles, Lord Baron Renfrew. The prince landed in Canada in July 1860 and spent two months touring, during which he was frequently greeted by cheering crowds. No one was quite sure, though, how he would be received when he crossed the border into the United States. After all, it was only just over 40 years prior that British soldiers had marched on Washington and burned down the White House. Still more recently, in the 1840s, the relationship between Britain and its former colonies had again been fraught, this time due to American designs on the Pacific Northwest. Read more | When was the White House built – and why is it white? There was no need to worry, however, as just like in Canada the prince received a rapturous welcome. Travelling unofficially as ‘Renfrew’, he was met in Washington by President Buchanan and spent some time touring the capital. But the most celebrated moment came a few miles away, at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Here, Lord Renfrew laid a wreath at the tomb of George Washington, the man who had of course defeated his great grandfather, George III, all those years ago. It was a powerful gesture, and it has been something of a royal rite of passage ever since. In 1970, for instance, the Prince of Wales – now King Charles III – laid his own wreath at Mount Vernon. Perhaps this month we will see his son, Prince William, do likewise. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/3EU058443-a21ccb9-e1777245457912.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="George VI leans forward to place a wreath against a white stone tomb, his figure slightly bowed in a solemn gesture. Rows of uniformed servicemen stand rigidly at attention on either side, while a small group of onlookers watches from the foreground." title="King George VI lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, 1939. The king’s five-day visit to the US, in which he met with President Franklin D Roosevelt, was the first such trip by a reigning British monarch (Photo by Topfoto)" /> 1939: The storm clouds of war The 1860 visit of ‘Lord Baron Renfrew’ occurred just as internal tensions in the United States were threatening to tear the country asunder. Within a couple of weeks of the prince’s departure, a new president – Abraham Lincoln – had been elected, while just a few months later war had broken out between North and South. The fighting would rage for the next four years, only ending in 1865. Almost 80 years later, in the summer of 1939, another American tour by British royalty likewise unfolded amidst the gathering storm clouds of war, albeit this time in Europe rather than in the United States. The 1939 visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth was a real landmark occasion: the first ever by a reigning British monarch. It came, moreover, at a particularly challenging moment for the royal family. Just three years earlier, in December 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the British throne. His decision provoked a constitutional crisis, but it also had ramifications for the US-UK relationship because it was at root a consequence of the king’s desire to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. The 1939 visit was thus a chance for the British royal family to shift the narrative. Equally important, it also provided an invaluable opportunity to strengthen transatlantic ties just as the Nazi threat in Europe intensified. The visit unfolded in June and was keenly supported by the US president, Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR). Like Lord Baron Renfrew’s visit in 1860, the royal tour took in a number of famous American landmarks, including Mount Vernon, where the British monarch followed the example set by his grandfather and laid a wreath at the tomb of George Washington. Read more | Why was George Washington the pride of Victorian England? Other significant episodes included a visit to the New York World’s Fair, a tour of the Capitol, and another wreath-laying, this time at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps most famous of all, however, was the king and queen’s meeting with FDR at his Hyde Park home. To the delight of the American press, the king was seen enjoying typical American picnic fare: hot dogs! By all accounts, the 1939 royal visit was a success. One American observer later wrote that “Their Majesties’ hundred hours in the United States had given rise to an enthusiasm without parallel in American history”. Later, one US newspaper even declared that because of the King’s visit “the old bond between the democracies has taken on higher, warmer, yes friendlier qualities than it ever had before”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/4GettyImages-79655098-fcd4ee0-e1777245704830.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A long line of cars moves down a wide, tree-lined avenue beneath a large triangular banner reading “Welcome Queen Elizabeth II”. Dense crowds line both sides of the road, with flags, uniforms and police escorts creating a sense of ceremony and scale." title="A motorcade marks Elizabeth II’s state visit to the United States in 1957. The young monarch faced the task of mending the so-called ‘special relationship’, which had been strained by the Suez Crisis (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1957: The new Elizabethan era Despite the success of the 1939 visit, the Americans did not immediately commit themselves to the British cause when war broke out in Europe later that year. But once the United States had entered the war (in December 1941) an alliance of unprecedented closeness was indeed forged. For the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, this was the beginning of what he would call the “special relationship”, a transatlantic partnership built on shared history, culture, values, and sacrifice. Nonetheless, for all its undoubted closeness the special relationship was frequently tested during the Cold War, most famously during the Suez Crisis of late 1956. The crisis was precipitated by the decision of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to seize the Suez Canal zone, a vital trade route. In response, the British and French (with Israeli support) launched a military operation to regain control, but they did so without first securing American approval. Their actions quickly met with vigorous criticism from Washington, with President Eisenhower demanding an immediate Anglo-French withdrawal on pain of severe economic sanctions. Chastened, the British withdrew their forces, and with his credibility damaged beyond repair, prime minister Anthony Eden duly resigned, albeit citing ill health. Read more | How significant was the Suez Crisis? Among the first key tasks of the new government of prime minister Harold Macmillan was therefore to restore trust with Washington. Fortunately ‘Super Mac’, as he was known, was very well-placed to do so – he knew President Eisenhower from their service together during the Second World War, while his ties to ‘Ike’s’ successor, President John F Kennedy, were even closer: he was uncle-in-law to JFK’s younger sister Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy (tragically killed in a plane crash in 1948). These close ties would certainly pay dividends, but when it came to rebuilding the special relationship Macmillan also had a trump card to play – royalty. The chance to play it finally came a year after the Suez crisis, in October 1957. Crowned in 1953 in a televised ceremony watched on both sides of the Atlantic, Queen Elizabeth II was eminently suited for the job of mending the special relationship, so recently strained by Suez. After all, she and the president were well-acquainted from the war years, and she was also already familiar with America. She had first visited – while still a princess – in 1951, during which visit she met with Eisenhower’s predecessor, President Harry Truman. The Queen was also very aware of the diplomatic impact of her parents’ visit in 1939. In short, this was one monarch ready and able to meet the challenge of the moment. The extent to which the 1957 state visit represented a clear attempt to restore the special relationship is quickly apparent in the itinerary. This was full of evocative symbolism and included a visit to Jamestown – to mark the 350th anniversary of English settlement – as well as a state dinner at the White House and a ticker-tape parade in New York City. It was a resounding success and was followed during her reign by no less than three more state visits to the United States. The second, in 1976, occurred during another testing moment in the transatlantic relationship. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/5GettyImages-57078933mod-0179412-e1777245939916.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Elizabeth II, wearing a sparkling tiara and sash, raises a glass as she smiles towards a suited President Gerald Ford returning the toast. A long table covered in bright flowers fills the foreground, with other formally dressed guests standing nearby." title="President Gerald Ford toasts Elizabeth II during the monarch’s 1976 state visit to the United States. The trip coincided with celebrations marking 200 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1976: The bicentennial The Queen’s 1976 state visit to the United States was purposefully timed so as to coincide with a major anniversary celebration – the bicentennial of the American Revolution. But like the visit of 1957 it also unfolded in the aftermath of significant transatlantic tensions, this time connected to the Vietnam War. The conflict in southeast Asia had dominated US foreign policy in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it also caused disagreements with European allies, including Britain. At the crux of the matter was the persistent refusal of the British government to send troops to fight alongside their American ally, a decision which drew pointed criticism from Washington. For both governments, the Queen’s 1976 state visit – which came at the invitation of President Gerald Ford – was thus an opportunity to reset the relationship after the recent disagreements. Read more | Queen Elizabeth II’s relationships with US presidents Like her 1957 visit, the details were worked out with an eye on the symbolism. The itinerary saw the Queen attend various bicentennial-focused ceremonies, and she also hosted her own reception at the British embassy in Washington. One of those in attendance declared that this was “the best diplomatic reception since King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited in 1939”. But the highlight was a speech the Queen gave on her arrival at Philadelphia during which she expressed her “sincere gratitude” to “the Founding Fathers of this great republic for having taught Britain a very valuable lesson”. The Americans were delighted, with all differences – historic and recent – now happily forgotten. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/6GettyImages-117937786-1d6273a-e1777246001564.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Elizabeth II wears a pale green coat and wide-brimmed hat with a pink accent, leaning on a railing and looking ahead. Beside her, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and other spectators in formal attire watch the event, some holding binoculars." title="Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh watch the Kentucky Derby during the monarch’s fourth and final state visit to the United States, May 2007. Although the monarch was able to indulge her passion for horse racing, the trip came amid heightened tensions stemming from the War on Terror (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2007: A fond farewell The Queen’s fourth and final state visit to the US was in 2007, and like all its predecessors it occurred amidst geopolitical turmoil (it was the same with the third, in 1991, which came amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union and shortly after the Gulf War). This time the turmoil was tied to the ongoing War on Terror, which had seen British forces again fight side by side with the American ally. But although this suggested that the special relationship was back on a sure footing elsewhere the picture was rather more complicated. American unilateralism had in fact strained the transatlantic relationship, producing significant anti-war sentiment in Britain as well as vocal criticism of Washington from other European allies (especially the French). Frustrated by what they felt to be his slavish devotion to the Americans, some in the British press had even characterised the prime minister, Tony Blair, as President Bush’s ‘lapdog’. Just as after both Suez and Vietnam, therefore, the 2007 state visit offered a chance to use pageantry and ceremony to repair some of the damage. This objective was again very apparent in the itinerary, which, in homage to the 1957 visit, included a trip to Jamestown, then marking the 400th anniversary of English settlement. Other stopovers, all of which were well-reported in the US press, included attendance at the Kentucky Derby (the Queen was well-known for her love of horse racing) as well as a formal state banquet at the White House. It was the latter which also produced one of the trip’s most memorable moments: while giving a toast, President George W Bush had thanked the Queen for her role in the bicentennial celebrations, erroneously suggesting while doing so that this had occurred in 1776 (rather than 1976). The Queen raised her eyebrows in response, which in turn led the president to quip that she had given him “a look that only a mother could give a child”.
Long to reign over us: how did Queen Elizabeth II survive seven decades of dizzying change?
When Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952, she could barely have conceived the currents – imperial retreat, multiculturalism, de-industrialiation – that would transform the nation during her reign. On the centenary of the Queen’s birth, David Cannadine explores how she navigated seven decades of dizzying change
When I was born in September 1950, King George VI had just over a year to live. I have no memory of him or his reign, and my first royal recollection was of the coronation of the second Queen Elizabeth – or, more precisely, of images of her state coach and horses, which I cut out of a souvenir magazine. My parents did not own a television set, and did not know anyone who did, so it was only in 2012, the year of Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee, that I watched the remastered version of the original coronation broadcast from Westminster Abbey. Richard Dimbleby’s reverential commentary, suffused with ardour and optimism, did indeed belong to that earlier time. When the Queen celebrated her platinum jubilee in 2022, few people in the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth could remember when she had not been on the throne. Like Queen Victoria, Elizabeth II had become part of what Victoria’s biographer Lytton Strachey called the “indissoluble” scheme of things, which made it impossible for many people to imagine the world without her. Apart from just over a year at the beginning, and (thus far) four years at the end, my own life has coincided exactly with the 70 years of her reign. I was no part of her life, and never met her, but she was certainly a part of mine, as she was of millions of people in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and far beyond. Joining Shakespeare I never imagined it would one day fall to me to tell Queen Elizabeth’s life story, but in 2014 I was appointed editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and it seemed likely that the Queen would die on my watch. The convention established for the ODNB’s predecessor, the original Dictionary of National Biography, was that when the monarch died, the editor would contribute the entry on him or her, and it duly fell to me to write the life of Elizabeth II. I did so in two forms: as a short book of 50,000 words, published late in 2025 by Oxford University Press; and as her entry in the ODNB, available online from April this year, which was cut to 35,000 words, putting the late Queen in the company of her namesake Queen Elizabeth I, along with Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. The ODNB entry is a tightly written biography, while the longer book historicises the Queen by setting her more fully in the context of her times. Read more | Buckingham Palace was the height of royal power – so why did Queen Victoria and Albert hate it? Producing these two different versions reminded me how biographers and historians take different approaches when writing individual lives. Some of the most outstanding recent biographies have been by historians – among them Ian Kershaw on Hitler, Jonathan Steinberg on Bismarck and Diarmaid MacCulloch on Thomas Cromwell – but it is a genre about which many scholars remain sceptical. The political and constitutional historian Geoffrey Elton spent his life determined not to produce a biography of Thomas Cromwell, even though he greatly admired him; and in writing his life of Hitler, Ian Kershaw noted that biography ran the risk of “over-emphasising the role of the individual in shaping and determining events”, and “ignoring or playing down the social and political context in which those actions took place”. These risks most certainly apply to biographies of monarchs, though they are less acute when dealing with kings and queens who proactively make history. But sovereigns who reign reactively, rather than rule proactively, create serious expositional challenges, anticipated by Karl Marx, when he observed that “men [and women] make their own histories, but they do not do so under circumstances of their own choosing”. Elizabeth II was just such a circumscribed monarch, living out her life against trends and trajectories in many ways far from friendly. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-120520595webready-f7c08c2-e1776683608167.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a person seated at a table with a BBC microphone in front of them, wearing a light blouse and a pearl necklace while holding a sheet of paper." title="In a speech broadcast to mark her 21st birthday – while she was touring South Africa – Princess Elizabeth pledged herself to a life of duty (Image by Getty Images)" /> Decline and fall One indication of this hostile 20th-century environment is that many monarchies were history’s victims rather than its victors. By the end of the First World War, the great-power thrones of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany had disappeared. The Second World War led to a further royal conflagration, as the Yugoslavian, Italian, Bulgarian and Romanian crowns were subsequently abolished, while the survival of the Japanese emperor was the exception that proved the rule. Thereafter the king of Egypt was driven out, the king of Iraq was murdered; Libya, Afghanistan, Greece, Abyssinia and Iran dispensed with their sovereigns, and only the return of a Spanish monarch in 1975 bucked that trend. This widespread royal retreat was accompanied by imperial dissolution, as the maritime empires of Portugal, Belgium the Netherlands and France disappeared during the second half of the 20th century. And so did the British empire, which had been the biggest of them all. Kipling had anticipated this retreat at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897, when his poem Recessional stressed the ephemerality of empire and the transience of global dominion. Between the partition of India and the return of Hong Kong to China 50 years later, the British empire went into full recessional mode. Elizabeth’s father, George VI, was the last British monarch to be Emperor of India, and she ‘gave away’ even more territory than George III. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-613457692webready-3319b3d-e1776682784658.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white portrait shows six people in formal ceremonial dress. At the centre stand a man in a decorated military uniform and a woman in a gown with a long train and veil. Two seated figures and two standing figures wear military uniforms with medals or elegant gowns and jewellery. Draped curtains and a carpeted floor form the backdrop." title="A family portrait from the wedding day of Elizabeth II’s parents, 26 April 1923. (From l to r): the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, the Duchess and Duke of York (the future Queen Mother and George VI) and Queen Mary and George V (Image by Getty Images)" /> A royal rebranding Such was the broader, confining global context against which Princess Elizabeth, born in 1926 as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, lived out her life. One further indication of these changing and challenging times was that only one of her parents was royal. Before the First World War, Europe’s ruling houses constituted an international, inter-connected elite, as exemplified by Queen Victoria’s children, most of whom wed their continental (especially German) relatives. But the First World War, which ranged the British and German royal dynasties against each other, put an end to that, and in 1917 George V rebranded the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as the House of Windsor, and decreed that his descendants might select marriage partners from among British families, by which he meant members of the aristocracy. Read more | The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen The Duke of York duly wed Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Scottish grandee the Earl of Strathmore, which meant Princess Elizabeth was only ‘semi-royal’, whereas both the parents of Prince Philip of Denmark and Greece, whom she would later marry, were royalty. Philip may have belonged to the rootless and impoverished interwar diaspora of minor princelings, but his lineage was grander than Princess Elizabeth’s. At the time of her birth, there was no realistic likelihood Elizabeth would become the queen regnant of the United Kingdom. Like all Europe’s remaining royal houses, the British monarchy was patriarchal and patrilineal, which meant that if the Duke and Duchess of York produced a son, he would immediately leapfrog his elder sister and become first in the line of succession. And Princess Elizabeth’s uncle, the Prince of Wales, who would accede to the throne on the death of his father, George V, might yet marry and father a boy who would eventually follow him as king. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-514080420webready-b1c182a-e1776682680633.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows two people standing together: one wearing a light dress with a brooch and a fur‑trimmed hat, the other in a dark suit with a patterned tie, light vest, and a flower pinned to the lapel. A stone wall with a metal window grille is behind them." title="The former Edward VIII marries Wallis Simpson in June 1937 after abdicating the throne. In doing so, says David Cannadine, he put “self and love before service and duty” (Image by Getty Images)" /> This meant there was every initial expectation that Princess Elizabeth would live out her life as a minor member of the royal family, marrying a British aristocratic landowner, doing good works in the local community, and enjoying the company of her horses and dogs. But she would not be the first member of the British royal family in modern times to inherit the throne unexpectedly. The same had been true of Victoria, of George V, and of her father, George VI. All three, like Elizabeth, were unanticipated monarchs who became successful sovereigns – as she would do to an even greater extent. This unexpected turn in Elizabeth’s life took place in 1936, when she was 10 years old. Her uncle, who had succeeded George V as Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, putting self and love before service and duty. But this obliged Elizabeth’s father to put service and duty before self and love, by becoming the sovereign, as George VI, he had never wanted to be. Having sired no son, this meant his elder daughter became heiress presumptive, and she fully assimilated her parents’ ethos of duty and service. In 1947, on her 21st birthday, when she was accompanying her parents on a tour of South Africa, Princess Elizabeth delivered a broadcast, pledging her life, “whether it be long or short”, to the service of the empire and Commonwealth, and it was a pledge she honoured and kept all her life. But that was not the only reason why 1947 was so important a year. India became independent, and was partitioned, portending the end of the British empire and its evolution into the voluntary community of association known as the Commonwealth. That same year, Elizabeth wed Prince Philip, beginning a more than 70-year union that would be perhaps the greatest royal marriage in history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-613465636webready-d118ece-e1776682342956.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a bride in a lace wedding gown, tiara, and pearl jewellery holding a bouquet, smiling at a man in a formal military uniform with medals. Dark curtains form the background." title="Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten on their wedding day, 20 November 1947. Their 73-year union was, writes David Cannadine, “perhaps the greatest royal marriage in history” (Image by Getty Images)" /> British revolution Thereafter there were many milestones in Elizabeth’s long life and reign, extending across an astonishing 70 years. Here are just a few of them. 1952: the death of her father, her accession as the second Queen Elizabeth, and the widespread belief that a ‘new Elizabethan age’ had dawned. (Due to Britain’s diminishing status in the world, that belief would prove to be mistaken.) 1960: Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change speech’ delivered in South Africa, portending the end of what remained of the British empire. 1964: the advent of the Queen’s first Labour government, led by Harold Wilson. 1965: Winston Churchill’s state funeral, both the last rites of the great man and a requiem for Britain as a great power. 1979: Margaret Thatcher took office, as the Queen’s first female prime minister. 1997: the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, delivered a jolt to the monarchy and the nation. 1999: the Queen opened devolved legislatures in Wales and Scotland. 2011: she visited Ireland and expressed sympathy for “those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past”. 2016: 43 years after Britain joined the EEC, an EU Referendum ended in Brexit. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1450414706webready-b13781c-e1776682235671.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a group of formally dressed people standing on steps outside a building. Some wear military uniforms, others fur coats or ceremonial robes. One naval officer salutes while others hold programs." title="The State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill" /> Significantly, none of these events were initiated by Elizabeth II, but she had to adapt to all of them. That is what monarchs who reign but not rule must do. At the same time, there were many milestones in her own life, as she celebrated a unique grand slam of four jubilees. 1977: her silver jubilee (25 years) – not yet even halfway through the Queen’s long reign, taking place during James Callaghan’s premiership, nearing the end of a difficult decade. 2002: her golden jubilee (50 years) – initially anxious, following the dismal 1990s and the deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, but turning out to be an unexpectedly successful amalgam of royal tradition and Blairite ‘cool Britannia’. 2012: her diamond jubilee (60 years) – perhaps the happiest of them all, following the marriage of William and Kate Middleton, preceding the successful opening of the London Olympics, and instantiating the Queen’s own hard-won apotheosis. 2022: her platinum jubilee (70 years) – inescapably elegiac, as the Queen was largely absent from the celebrations, and her last years had been hard, with Covid, the death of Prince Philip and the departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to the US. But she made a final appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where she had first been glimpsed as a baby in her mother’s arms 95 years before. The Queen’s long reign meant her closest relatives were obliged to adapt in unprecedented ways. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother became a dowager queen for half a century. Prince Philip gave up a promising naval career and subordinated his life to supporting hers. Prince Charles had to wait until his early 70s before he became king. Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, found neither personal happiness nor a fulfilling public role. In different ways, this must have been difficult for all four of them. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-3335882webready-e52ecc4-e1776682455805.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a woman in a light outfit, hat, gloves, and pearls holding a bouquet as she interacts with a crowd of adults and children waving flags." title="The Queen meets children during her silver jubilee celebrations, 1977. Despite the smiles, Britain was suffering a crisis of confidence at this point in her reign (Image by Getty Images)" /> Unlike their parents, but like their Aunt Margaret, three of the Queen’s children – the Prince of Wales, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew – divorced, which meant the (dysfunctional) royal family increasingly became a scandal-ridden soap opera. Prince Andrew’s excessive sense of entitlement, and his close friendship with the convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, were deplorable displays of bad behaviour and demonstrated still more deplorable and damaging lapses of judgment. The Duke of Sussex denounced his father in public for being cold and aloof, while his wife branded members of the royal family as uncaring, unsympathetic and racist. “Recollections may vary,” was the Queen’s response. As someone who belonged to the generation that had gone through the Second World War, she was ill at ease with the emotional incontinence that had become widespread during the closing decades of her reign. Total transformation During her 70 years on the throne, Britain changed significantly. In the early 1950s, the traditional aristocracy still counted in the corridors of power, the middle classes were closely linked to the empire, the military and the civil service, and working-class men were overwhelmingly employed in such heavy industries as coal mining, steel making and ship building. Except for the Queen, women knew their (subordinate) place, social mobility was limited, higher education was restricted to a minority, Britain was, to a large extent, ethnically homogeneous, the Church of England was a significant force, and the Victorian moral code still prevailed. Read more | The royal family and their right to privacy: who should have access to the records? But by the end of the Queen’s reign, the aristocracy was no longer the power elite, the middle class sought alternative employment, and the de-industrialisation of Britain meant most men no longer undertook hard manual labour. Rising standards of living and the expansion of universities made the country a more mobile and less deferential society, women occupied prominent positions in public and professional life, the influence of the Church of England had declined, the Victorian moral code had been dismantled, and the influx of immigrants from the dissolving empire meant Britain became an increasingly multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multicultural society. To all this the Queen adapted, slowly and not always enthusiastically, but overall, wisely and well. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-530137388webready-eab239c-e1776682946240.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Three people at a formal event: one in a sequined gown with a tiara and jewellery, one in a patterned dress with gloves and pearls, and one in a light traditional outfit. They appear to be conversing in an ornate indoor setting." title="With Margaret Thatcher at a Commonwealth meeting in Zambia, 1979. The Queen placed great store on Britain’s membership of this association of more than 2.7 billion people (Image by Getty Images)" /> As the United Kingdom diversified, the British empire diminished, until by the end of her reign it had almost completely disappeared. However much she cared about it, and however hard she worked at it, being Head of the Commonwealth was scarcely the same as being Empress of India. In 1952 Britain was still – just – a great global power; 70 years later, it was a middle-sized nation that had sought to compensate for the loss of empire by joining the European Economic Community, a venture that was abandoned following the referendum of 2016. It thus fell to Elizabeth to preside, not only over domestic devolution, diversification and de-industrialisation, but also over imperial retreat and international withdrawal. This meant that although in later life she became, like Victoria before her, a justly venerated matriarch, the uplifting, expansive narrative widely proclaimed in 1887 and 1897 found no echoes in 2002, 2012 and 2022. Queen Elizabeth II’s greatest achievement was, perhaps, to make recessional majestic. These were not circumstances of her own choosing, but she made history, all the same. Sir David Cannadine is the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. His latest book is Queen Elizabeth II: A Concise Biography of an Exceptional Sovereign (OUP, 2025) This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen
At the time of her birth, Elizabeth II was a princess who was never expected to succeed the throne. So how did she become queen? From her unconventional childhood to the crisis that made her a monarch, Kate Williams charts Elizabeth II's life within the royal family before she was crowned...
In April 1926, Britain was on the brink of the General Strike called by the TUC. There had been an economic perfect storm: the postwar crash in coal prices, combined with the government putting Britain on the gold standard, had put mining under pressure. After a government commission recommended reducing miners’ wages, the stage was set for an all-out strike of miners and other workers covered by the TUC, including railway and transport workers. But despite being in a crisis, the home secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks could not be excused from witnessing the legitimacy of a royal baby. The Duke and Duchess of York – George V’s second son, Bertie and his wife, the former Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon – were expecting their first child. Although the baby was not a direct heir to the throne, Sir William still had to travel to 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair, a home owned by Bowes-Lyons, where the child was due to be born. Read more | Queen Elizabeth II: 50+ facts about her life and reign The little girl was born by caesarean section at 2.40am on 21 April. “We have long wanted a child to make our happiness complete,” wrote the duke. The child was “a little darling with a lovely complexion”, decreed Queen Mary. “I do hope that you and papa are as delighted as we are to have a granddaughter, or would you sooner have had another grandson?” wrote the duke to his father, George V. The baby was officially third in line to the throne, but since she was the child of George V’s second son – and female – she was destined to be pushed down the succession by sons born to her uncle, the Prince of Wales, and her father. She was called Elizabeth Alexandra Mary after her mother, great-grandmother and grandmother – after consorts, not queens regnant. The princess was destined for a good marriage and little more. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1404441219-533f6bb-e1776639421178.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A baby Queen Elizabeth II is held by her mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, while her father, the future King George VI, looks on in a black-and-white family portrait." title="The Duke and Duchess of York with the infant Princess Elizabeth, 1926. The Duke would later become George VI following the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII in 1936 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> On 3 May, the TUC called the General Strike. Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin called it the “road to anarchy”, but the government played hard, drafting in volunteers and calling forth the middle classes to step in. By 12 May it had been called off and the following year the government outlawed sympathetic strikes and strikes intended to coerce the government, making another general strike impossible and restoring the existing structures of power. Two weeks later, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was christened by the archbishop of York at Buckingham Palace. The young princess was a favourite with her grandparents and one of the few people in the family not afraid of the king, whom she called ‘Grandpa England’. In early 1927, her parents departed on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, leaving her with her nannies. When they returned, they took a new house, 145 Piccadilly, near Hyde Park. It had 25 bedrooms, a lift and a ballroom but, by royal standards, Elizabeth was growing up in a cosy, normal house and her playmates in the gardens were the daughters of businessmen and doctors, not fellow princesses. In 1930, Princess Margaret was born. This time the home secretary, John R Clynes, had to trek up to Glamis Castle, the ancestral home of the Duchess of York. “I am glad to say that she has large blue eyes and a will of iron, which is all the equipment a lady needs!” the duchess wrote. As they grew up, it became evident that the two little girls had very different personalities. Elizabeth was conscientious, dutiful and orderly – she couldn’t go to sleep without unsaddling and feeding all her nursery horses and lining them up neatly. Margaret was playful, determined and fond of pranks – she blamed any mistakes or spillages on her imaginary friend, Cousin Halifax. In 1933, when Elizabeth was seven, she received a new governess, Miss Marion Crawford. She had been recommended to the Duchess of York as a “country girl who was a good teacher, except when it came to mathematics”. Fortunately, the duchess was not looking for a challenging academic schedule. Both she and her husband had hated school (the duke had been ridiculed as a dunce). What the royal couple wanted for their daughters was a “really happy childhood, with lots of pleasant memories”, which meant minimal lessons. The king had only one request: ‘‘Teach Margaret and Lilibet a decent hand.” Miss Crawford’s regimen was gentle. Elizabeth received lessons from 9.30 until 11 in the morning and the rest of the day was devoted to outdoor games, dancing and singing, with a rest period for an hour and a half. Unlike her parents, Elizabeth had an aptitude for learning and enjoyed history and literature but she had little opportunity for sustained study. Queen Mary criticised their education and recalled that she had busied herself with homework in the holidays – but to no avail. In her free time, Elizabeth was fondest of dogs and horses. She declared she wanted to marry a farmer so she could have lots of “cows, horses and dogs”. George V died in January 1936, and the Prince of Wales assumed the throne as Edward VIII. As king he was more dependent on his lover, Wallis Simpson, than ever. But although the foreign press discussed his relationship with the American divorcee at length, the British newspapers stayed quiet. In late October, Wallis filed for divorce from her second husband and it was clear that the king meant to marry her. The government was as determined to stop him, for it was thought the people would not accept a divorced consort. The empire governments mostly refused the idea outright. “It was plain to everyone that there was a great shadow over the house,” wrote Miss Crawford. Read more | The death of King George V – what happened? On 10 December, 10-year-old Elizabeth was about to write up her notes from her swimming lesson when she heard chants of “God Save the King” outside. She asked a footman what had happened and he told her that her uncle had abdicated and her father was king. She ran up to tell her sister the news. “Does that mean you will have to be the next queen?” asked Margaret. “Yes, some day,” replied Elizabeth. “Poor you,” said Margaret. In the face of crisis and change, Elizabeth adopted a technique she would use throughout her life: she stuck to her routine, attempting to appear unruffled. She wrote up her swimming notes, and at the top of the page she wrote: “Abdication Day.” Royal Women with Kate Williams Join Professor Kate Williams for a six-part HistoryExtra series uncovering the little-known stories behind some of history’s most famous queens. From Cleopatra to Elizabeth II, we’ll explore how royal women navigated power, politics, and expectation and how their legacies were shaped long after their deaths. Watch now The jolly life of 145 Piccadilly was at an end. The family moved into Buckingham Palace and her father and mother – who had always been so present – became consumed by meetings, receptions and politics. The former king, now the Duke of Windsor, the Uncle David of whom the children had been so fond, was sent to Europe. Elizabeth attended her father’s coronation, accompanied by Queen Mary, writing that the abbey was covered in “a sort of haze of wonder as papa was crowned, at least I thought so”. Elizabeth was now heir to the throne. Queen Mary stepped up her campaign over education, and more history was introduced. In 1938, Elizabeth began receiving lessons from the vice provost of Eton, Henry Marten, on constitutional history. Marten’s teachings were important to Elizabeth’s perception of her role: he told her that monarchy was strengthened by adaptability and talked of the importance of broadcasting directly to her subjects. The palace and the government were concerned that the princess did not seem too isolated. The First Buckingham Girl Guide Pack was instituted, with 20 girls invited to the palace on Wednesday afternoons. They learned trekking in the palace grounds and practised signalling in the corridors. On 15 March 1939, German tanks entered Prague. The ‘peace’ created through appeasement by prime minister Neville Chamberlain was shattered. “Who can hope to appease a boa constrictor,” declared The Telegraph. The country moved towards war. In the summer of 1939, Elizabeth and her parents paid a visit to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where the king had studied. There she was introduced to Philip of Greece, 18 to her 13. The princess was fascinated by him. On 3 September 1939, Chamberlain announced on the BBC that Britain was now at war. The king broadcast later in the day, telling the people that this “grave hour” was “perhaps the most fateful in our history”. The princesses were staying at Birkhall, near Balmoral, on their annual summer holiday with Miss Crawford – and were soon joined by hundreds of evacuees from Glasgow. After Christmas at Sandringham, they went to Royal Lodge in Windsor, the pale pink walls painted green to fool enemy bombers. The queen refused to bow to pressure to send the children to Canada, out of the range of the enemy. Read more | Did appeasement cause the Second World War? In spring 1940, German troops invaded Denmark and Norway. Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister, declaring to the Commons that Britain must “wage war, by sea, land and air with all our might”. The dispossessed royals of Norway and Denmark arrived seeking safety in London. The princesses were sent to Windsor Castle, where they would remain for the rest of the war – along with the crown jewels, bundled up in paper in the underground vaults. The princesses were key to the propaganda strategy – the nation was told that they were in a secret location in the countryside, where they carried around their gas masks and grew their own carrots and potatoes in a vegetable patch. But the princesses were not exempt from the terrors of war – 300 bombs were dropped on Windsor Great Park over the course of the conflict. Often they were woken at night and sent into the underground vaults of the castle. Like Churchill, they slept in ‘siren suits’, zip-up all-in-one jumpsuits designed for warmth and practicality in bombing raids. The palace had repeatedly rejected requests for Elizabeth to speak on the radio. In 1940, with the Luftwaffe razing British cities to the ground, the king and queen changed their minds. In a time when US support for the war effort was critical, they agreed to allow the princess to broadcast on the BBC to the children of North America. On 13 October she gave her speech, expressing how she and her sister sympathised with those who had been evacuated, since “we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all”. The speech was a hit. “Princess yesterday huge success here,” reported a north American representative of the BBC. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1018089778-f154721-e1776639568862.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black-and-white image of a young Queen Elizabeth II seated at a desk reading from a script into a microphone, with Princess Margaret watching beside her." title="Princess Elizabeth (right) and Princess Margaret broadcast a morale-boosting speech for the “children of North America” in October 1940. The address was warmly received across the pond (Photo by Getty Images)" /> “This time we are all in the front line,” said the king in his Christmas message at the end of 1940. The bombing of British cities continued until April. Britain entered a sustained period of hardship. In 1941 it was the first country in the world to introduce conscription for single women. When Elizabeth turned 16, she begged her father to allow her to join the Labour Exchange. She was interviewed, but not placed – much to the relief of the king, who wished to protect his daughters. At the end of 1943, when Elizabeth was 17, Philip came to spend Christmas with the family. He was charmed by her admiration and what he described as the “simple pleasure” of family life, so unlike his own unhappy childhood. He returned to war enthusiastic about the idea of marrying the princess, and his cousin, George of Greece, made a suggestion to the king that the pair might wed. It was a misstep; the king was shocked and told George that Elizabeth was too young and Philip “had better not think any more about it at present”. The king didn’t wish to lose his daughter and the courtiers thought Philip “rough, ill mannered” (in the words of one). Worst of all was his background. As one courtier put it, “it was all bound up in one word: German”. The princess turned 18 in 1944 and began to assume royal duties. Her father insisted she be made a counsellor of state (usually only open to those who had reached 21) and she stood in for him when he was briefly in Italy, signing a reprieve on a murder case. She made her first public speech at a children’s hospital and launched HMS Vanguard in the autumn. But she wanted more – she desired to serve in the forces. In early 1945, the king relented and allowed her to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a trainee ambulance driver. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1475851901-3f9d0ec-e1776639728760.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A young Queen Elizabeth II in Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform stands beside a military ambulance marked with a Red Cross." title="Princess Elizabeth served as a trainee ambulance driver and mechanic during the Second World War. Photographs of the young royal doing her bit for the country became a vital propaganda tool for the British government (Photo by Getty Images)" /> At the base in Aldershot, she was initially kept away from the other trainees and taken to eat in the officers’ mess, before the papers found out and the regime was quickly adjusted. The princess later said that it was the only time in her life that she had been able to test herself against people her own age. For the government, her training was a propaganda coup. Photos were taken of her wielding her spanner or standing by vehicles and she was on the front of every Allied newspaper. On 30 April, Allied forces occupied the Reichstag. Hitler took his own life in his bunker and the troops surrendered. On 7 May, the BBC interrupted a piano recital to announce that the following day would be known as Victory in Europe Day. The war was over. On VE Day, the princesses appeared with their parents and Winston Churchill on the balcony of the palace to wave at the crowds, Elizabeth in uniform. That evening, Margaret suggested that they go out to see the crowds. The king and queen relented and the girls set off, accompanied by Marion Crawford and various officers, wandering as far as Park Lane before returning back through Green Park to shout “we want the king!” with the crowds. “All of us were swept along by tides of happiness and relief,” recalled Elizabeth. Read more | “We sang, we danced and we all held hands”: celebrating VE Day Once the euphoria had subsided, the aftermath of war seemed grey, miserable and full of privations. “Food, fuel and clothes are the main topics of conversation,” wrote the king. He was exhausted by the effort of war and found it hard to adjust to daily life. At the same time, the people were fascinated by the princess and increasingly preferred to see her opening hospitals, presenting prizes and giving speeches. She was overwhelmingly popular: dignified, a veteran of the war and full of the glamour of youth. Cambridge University suggested she might be the first woman ever to receive an honorary degree, but the palace refused the offer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-3354783-d77a9e1-e1776639818551.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip walk arm in arm outdoors, smiling at one another in a black-and-white photograph." title="Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip enjoy a walk during the first part of their honeymoon, which was spent at the Broadlands Estate, Hampshire, in November 1947. The couple would be married for 73 years (Photo by Getty Images)" /> In 1946, with the end of the war in Japan, Prince Philip returned to Britain and was sent to teach naval officers in Wales. He began to court Elizabeth in earnest, taking supper with her and Margaret in the nursery and taking the sisters out to restaurants or shows. Austerity Britain was delighted by the idea of a royal romance and the possibility of a wedding. The king and queen were dubious, but it was too late – Elizabeth was determined to marry Philip. In February 1947, the princess left the country for the first time for a tour to South Africa with her parents and sister. There, she celebrated her 21st birthday. She reviewed troops, attended a ball in her honour and gave her address to the empire. In it she pledged her future: “I declare before you that my whole life, whether it shall be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.” She had spent a long time in the nursery but now she was 21, on the brink of marriage – and in less than five years, she would become queen. This article was first published in BBC History Magazine’s ‘Queen Elizabeth: 90 Glorious Years’ bookazine
From the morally bankrupt to the staggeringly inept, Jonny Wilkes guides us through the lives of 16 rulers who wrote their names into the history books for all the wrong reasons
The past has no shortage of disastrous kings, queens, and other rulers; such a list could easily have been filled with the worst Roman emperors alone. Some have been homicidal, like Nero or Genghis Khan; simply incompetent, like Edward II; completely untrustworthy, like Charles I; or amiable but inadequate, like Louis XVI of France. But who are truly the worst, and why? Jonny Wilkes makes the case against 16 rulers from history… <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-520718487-44a3fc9-e1776420577392.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A medieval battle scene shows armoured soldiers fighting with spears and shields, while two mounted knights dominate the centre and right. The figures wear ornate gold-and-black armour, and richly decorated horses move through the fray. Stone buildings and a towered structure rise in the background." title="King Tarquin and his family were expelled from Rome in 509 BC, paving the way for the creation of the Roman Republic (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus King of Rome, 534–509 BC Before Rome had emperors, it had a line of kings going back to the city’s mythical founder, Romulus. The last, however, presided over a reign of terror so bad that the people gave up on the monarchy altogether, heralding the dawn of the Republic. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (commonly known as ‘Tarquin the Proud’) had seized the throne by planning the assassination of his own father-in-law, then once in power he killed senators on a whim and imprisoned or executed anyone suspected of disloyalty. His undoing came when his son raped a noblewoman, which caused such outrage that a revolt broke out that saw the tyrannical king overthrown and exiled. In his doomed attempts to regain the throne, he persuaded neighbouring cities to attack Rome, seemingly unfazed by the damage this would do to his erstwhile kingdom. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1439484597-HR-9ecf251-e1776420717721.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration shows a person in a fur garment and sandals lifting a club to strike a bear that rears up on its hind legs with claws extended. They stand in an enclosed arena-like space." title="A 19th-century image depicts Commodus fighting a bear. The emperor is best known today as the main antagonist in the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. Commodus Roman emperor, 177–92 AD There are a number of contenders to the title of ‘most despicable emperor of Rome’, so we could just as easily be discussing the cruel and murderous rules of, say, Nero and Caligula. The bloodthirsty, vainglorious spendthrift, Commodus, however, went from inheriting an empire enjoying a long period of peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana, to leaving it broke and in turmoil. If not executing anyone he suspected of plotting against him, he was leaving the job of ruling the empire to a series of corrupt, cruel and incompetent favourites. He much preferred to fight as a gladiator, relishing in slaughtering a menagerie of animals in the arena. No wonder, then, that Commodus was chosen as the villain in Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals masterpiece, Gladiator. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/4King-JohnGettyImages-804458704-88379ce-e1776420847382.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A medieval illustration shows a crowned figure in red robes signing a document at a table covered with an ornate cloth, while knights, clerics, and noblemen stand around under a canopy. A grassy landscape with tents and figures appears behind them." title="A fanciful illustration depicts King John signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede. In reality, the charter was authenticated with his royal seal (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. John King of England, 1199–1216 Seriously, how could the arch-villain of Robin Hood not make an appearance? Beyond the tale of the fabled outlaw, John severely damaged the authority of the English monarchy. As a prince, he angered the nobles of Ireland and attempted to steal his brother Richard I’s crown, only ending up as king after Richard died without a legitimate heir. Notably, he also managed to outmanoeuvre a rival claim from his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, whom he is later believed to have had murdered. Within a few years in power, John had lost Normandy – the foundation of his family’s Angevin empire on the continent – then he emptied the kingdom’s coffers trying to win it back. His oppressively high taxes, his clashes with the church and his cruel and conniving personality all led to a revolt of England’s barons. Under threat of civil war, John was forced to seal Magna Carta, a historic document that limited royal power. He then proceeded to ignore it. The barons rose up again and John’s reign ended, dying of dysentery, as he fought to keep hold of his kingdom. Read more | How King John helped bring about a political miracle in medieval England <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-929217154-a82abdb-e1776421043333.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An emperor in elaborate robes and a crown sits composed on a throne between patterned pillars, while attendants in similar ceremonial clothing move hurriedly across the foreground. Smoke or swirling shapes fill the space, and broken pottery pieces lie near the throne, adding to the sense of disruption." title="An illustration depicts Emperor Aizong on his throne during the Mongol siege of Caizhou. The ruler’s death led to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, taking power – albeit very briefly (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Wanyan Chenglin Emperor of the Jin dynasty, 1234 On 9 February 1234, with the warriors of the Mongol empire besieging the city of Caizhou, the emperor of the Jin dynasty in China, Aizong, knew that his 10-year reign would be over shortly. That said, he did not want to be the last in his line, so he abdicated and passed the throne to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, before taking his own life. The reluctant new emperor began a reign that would be doomed to last just a matter of hours. He was killed leading his soldiers in a last stand when the Mongols broke through the city walls. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/12Charles-the-BadGettyImages-587495540-00b7ee7-e1776421241476.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A medieval manuscript illustration shows a crowned figure in red robes seated inside a small architectural chamber, gesturing toward several figures in long white robes standing outside. The scene is set against a patterned gold and red background with a decorative border" title="Charles II of Navarre harangues a crowd of angry Parisians. The monarch’s abysmal leadership earned him the name ‘Charles the Bad’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. Charles the Bad King of Navarre, 1349–87 The name gives away why he belongs on this list, doesn’t it? Charles earned ‘the Bad’ for his duplicitous and treacherous behaviour in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Although King of Navarre in Spain, he owned a lot of land in northern France, which put him in the middle of the conflict, and his response was to keep flipping sides. Driven solely by ambition, he believed he should be on the French throne, and he plotted and murdered to get it. All the while, Navarre went ignored. What made him truly bad, though, was that his schemes failed utterly. Charles is perhaps best-known today for his grisly end in 1387, when the brandy-soaked sheets he had been wrapped in to cure an illness accidentally caught fire, burning him alive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/13GettyImages-973900956-e2098c3-e1776421323481.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait shows a person wearing a dark garment with a white collar and a gold chain decorated with jewels and a cross‑shaped pendant. They wear a dark cap, set against a reddish background." title="Henry VI’s disastrous rule led to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, during which he lost his throne twice (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. Henry VI King of England, 1422–61, 1470-71 Ascending the throne of England as an infant and the son of the hero of Agincourt, the young Henry VI was always going to struggle to live up to his dynastic legacy. Not helped by his total lack of leadership, it went even worse than feared: he lost control of France (won by his father Henry V), suffered a mental breakdown, and saw his kingdom plunge into the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian cause would be headed not by the king, but his queen, Margaret. Henry’s role amounted to being kicked off the throne by the Yorkist Edward IV, then placed back on it by the ‘kingmaker’, the Earl of Warwick, and finally losing it again after being captured. Read more | The power behind the throne: women in the Wars of the Roses <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/6-Christian-II-GettyImages-1474551628-a0ec6c8-e1776421427762.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A rustic stone-walled room is lit softly as an older person with grey hair stands behind a carved wooden chair. Another figure in dark Renaissance-style clothing with puffed sleeves and a hat leans on a round table set with a pewter jug, a cup, and a plate holding a small piece of food. A large ceramic jug rests on the floor, and behind them is a bed draped in red and white fabric with shelves holding household objects." title="Christian II spent the last 27 years of his life under lock and key, as shown in this 1871 painting by Carl Bloch (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. Christian II King of Denmark and Norway, 1513–23 Christian’s reign may seem more insignificant than terrible at first glance, but it signalled the end of the Kalmar Union, which had bound together the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden for well over a century. Having been crowned in the first two of those countries in 1513, he set out to secure the third. It would not be until 1520 that he captured Stockholm, although, hardly magnanimous in victory, his immediate action was to execute 82 nobles. The so-called Stockholm Bloodbath fuelled a Swedish rebellion against Christian and weakened his authority back in Denmark and Norway. He was overthrown and exiled, and then when he launched a desperate bid to win back his thrones by force, he was imprisoned for the rest of his life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/3Ivan-the-TerribleGettyImages-2182465325-461b373-e1776421509731.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait shows a ruler wearing richly decorated robes and a tall, jeweled crown, holding a golden scepter in one hand and an orb topped with a cross in the other. The background is dark, highlighting the elaborate attire." title="No one was safe from Ivan the Terrible – he is even said to have murdered his own son in a fit of rage (Image by Getty Images)" /> 8. Ivan the Terrible Tsar of Russia, 1547–84 As the first tsar, Ivan was in some ways an able ruler since he laid the foundations of the Russian empire. He became known as ‘the Terrible’ for a reason, though. Having hated the nobles from an early age (at 13, he had one fed to a pack of dogs), he wasted no time in purging the upper classes. The domain he inherited clearly was not enough: he instigated numerous, and disastrous, wars of expansion, and even established his own fiefdom within his land where, essentially, anything went. With Ivan prone to paranoia and fits of rages, no one was safe: he ordered a full-on attack on one of his own cities, Novgorod, and beat his daughter-in-law into having a miscarriage, then murdered his son. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/9Rudolf-IIGettyImages-905611540-b04ce2b-e1776421580535.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A formal portrait shows a man in dark, gold‑detailed armour with a white ruffled collar, holding a baton and resting his other hand on a decorated sword. He stands beside a red‑covered table with a feathered hat, against a backdrop of patterned gold‑and‑red drapery." title="Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II depicted c1580. Critics of Rudolf’s rule claim that he spent more time dabbling in the arts than governing his vast domain (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. Rudolf II Holy Roman Emperor, 1576–1612 Despite being hailed as a generous patron of the arts and sciences, Habsburg emperor Rudolf II utterly failed in his role as the leader of one of Europe’s major powers. Rather than focusing on politics and administration, he instead shut himself away to focus on personal pursuits like alchemy. When he did show some determination – starting a war with the Ottoman empire to unify Christendom – it proved a disaster. His subjects in Hungary revolted and his family made him hand over power to his younger brother. Rudolf’s most damning legacy, however, was that his miserable tenure as emperor has been blamed as one of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Read more | What was the Habsburg jaw? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/8-LouisXVGettyImages-587493726-ce25b64-e1776421720614.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A formal portrait shows a man in a blue velvet coat with gold embroidery, a white waistcoat, lace cuffs, and a blue sash decorated with medals. He stands before red drapery with a cloudy sky in the background." title="King Louis XV ruled France for nearly 59 years – but his time on the throne was marred by countless failures (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Louis XV King of France, 1715–74 It could certainly be argued that Louis XV’s status as a poor king of France was overshadowed by his successor, Louis XVI, since he was the one who lost his head in the French Revolution. Yet Louis XV’s reign sowed the seeds of the people’s discontent that would lead to such a violent rejection of the monarchy. In short, he was a deeply ineffectual ruler, let alone the all-powerful absolutist king that France had become accustomed to under Louis XIV. Reports of corruption and handing over influence to his mistresses hurt the crown’s authority, while his wars and extravagant spending depleted the coffers. France became a less powerful nation under his rule, and smaller too: he gave up New France in the Americas after the disastrous Seven Years’ War. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/5Ferdinand-VIIGettyImages-1288509729-08b1863-e1776421796923.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A detailed 19th‑century ceremonial scene depicts royals and high‑ranking officials in elaborate uniforms and gowns assembled by a waterfront. Boats and sailors fill the foreground, while clergy, soldiers, and attendants stand nearby. A grand architectural building rises in the background." title="A painting shows Ferdinand VII greeting the French Duke of Angoulême, whose 1823 invasion of Spain – ordered by fellow Bourbon Louis XVIII – restored Ferdinand’s absolutist authority after three years of constitutional rule (Image by Getty Images)" /> 11. Ferdinand VII King of Spain, 1808, 1813–33 Shortly after taking the throne in 1808, Ferdinand handed over his kingdom – and himself – to Napoleon Bonaparte. Six years of captivity in France later, he returned with a need to prove his absolutist credentials and so ditched Spain’s liberal constitution that had been written in his absence. This led to multiple uprisings, notably the revolt of 1820, which ushered in three years during which the king was forced to accept a constitutional regime. While more selfish than monstrous, Ferdinand’s legacy and place on this list were confirmed by two things: he oversaw the loss of nearly all of Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas and, following his death, his petty bid to exclude his brother from the succession resulted in a long civil war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/11Ranavalona-IGettyImages-1414087523-76615ce-e1776421903297.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A portrait shows a person in a long pink gown with ruffled trim and a red, gold‑edged cape, standing outdoors with a jeweled crown on their head. They hold a white handkerchief, with trees and distant hills behind them." title="It is said that Queen Ranavalona wanted to create a pair of giant scissors to cut her enemies in half (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. Ranavalona I Queen of Imerina, 1828–61 To try and hold back the wave of European colonisation in Africa, Queen Ranavalona I, of modern-day Madagascar, would go to any lengths. She wanted to purge all foreign influence, expelling missionaries, persecuting Christians and restricting trade. She even tried to have a giant pair of scissors made so that she could literally chop foreigners in half. The ones who suffered the most, however, were her people: to preserve her land’s self-sufficiency and way of life, as she saw it, Ranavalona used forced labour for her royal projects and fear to maintain order. Many executions took the form of the tangena ordeal, a witch-hunt-style trial where the accused was made to ingest poison and if they showed any adverse effects, they were deemed guilty. It is claimed that as much as 50 per cent of the population perished during her rule. Read more | “Africans have been starved of historical figures from their own lands that they can look up to”: Paula Akpan on female African leaders <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/10Leopold-IIGettyImages-1340093773-009a5d7-e1776421971106.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A political cartoon depicts a person trapped in the coils of a large red snake whose head is drawn as a crowned man. Another figure stands in the background near vegetation and a hut." title="A satirical cartoon from Punch magazine depicts King Leopold II as a snake, viciously attacking a Congolese rubber worker (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. Leopold II King of the Belgians, 1865–1909 Leopold II may not have been a terrible king in Belgium itself, but with the Congo Free State, he revealed just how much of a monster he could be. In 1885, he created his own state in central Africa, having convinced European powers that he intended to improve the lives of the people living there. In reality, this privately owned kingdom allowed Leopold to exploit the Congolese people so that he could make money from its ivory and natural rubber reserves. Under his system of forced labour, any workers who failed to meet their quotas would be punished with mutilation. Leopold’s preferred method was chopping off hands and feet. Millions died from the brutality and rampant diseases. This was an age where European empires carved up and exploited the African continent, so the fact that international outrage finally forced Leopold to hand over the Congo Free State illustrates the appalling extent of the atrocities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/7Khalid-ibn-Barghash-fb0d656.jpg" width="551" height="775" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a person seated on an ornate chair, wearing a turban, a long decorated robe, and sandals, with a curved dagger at the waist. A patterned carpet and cushioned bench appear behind them." title="The Anglo-Zanzibar War – which lasted for just 38 minutes – put Khalid ibn Barghash’s three-day rule to an end" /> 14. Khalid ibn Barghash Sultan of Zanzibar, 1896 Not only did Khalid ibn Barghash rule for just three days, but he was ousted in the shortest war in history. So, in truth, there is no knowing whether he would have been a bad ruler: there wasn’t enough time. In 1896, the sultan of Zanzibar died, which put the British in a tough position. They controlled the islands off the east African coast as it served as a strategic trade post for the Indian Ocean. Against British wishes, Khalid, who may well have killed his predecessor, assumed the role of sultan and fortified the palace with around 3,000 supporters. The British sent warships, though, and initiated a brief bombardment. The Anglo-Zanzibar War lasted around 38 minutes, and Khalid fled into exile. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/17Nicholas-IIGettyImages-542910549-cbbc229-e1776422122833.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A historical black‑and‑white photograph depicts two officers in peaked caps, boots, and decorated uniforms standing on a grassy field and speaking to one another. Behind them, other officers gather in small groups, and a horse‑drawn carriage or artillery piece sits near the tree line." title="Tsar Nicholas II (right) addresses a Russian officer during the First World War. The Romanov ruler was overthrown in 1917 and murdered alongside his family the following year (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Nicholas II Tsar of Russia, 1894–1917 The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for more than 300 years – and it all ended during the reign of Nicholas II. Not suited to wielding autocratic power over a huge empire, he made a catalogue of errors and refused to adapt beyond his rigid belief that he had the divinely ordained right to rule. In 1905 alone, Russia lost a war with Japan and broke out in revolution, yet Nicholas only made cursory changes and tried to move on. His court became dominated by the strange and ambitious mystic, Rasputin, his nobles and politicians abandoned him, and his decision to take command of the armies in the First World War meant that he was held personally responsible for every defeat and death. Revolution erupted again in 1917, forcing his abdication. While imprisoned by the revolutionaries, Nicholas and his entire family were murdered. It was a bloody and definitive end to the tsars, as Russia became a communist regime. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/15Edward-VIIIGettyImages-514689872-8d0ca51-e1776422238781.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows three people standing side by side outdoors: a man in a military uniform with insignia, a man in a long overcoat and tie, and a person in a dark coat and hat. A building with shuttered windows appear behind them." title="The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) pictured with Adolf Hitler, 1937. The couple’s meeting with the Führer proved highly controversial (Image by Getty Images)" /> 16. Edward VIII King of England, 1936 Edward became king on 20 January 1936, on the death of his father George V. Before the year was out, he had abdicated in disgrace. His brief reign had entirely been focused on his wish to marry an American named Wallis Simpson, but she had been divorced once and was seeking a second, making her wholly unacceptable to the royal family, the political establishment and the church. Yet his reputation as a bad monarch could have been even worse had he stayed: Edward has long been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, who toured Hitler’s Germany almost two years before the Second World War.
Think you know everything about the Tudors? Here's 15 facts that will prove you wrong
Tracy Borman shares a selection of surprising insights into England’s most famous royal dynasty – from Mary I’s love of gambling to the truth about Henry VIII’s extramarital affairs
1. The Tudors weren’t known as the Tudors Although we use ‘Tudor’ as a nifty shorthand for both the era and the dynasty, it wasn’t used at the time either by the monarchs or their people. Neither did they see it as a distinct period: in fact, Henry VII went to great lengths to emphasise the continuity with his royal predecessors, even down to using the same tailor whom Edward IV had employed. He also emphasised his Lancastrian roots and tried to downplay his Welsh origins, aware that his grandfather Owen Tudor had married well above him when he bagged Henry V’s widow Catherine of Valois as a bride. Throughout the period 1485–1603, the people identified as subjects of each successive king or queen, as well as taking pride in their local affiliations, rather than seeing themselves as ‘Tudor people’. 2. They had a pretty dodgy claim to the throne When Henry Tudor won the crown from Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, he was quick to stress his legitimacy. But there was more than a hint of protesting too much. In fact, the Tudors were descended from Edward III’s fourth son, John of Gaunt, and his long-standing mistress, Katherine Swynford. Moreover, Henry VII’s father Edmund was the child of Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois, by her Welsh attendant. With such a dubious bloodline, it’s little wonder that England’s first Tudor king wasted no time in marrying Elizabeth of York, the eldest child of Edward IV. Their marriage united the warring houses of York and Lancaster and, crucially, gave the Tudors some much-needed legitimacy. 3. Henry VII was no miser The first Tudor king has a reputation for penny-pinching. But while he kept a close eye on his expenditure, he knew how to splash the cash when it was to his advantage. In the early years of his reign, when he was under constant threat from rivals and pretenders and many of his subjects questioned his right to be king, he spent lavish sums on dressing the part. Just over a week after defeating Richard III at Bosworth, he ordered a set of new gowns fashioned from cloth of gold, satin and royal purple velvet at a cost of £336, which roughly equates to £225,000 in today’s money. During the two years that followed, he spent an eye-watering £5,386 (£3.6 million) on his wardrobe. But his generosity had its limits. His wife, Elizabeth of York, struggled to make ends meet throughout their marriage. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/3-GettyImages-173317469-b1ae837-e1775575599556.jpg" width="619" height="413" alt="A painted portrait of Henry VII wearing a red fur‑trimmed robe and cap, holding a gold sceptre against a plain background" title="A 19th-century depiction of Henry VII. The first Tudor monarch spent vast sums of money on looking the part when he was newly crowned (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. You would smell Henry VIII before you saw him For the last 20 years of his life, Henry was tormented by pain from a chronic leg ulcer, which was aggravated by a serious fall from his horse while jousting in 1536. The ulcer often became inflamed and – unsurprisingly – Henry was a difficult patient, refusing to rest for long enough for it to heal. At its worst, the suppurating wound could be smelt from three rooms away. Read more | Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant? 5. Henry VIII’s love of hawking was almost the death of him Henry’s love of sport was well known throughout the court. As a young king, he would spend hours hunting, jousting, shooting arrows and playing tennis. Hawking was another of his favourite sports and his private apartments contained an impressive array of falconry equipment. But in 1525, Henry was almost killed while pursuing his hawk. Attempting to pole vault over a ditch, instead he fell headfirst into it and almost drowned. Thankfully, his quick-thinking footman, Edmund Moody, managed to pull him out in the nick of time. 6. Henry VIII was a bit of a prude Contrary to popular belief, Tudor England’s most-married monarch wasn’t much of a lothario. In fact, he had twice as many wives as mistresses. There is only evidence of three extramarital affairs. The women involved were Bessie Blount (the mother of Henry’s not-so-subtly-named illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy), Mary Boleyn (sister of his second wife Anne) and ‘Mistress Shelton’, who was either Margaret or Mary Shelton, both cousins of Anne Boleyn. Although there was a rumour that he once had an affair with Anne’s mother Elizabeth, he stoutly denied it: “Never with the mother!” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/6-2F1GM47-eea3c47-e1775575675952.jpg" width="1500" height="1486" alt="A painted portrait of a teenage boy in a light garment and patterned head covering, shown against a deep blue background with gold lettering identifying him as Henry, Duke of Richmond, aged fifteen." title="Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII from his affair with Bessie Blount. For a king – especially one who married six times – Henry was surprisingly prudish (Image by Alamy)" /> 7. Anne Boleyn did not have a sixth finger on one hand This oft-repeated tale is based on scurrilous gossip written almost 50 years after Anne’s death. A host of hostile Catholic tracts about Anne appeared in the 1580s as part of a smear campaign against her ‘heretic’ daughter, Elizabeth I. Nicholas Sander was one of the most influential and claimed that Anne had been Henry VIII’s daughter as well as his wife, the result of his clandestine affair with her mother. Feeding on the rumours of witchcraft that had circulated at the time of Anne’s demise, he asserted that she had a sixth finger on her right hand and a large ‘wen’ (a boil or mole) under her chin. Such blemishes were commonly thought to be the ‘Devil’s Mark’ – a symbol of having made a pact with Satan. In fact, Anne was proud of her long, slender fingers and always took care to show them off to best effect… all 10 of them. 8. Anne of Cleves was not ugly You may have heard the story: Henry VIII fell in love with Anne of Cleves’ portrait and immediately signed on the dotted line of the marriage contract. But when he met his bride in person, he was appalled that she was nothing like her profile picture. So, he had the marriage annulled before you could say ‘off with her head’. In fact, Holbein’s portrait was faithful to Anne, and many contemporary accounts praise her beauty. If anyone had cause for complaint about their betrothed’s physical assets, it was Anne. Henry was no oil painting by the time she married him in January 1540. Pushing 50, he was bloated, ulcer-ridden and almost certainly impotent. It was with understandable haste that Anne agreed to an annulment just six months later. Read more | Why did Henry VIII send Anne Boleyn to the block? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/8-AnnedeCleves-3a7323a-e1775635785574.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A Renaissance portrait of a richly dressed figure in a red‑and‑gold embroidered gown with ornate jewellery and a jeweled headpiece, standing against a blue background with hands clasped to show rings and lace cuffs." title="The famous Anne of Cleves portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539. Contrary to popular belief, Anne was not ugly; in fact, she was praised for her beauty" /> 9. Edward VI kept a diary The boy king was the only Tudor monarch to leave behind a private journal. But if you’re expecting a tell-all exposé full of secretly expressed desires, grudges and hopes, you might be disappointed. In fact, it’s a rather dry summary of the events of his reign. Even the execution of his once-cherished uncle is afforded only the following curt line: “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off today.” Overall, the diary reveals a boy who was precociously intelligent, as might be expected for Henry VIII’s “precious jewel”, who had the best of everything growing up. But he also appears cold, unfeeling and uncompromising – a dangerous blend of traits that might have made him an even greater tyrant than his father if he lived to maturity. 10. Lady Jane Grey was queen for 14 days, not nine Jane has gone down in history as the ‘Nine Days’ Queen’. But while it’s true that she was proclaimed queen on 10 July 1553 and deposed by Mary Tudor on 19 July, her reign technically began as soon as Edward VI had breathed his last on 6 July. On his deathbed, Edward changed the succession in favour of his Protestant cousin Jane to prevent his Catholic half-sister Mary claiming her right. He was heavily influenced by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had married his son Guildford to Jane. Even so, Edward’s ‘Device’ for the succession was legally-binding, so Jane was the rightful queen as soon as the young king died. Yet she is always referred to as ‘Lady’ rather than ‘Queen’ and is often omitted from the roll call of English monarchs altogether. That owes much to Mary Tudor’s propaganda: to seize the throne, she had to present Jane as a usurper. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/10-GettyImages-2226518693-829fe72-e1775636087938.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman in Tudor dress stands against a plain backdrop, wearing a velvet gown with puffed sleeves, gold embroidery, and multiple strands of pearls. She has a pearl‑lined headdress framing her centre‑parted hair and holds a small ornament or flower in one hand." title="Despite being known as the ‘Nine Days’ Queen’, Lady Jane Grey actually ruled for 14 days (Image by Getty Images)" /> 11. ‘Bloody Mary’ wasn’t all that bloody Mary I’s obsession with returning England to the Roman Catholic faith spurred her to have around 300 Protestant heretics burned at the stake. But while there is no doubting the horrific nature of their deaths, Mary acted out of conscience rather than brutality. Blinded by her own faith, she genuinely believed that she was saving her subjects from eternal damnation by bringing them into the Roman Catholic fold. Furthermore, the number of people who died on Mary’s orders was just a fraction of those who suffered at the hands of her far bloodier father, Henry VIII. He sent more men and women to their deaths than any other Tudor monarch. Anyone who refused to fall in with his will was sent to the block – commoners, statesmen and wives alike. It even became a crime to think differently from the king. Contemporary records are patchy and inconsistent, so it’s impossible to quantify exactly how many deaths Henry was responsible for. Estimates vary from a few thousand to as many as 72,000. 12. Mary Tudor was a bit of a party girl Despite her reputation for sober-mindedness and piety, Mary loved to have fun. One of her favourite companions was Jane Fool, a female jester. The queen was also an avid gambler and loved to play cards and board games. She also entertained lavishly and spent huge sums on feasting and drinking. A scandalised Spanish ambassador reported: “There is plenty of beer here, and they drink more than would fill the Valladolid river [known as the Pisuerga river today]… The ladies and gentlemen put sugar in their wine, with the result that there are great goings on in the palace.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/12-GettyImages-1309904166-9ab877f-e1775636163844.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="Seven people in Renaissance dress gather around a table playing cards. Gold coins lie across the dark tablecloth, and one player holds up the seven of hearts while another displays several cards. Shelves with bottles and a small vase of flowers sit in the background." title="The Card Players, c1550–99. Mary I was an avid gambler, who loved to play cards and host lavish parties throughout her reign (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Queens of bling: the importance of jewellery to Henry VIII's six wives 13. Elizabeth I employed the original James Bond The queen’s personal astrologer Dr John Dee was one of her closest advisers. She would regularly consult him about the most apposite moment to undertake key events, such as her coronation. An astrologer, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Dee was one of the most learned men of the age. But he also carried out more covert assignments for his royal mistress. She employed Dee as a spy, and he would report on intrigues abroad using complex codes. He signed his letters with the numerals ‘007’. 14. Elizabeth I was (apparently) a man The ‘Bisley Boy’ legend states that in 1542, the future Elizabeth I (then aged around nine) was sent to Overcourt House in the Cotswold village of Bisley to escape the plague in London. Whilst there, she sickened with a fever and died. Knowing that Henry VIII was on his way to visit his daughter, her panic-stricken governess searched the village in vain for a girl who resembled Elizabeth closely enough to fool the king. The only child of the right age and colouring was a boy, so in desperation she dressed him in the princess’s clothes and the deception was complete. This unlikely tale dates from the 1800s and was made popular by Dracula author Bram Stoker in his book Famous Impostors. There is no contemporary evidence to support it and more than a whiff of misogyny about the whole thing. How else could Elizabeth have ruled so successfully for so many years? She must have been a man. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/Bram-Stoker-famous-Imposters-ABE-Books-6975c56-e1775636264617.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An open book rests on a wooden surface. The left page shows a black‑and‑white illustration captioned “Elizabeth as a Young Woman.” The right page is the title page of Bram Stoker’s Famous Impostors, published in 1910 by Sturgis & Walton." title="A copy of Bram Stoker’s 1910 book Famous Impostors. The tome helped popularise the ‘Bisley Boy’ legend, suggesting that Elizabeth I was actually a man (Image by Best of Books Store)" /> 15. Elizabeth I didn’t leave her throne to James VI But as she lay dying at Richmond Palace in March 1603, she finally settled the matter, gasping that she would have none but “my nearest kinsman the King of Scots”. This deathbed scene was recorded by the contemporary historian William Camden, who had been commissioned to write a biography of the celebrated queen during her lifetime. But dramatic new research by the British Library has proved that Camden was forced to rewrite it on the orders of the new king to make his accession look more predetermined than it had been. Using transmitted light, the researchers found that in his original manuscript, written at the time of Elizabeth’s death, Camden had recorded that she died without naming a successor. But a few years later, his words were covered over with the lie that ushered the Stuarts to the Tudor throne.
The Victorians were facing a population crisis, until this ‘obscene’ invention turned out to be the solution
In the first half of the 19th century, England’s population doubled. With many families struggling to survive, the picture had to change – and the solution came in an innovative treatment of one material: rubber. But as the question of ‘respectable’ reproduction emerged, Ruth Goodman explains how the invention also widened an already broad class divide
The air in Victorian London was thick with smog. In the narrow streets of the rapidly industrialising city, where the city’s poorest families lived cheek by jowl, every child born stretched meagre resources thinner still. For those in the working class, wages were uncertain and the cost of living presented constant challenges. Yet, despite the hardship, children kept coming – one after another, year after year. With most families lacking access to contraception, there was no realistic alternative. Big families: the Victorian ideal? “One of the things that we all think we know about Victorian families was that they all had huge numbers of children”, explains historian Ruth Goodman in her HistoryExtra Academy series on Victorian Life. This is true: between 1800 and 1850, England’s population had doubled, and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, families across the social spectrum were getting bigger. Victoria herself had nine children with her husband, Prince Albert, providing an example for others to follow. But outside of the royal family, this birth rate boom placed huge pressure on the resources of families who were scraping by on meagre livings amid the industrial revolution. But as the century progressed the image of the archetypal Victorian family – respectable, hardworking and moral – began to change. Now, smaller, controlled families were becoming the ideal. This had a noticeable effect on the population. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-464466975-aca8503-e1775055434278.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful Victorian pop‑up illustration opens to reveal Queen Victoria seated with a child while Prince Albert plays on the floor with two others in an ornate domestic interior." title="A c1845 depiction of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at home, playing with their children. The royal couple and their nine offspring were seen as the perfect example of a Victorian family (Image by Getty Images)" /> “From the 1880s, you can actually see the effects of contraception turning up in family size,” Goodman says. “In the census and the records, you can see that middle class families are getting smaller.” Read more | Think the Victorians were prudes? Their filthiest jokes will shock you Early Victorian contraception This was largely down to new discussions about family limitations. Shrouded in euphemism, the understanding of sex and how to prevent pregnancy was starting to be framed as a health concern. Goodman explains how it was often covered by the phrase: “Being kind to your wife”. Framing contraception in this way placed the onus on parents to prevent excessive numbers of children for their own good. The idea was that a respectable family wouldn’t have more children than they could feed, and a decent father would ensure his children had a mother to look after them. “Quiet discussions are had within certain groups of society about [not letting] your wife have too many children,” says Goodman. One argument was that “it’s not healthy for her, she should be around in good health to bring up the children you already have.” What contraception was available? In today’s world, there’s an array of accessible contraception. In the Victorian era, the options were more limited. However, there was one development that changed the game: the vulcanisation of rubber. Vulcanisation – the process of improving the durability and pliability – of rubber was patented by British inventor Thomas Hancock in November 1843 and became more widespread in the mid-to-late 19th century. The progress and innovation that characterised the Industrial Revolution helped accelerate its commercial success – and one of its most practical uses was for condoms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-90732016-2629d99-e1775055647469.jpg" width="1500" height="1500" alt="A circular relief sculpture shows a man in formal 19th‑century clothing, with detailed facial features and visible surface cracks." title="A medallion portrait of Thomas Hancock, who obtained the first British patent for vulcanised rubber in 1843 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Condoms in some form had been available for centuries. They had variably been made from sheep guts, linen or other materials – intact condoms made from animal membrane dating to the 1640s were discovered at Dudley Castle – and were almost exclusively used for preventing the spread of venereal disease. The vulcanisation process made rubber “flexible and soft” says Goodman, “so then condoms became made of a softer, more cleanable material.” Read more | From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys The introduction of cleanable, reusable rubber condoms in 1855 was revolutionary – and people started to see the possibilities for using condoms in family planning too. Vulcanised rubber also led to the creation of the female cap – a forerunner to diaphragms and cervical caps – which, as Goodman states, “made it possible for a woman to begin to take control of her own fertility”. Due to the hierarchical ‘male breadwinner’ structure of Victorian families, the reality was that decisions regarding reproduction, or lack thereof, were still primarily made by men. However, this development in female contraception did allow women a little more autonomy over their bodies and futures. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-90763429-9b45b35-e1775056110601.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A small, rounded brown object resembling a bowler hat sits on a dark surface, with worn texture and the words “Racial Trade Mark” printed in white on the top." title="A cervical cap, c1920s. The introduction of this contraception gave women a degree of power over their own fertility (Image by Getty Images)" /> A mirror of the class divide Despite the incredible innovations, access to these new methods of contraception was far from equal. “Doctors found their way to manage their own families”, explains Goodman, “but they were not keen on passing that information on to the working classes.” While there was a widespread belief in the need to reduce family sizes, many of those in power tried to stop it. Attempts to make contraceptive advice more accessible through pamphlets were often unsuccessful as it was “decided that these were obscene publications”. Ideas of propriety and morality – as well as objections from the Catholic Church to any ‘unnatural’ birth control – prevented access to communication about sex in any straightforward terms, and in turn, limited people’s understanding of it. In 1877, The Fruits of Philosophy (an 1832 book that advocated for birth control) was the subject of a sensational obscenity trial in London. Activist Annie Besant stood in her own defence, dubbed a “filthy woman” for selling it. As Michael Meyer explained on a previous episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, “[the jury decided it was a] dirty, filthy book, [but] absolved the defendants of any malicious intent in publishing it”. Regardless of intent, Besant and her co-defendant Charles Bradlaugh were found guilty under the Obscene Publications Act 1857. Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all Later, their convictions were overturned, and both continued to campaign, with Besant publishing her own birth control pamphlet, The Law of Population. The problem with The Fruits of Philosophy wasn’t its contents – the information inside was nothing that Victorian medical professionals didn’t already know – but that it was being sold at a low enough price for the average person to buy it. The middle classes believed that the pressure of rising population numbers forced the working classes (who they presumed were naturally lethargic) to work harder. This prejudiced – and incorrect – assumption about the nature of working-class people led to deliberate limitations on their access to contraceptive information. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-3089859-b6a0f97-e1775056364693.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white historical photo shows two women, a man, and three children standing outside a small shop with jars and baskets visible inside." title="Impoverished people gather in front of a rag shop, c1877. The working classes faced many hardships – some of which were exacerbated by their lack of access to contraception (Image by Getty Images)" /> Even with these rather aggressive attempts to prevent contraceptive advice from being disseminated, the knowledge did spread. Throughout the later years of the 19th century and into the 20th, medical pamphlets, marital guides and private consultations offered methods to regulate conception. For those who could afford discretion and access to physicians, family planning became a means of greater control over their future. For those who couldn’t afford it, though, nothing much changed. In Victorian England, birth control was a mirror of the class divide. It revealed who had enough money to dictate the size of their family, and who had no such luxury.
What did Anne Boleyn REALLY look like? Our new research could change everything
Dark or brunette? Fair or swarthy? A paragon of beauty or a refined charmer? Our picture of Henry VIII’s ill-fated second queen has become distorted over five centuries – but new research by Owen Emmerson and others comes closer to revealing her true appearance
Close your eyes and picture Anne Boleyn. Chances are you can conjure up a pretty clear and detailed image in your imagination – because few figures in English history seem as visually familiar as Henry VIII’s second queen. Representations of her face appear everywhere: in films, television dramas and novels, in museum gift shops and digital reconstructions. She is often depicted in popular culture as an elegant brunette whose sophistication distinguishes her from others at court. Over time, this image has hardened into something close to fact. Anne Boleyn, we are told, was devastatingly beautiful. Yet this certainty is built on fragile foundations, and surviving evidence provides a less concrete understanding of Anne’s appearance. No formal painted portraits from life survive today, though images in a number of smaller, more intimate formats – particularly miniatures – are candidates for having captured her true likeness based on contemporary encounters. The more-familiar portraits featuring the now-iconic ‘B’ pendant necklace, meanwhile, were likely created decades later, influenced by politics, artistic convention and hindsight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/DXFXNM-38bec64-e1773309603951.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman with long dark braids, wearing a white period-style gown, sits on a cushioned bed and gently holds a baby wrapped in richly patterned blue and gold fabric. Dark wooden furniture and white bedding frame the intimate, historical-feeling scene" title="Natalie Dormer played Anne Boleyn in the television series The Tudors, which perpetuated modern ideas of the ill-fated queen as a dark-haired beauty (Image by Alamy)" /> For generations, historians assumed that any accurate representations created during Anne’s life had been lost altogether, erased after her execution in 1536 on the orders of Henry VIII. That story is compelling, but it is wrong. My research – which underpins Capturing a Queen: The Image of Anne Boleyn, a new exhibition at Anne’s childhood home, Hever Castle – suggests that her true likeness remained visible long after her dramatic death. Her image circulated widely in several different forms: in print, on medals and in drawings that outlived her. Alongside written descriptions left by those who saw her, these sources allow us to come close to understanding how Anne Boleyn looked. They also prompt a more revealing question: during her lifetime, was Anne admired for beauty – at least, as the 16th century understood it? And how much did beauty really matter in a court where power, conviction and function carried far greater weight? Ideals of beauty Today, audiences are encouraged to believe that Anne Boleyn must have been very beautiful indeed to have displaced Queen Catherine of Aragon in Henry VIII’s affections, and to have inspired him to reshape England’s religious and political landscape in order to marry her. This assumption reflects modern ideas about attraction and agency far more than it does the reality of Tudor mores. Different priorities shaped ideals of female beauty then: light colouring and complexion were widely admired. In 16th-century England, though, beauty alone rarely secured influence. At court, education, connections and presence mattered far more than looks. Intelligence, conversation and the ability to command attention in a highly performative environment were prized qualities. Anne excelled in these attributes. Read more | Anne Boleyn’s fatal French connection Anne stood out, but not because she perfectly embodied an ideal of beauty. Her continental education, her penchant for French fashions and her finely honed courtly manner set her apart in a milieu still shaped by conservative English expectations. Contemporary responses to her appearance consistently suggest moderate attractiveness rather than conventional beauty. To understand that distinction properly, we must turn to the accounts of her appearance and demeanour from people who saw her. Consistent picture Contemporary descriptions of Anne are limited but broadly consistent. Simon Grynaeus, a German humanist who visited the English court in 1531, wrote to a compatriot that she was “young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion”. In October 1532, the Venetian ambassador Carlo Capello, in a report later recorded in Marino Sanuto’s Diarii, described her as “not one of the handsomest women in the world… of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised… and her eyes, which are black and beautiful”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/PD1438753-1778ee6-e1773309357932.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Engraved profile portrait of a man with long hair and a full beard, wearing high‑collared, layered Renaissance garments. The image is rendered with fine linework and cross‑hatching" title="An 18th-century engraving of German scholar Simon Grynaeus who, having met Anne Boleyn, described her as “young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion” (Image by Topfoto)" /> Lancelot de Carle, secretary to the French ambassador in London, wrote a long poetic account of Anne’s fall and execution in 1536, emphasising her expression and presence rather than physical features. Even sympathetic observers were measured: the reformist cleric John Barlow described her as “reasonably good-looking”, a phrase that in Tudor usage suggested composure and refinement rather than striking beauty. What emerges is not the image of a woman celebrated for physical perfection but of someone whose appearance was animated by intelligence and presence. Observers repeatedly returned to her eyes and manner. The French diplomat Lancelot de Carle said of her eyes that she “knew well how to use [them] with effect”, capturing a sense of engagement, wit and command that made her captivating in person. For centuries, the absence of a painted portrait from Anne’s lifetime was explained by a dramatic story: that Henry VIII ordered every likeness of her be destroyed after her execution. The image of a furious king erasing the woman for whom he had broken with Rome is powerful, but has no basis in contemporary sources. The story appeared first in the 19th century, when historians sought an explanation for Anne’s apparent visual disappearance. What happened after the queen’s fall was administrative rather than vengeful. Anne’s badges and monograms were removed from royal buildings and replaced with those of her successor, Jane Seymour, just as Catherine of Aragon’s emblems had earlier been replaced by Anne’s. The King’s Works accounts for September 1536 list payments for removing Anne’s devices alongside those of Cardinal Wolsey, the king’s former chief minister, by then long dead. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/3BDA0P2-4f33c37-e1773310304248.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Gilded wooden sculpture of a bird holding a staff. Intricate carved motifs and textured wings stand out against a red display background." title="A falcon badge from Hampton Court. This emblem of Anne Boleyn remained in place after her demise, despite claims that Henry ordered all traces of her be removed (Image by Alamy)" /> No orders to destroy Anne’s portraits have been found, and even the command to remove her emblems was carried out only partly. Many of her falcon badges remain in the roof of Hampton Court’s Great Hall, blackened with paint but intact. Moreover, inventories taken after Henry’s death show that he continued to own objects that had once belonged to Anne and were decorated with her iconography, albeit packed away in chests. Anne herself had become valueless to him, but the gold and silver fashioned into her goods had not. He did not destroy them, just ensured that they were no longer seen. The people’s prints Though no painted panel portrait survives from Anne’s lifetime, images of her certainly do. Some of the most revealing were created not for the elite interiors of palaces but for public circulation. In the summer of 1533, the prolific printer Wynkyn de Worde was employed to publish a pamphlet titled The Noble Tryumphaunt Coronacyon of Quene Anne. Its cover features a small woodcut long dismissed by historians as a generic courtly scene. However, in collaboration with historian Jessica Carey-Bunning, I have identified this as a narrative composition including three contemporary images of Anne Boleyn at distinct stages of her relationship with Henry VIII. The woodcut provides a visual sequence affirming the validity of the union. To the left, Henry courts Anne; in the centre, the couple are joined in marriage; and in the most prominent image, at the right, Henry and Anne are crowned beneath a cloth of estate, the king’s hand resting on his queen’s stomach. To a contemporary viewer, this was an explicit declaration of pregnancy. When the pamphlet was published, Anne was about six months pregnant with the child who would reign as Elizabeth I. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BAL3286974-85c45de-e1773310578859.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A detailed black and white woodcut showing the same two figures three times over, in different positions, facing each other, standing and sitting" title="A 1533 woodcut shows three stages in the relationship between Henry and Anne, from left to right: wooing, the wedding, and a tender moment apparently signalling pregnancy (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> This woodcut image operated as a tool of legitimacy, fertility and dynastic hope. It was intended not to capture Anne’s features but, rather, to put her face to work. It was circulated deliberately and widely at the most politically sensitive moment of her queenship. Other contemporary images reinforce this visibility. A lead prototype or proof known as the ‘Moost Happi’ medal, likely commissioned in anticipation of a male heir and struck in 1534, depicts Anne in part profile wearing a gable hood, and bears the initials AR (for Anna Regina). Edward Hawkins, keeper of antiquities at the British Museum in the 19th century, suggested that another surviving lead prototype showing Henry was a companion to Anne’s medal. My discovery of a fully cast example of the companion medal of Henry, fashioned as a hat pin in modest tin, indicates that these likenesses were destined for a wide distribution beyond the court – an effort to disseminate images of the king and his new queen. Read more | Tudors in turmoil: deciphering Hans Holbein’s masterwork The Ambassadors Another contemporary image of Anne survives in a sketch of her coronation banquet, depicting her crowned beneath a cloth of estate in Westminster Hall, the focal point of an elaborate theatrical display. Even in this crude drawing, Anne is unmistakably the axis around which the ceremony revolves. Together, these show that Anne was among the most visually represented queens of early Tudor England. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/hip2593496-f6287f1-e1773310819221.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A detailed pencil and chalk profile portrait of a person wearing a wrapped head covering, shown against a lightly toned background." title="Hans Holbein the Younger's drawing, likely depicting Anne, shows a number of key similarities to Hollar's picture (below) (Image by Topfoto)" /> Something rarer also survives: a glimpse of Anne Boleyn as she may have been seen by those who knew her personally. A chalk drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, depicts a woman in a fur-trimmed nightgown with a simple coif, her eyes lowered in contemplation. Though its subject has long been debated, recent scholarship by Dr Kate Heard has fundamentally reshaped understanding of this work, strongly supporting its identification as Anne Boleyn. The drawing dates securely to Holbein’s second period in England, when he was working at the heart of the Tudor court, producing preparatory studies for both painted portraits and miniatures – and, crucially, working extensively under Anne’s patronage. The apparent informality of the portrait, once used to argue against the identification, now strengthens it. Comparable works by the Horenbout workshop similarly depict elite sitters such as Henry VIII’s son, the Duke of Richmond, in a state of undress, intended for private viewing. Technical examination by the Royal Collection Trust has revealed that the sitter’s hair was originally far darker than it appears today. Layers of red, brown and black chalk have been largely worn away, with only remnants visible. Most compelling, however, is the later inscription identifying Anne as the sitter, based on an attribution by Sir John Cheke, who had met Anne in 1534, benefited from her patronage, and was closely connected to her circle through his wife, Mary Hill. If identified correctly, which now seems highly likely, this drawing represents the most direct surviving contemporary likeness of Anne. It shows her not as a crowned emblem of dynastic hope, as her public image had been crafted, but as a thinking, contemplative and private individual. The Windsor drawing also unlocks the meaning of a later engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar titled Faith, or St Barbara, produced in 1647. This print, based on a now-lost Holbein design once in the Earl of Arundel’s collection, depicts a crowned female figure holding a chalice and wafer set against a landscape of cliffs and water. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2TCATRR-055fb42-e1773310923192.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A finely detailed historical engraving depicting a crowned woman in elaborate robes. She stands holding a large chalice with a smooth sphere balanced on its rim. The line work is delicate and textured, and the background features soft shading and cloudlike forms, giving the scene a symbolic or allegorical tone." title="Wenceslaus Hollar based his engraving Faith, or Saint Barbara on a picture by Hans Holbein the Younger (Image by Alamy)" /> When compared closely with the Windsor drawing, the resemblance is striking: they share the same profile, jawline, eye shape and cranial structure. The correspondence between the two strongly suggests that Holbein’s use of Anne’s face for Saint Barbara was drawn from his preparatory study. In this reading, the Windsor drawing was not an isolated likeness but part of a broader artistic conception. The choice of that saint is significant because, like the reformist Anne, Barbara was associated with steadfast Christian faith and resistance to coercion when compelled to revert to traditional beliefs. In Anne’s book of hours, King’s MS 9, the illumination of Saint Barbara shares compositional similarities with the Windsor sketch and Hollar engraving, including a distinctive looped plait, indicating direct visual continuity. Portraying Anne in this guise would have aligned her queenship with conscience and reform. Seen in this light, the image becomes both devotional and political. It presents Anne not simply as consort but as belief embodied. Saint Barbara was martyred and executed by the sword – a parallel that later viewers of this image could hardly have missed. The tragic irony is inescapable, though clearly it lies beyond the image’s original intent. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BAL7392888-edf5339-e1773314139385.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A circular portrait miniature of Anne Boleyn framed in gold. She wears a richly decorated Tudor headdress with gold embroidery and pearls, a dark gown with a square lace‑trimmed neckline, and a chain necklace, set against a deep blue background" title="Other portrait miniatures – including this one now in the collection of the Duke of Bucchleuch – share "a striking physiognomy" with other paintings (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> The possibility that Anne’s contemporary likeness survives in smaller, more intimate painted formats is strongly supported by this pairing of the Windsor sketch and the image of her as Saint Barbara. Two other near-identical portrait miniatures – one now in the collection of the Duke of Bucchleuch, the other in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada – long associated with Anne, share a striking physiognomy with these two. When viewed together, the alignment of the facial structures is too close to be dismissed as a coincidence. These works appear to preserve a recognisable likeness circulating within and shortly after Anne’s lifetime, intended for private recognition rather than public proclamation. Though we can’t be absolutely certain of the person whom they portray, these miniatures stand as the most plausible painted candidates for capturing Anne Boleyn’s likeness from life. Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love Changing faces After her execution, Anne’s image fell out of use. When it re-emerged during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I, it was in a radically altered political landscape. One of the most familiar images of Anne today is the portrait painted c1584 and catalogued as NPG 668 in the National Portrait Gallery. Long treated as a posthumously created likeness of Anne herself, it preserves something else: Elizabeth’s face. Art historian Lawrence Hendra has identified the creator of this famous panel painting as the as-yet-unnamed ‘Pearl Artist’. Comparing this artist’s other works – including portraits of Elizabeth I, her half-sister Mary I and her great-grandfather, Edward IV – it is clear that the painter used the same facial pattern for each sitter, including Anne Boleyn. The elongated facial structure, refined nose and controlled expression closely mirror Elizabeth’s physiognomy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-92818829-f98bc7d-e1773311146880.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A richly detailed Tudor portrait of Anne Boleyn shown against a dark background. She wears an elaborate pearl‑studded headdress framing her face, a dark gown decorated with gold embroidery and pearls, and a necklace with a prominent gold “B” pendant. At the top of the painting, Latin text identifies her as “Anna Bolina, wife of Henry VIII.”" title="The 'Pearl Artist' painting of Anne. This was produced c1584 (Image by Getty Images)" /> This effort to make Elizabeth’s relatives, some of whom likely bore no resemblance to one another, look alike was deliberate. In the 1580s, Elizabeth’s position was vulnerable. She was unmarried, without an heir, and facing both internal Catholic resistance and external threat. So repainting her ancestors with her own facial features anchored her visually as the rightful queen at a time when her legitimacy was again in question. Ensuring that Elizabeth looked like her father’s relatives as well as her mother, who had been accused of adultery, was a covert attempt to transform Anne from a condemned queen into a dynastic foundation stone, visually legitimising her daughter’s rule. A different but equally deliberate innovation appears in the so-called Hever Rose portrait. Recent multi-modal scientific analysis by the Hamilton Kerr Institute, combined with dendrochronology (the dating of the wooden panel), places its painting in c1583, just one year before the famous picture in the National Portrait Gallery. Infrared reflectography reveals that the artist initially followed a pre-existing design but then interrupted it, inserting fully articulated hands holding a rose. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/Anne-Boleyn-16th-Century-Hever-Rose-24ca6bb-e1773311339212.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A richly detailed Tudor portrait of Anne Boleyn shown against a dark background. She wears an elaborate pearl‑studded headdress framing her face, a dark gown decorated with gold embroidery and pearls, and a necklace with a prominent gold “B” pendant. She has her hands held up against her chest. At the top of the painting, Latin text identifies her as “Anna Bolina, wife of Henry VIII.”" title="The Hever Rose portrait, painted c1583, is notable in deliberately depicting Anne’s hands – probably an attempt to nullify defamatory claims that she had possessed six fingers (Image by Hever Castle)" /> This moment matters, because it marks the first time Anne’s hands appeared in her posthumous iconography – a choice that was almost certainly polemical. In the early 1580s, defamatory claims by Nicholas Sander alleging that Anne possessed a sixth finger were already circulating widely in manuscript, years before they appeared in print. By depicting elegant, unblemished hands, with each finger made carefully visible, the artist offers a quiet but pointed rebuttal to this claim. Both portraits respond to the same anxiety. In a period when Elizabeth’s legitimacy was under attack, Anne’s image was re-engineered to defend it: her face reshaped to mirror the queen’s, her body corrected to refute slander. Art became a form of political repair. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/BAL872290-3b47074-e1773313278928.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A highly detailed Elizabethan portrait showing a figure in an opulent gown covered with pearls, gemstones, and intricate gold embroidery. A tall, floral-patterned lace ruff frames the neck, and the sitter’s tightly curled hair is topped with a pearl‑ and jewel‑encrusted headdress. The dark background emphasizes the elaborate textures and craftsmanship of the clothing and accessories." title="Contemporary portraits, like the one of Elizabeth I above, were clearly based on the same facial pattern used in the 'Pearl Artist' painting of Anne (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Lost likeness Nearly five centuries after her execution, we may never know precisely what Anne Boleyn looked like. Her face survives only in fragments, refracted through prisms of politics, art and memory. Yet this uncertainty is not a failure of evidence; it is part of her history. The images and descriptions that survive show that Anne was not invisible, and not admired solely for her beauty. She was compelling because of her presence, intelligence and conviction. She understood the power of being seen, and used imagery, print and ceremony to assert her place in the world. In the end, the question of her appearance matters not because it satisfies curiosity but because it restores agency. Anne Boleyn was not merely a face shaped by others but an active participant – through her patronage of Holbein and the Horenbout family, not least – in how she was represented, remembered and contested. Approaching 500 years on, we are still learning to see her clearly. Unpicking locks What colour was Anne Boleyn's hair? Modern portrayals often depict Anne with jet-black hair, reinforcing an image of dark, exotic beauty. The historical record, however, is more ambiguous. Contemporary descriptions mention dark eyes and darker complexion, but none explicitly describe hair colour – likely because it may not have seemed remarkable enough to comment upon. Some later sources describe Anne as “witch-like” with black hair; others suggest chestnut or reddish tones. The poet Thomas Wyatt may have been referring to her when he wrote of a “brunet” woman. In Tudor usage, that could refer to dark hair, darker skin or both, and was often used to signal complexion rather than colouring alone. Genetics adds more uncertainty. Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth I, was red-haired, as was Henry VIII in his youth. Red hair is linked to variants of the MC1R gene expressed only if inherited from both parents, so Anne must have carried at least one such variant. Though not proof that she herself was red-haired, this significantly increases the likelihood, and makes chestnut or auburn tones entirely plausible. Later portraits often show Anne with lighter reddish-brown hair. These may reflect attempts to align her appearance more closely with Elizabeth’s, reinforcing dynastic continuity. In a culture where fair hair was associated with virtue, this shift was politically advantageous. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-544168286-132885d-e1773314361550.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A richly detailed Tudor portrait of Anne Boleyn shown against a dark background. She wears an elaborate pearl‑studded headdress framing her face, a dark gown decorated with gold embroidery and pearls, and a necklace with a prominent gold “B” pendant." title="A late 16th-century portrait shows Anne with reddish hair, again perhaps tying her to Elizabeth (Image by Getty Images)" /> This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
What was the most important year in history? We asked 9 experts – and this is what they said
Our crack team of historians, broadcasters and authors offer their takes on a conundrum that continues to divide opinions
AD 1000 Norse power: when worlds collide This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of Greenland to the edge of the North American continent. There they met inhabitants of coastal regions of what’s now Canada: ancestors of peoples such as the Beothuk and Algonquin. The circle of humanity was closed for the first time in recorded history. In the 1960s, archaeologists found a Norse overwintering site at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. This backed up what the sagas had already described: a series of voyages west from Greenland, the discovery of new lands and resources, and increasingly violent encounters with the people they called Skrælingar – an unpleasant name meaning ‘wretched ones’. These cross-cultural encounters began promisingly enough, with red cloth and dairy products traded for animal pelts. Eventually, though, relations disintegrated into distrust, violence and murder – an uneasy foreshadowing of what would follow centuries later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2RA49CHwebready-675b6fb-e1772549042852.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cluster of reconstructed Viking buildings with sod-covered roofs sits inside a white wooden fence near a rocky coastline. The turf-walled structures vary in size and line a central dirt path, with wooden beams and tools displayed outside. Low hills and open water frame the background, evoking the historic Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland." title="Viking dwellings reconstructed at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, likely the site of the first Norse settlement in North America (Image by Alamy)" /> This is, of course, a moment of retrospective significance. Those voyagers didn’t realise that they had reached an entirely new continent. Their expeditions did not make big news around the world. For me, that makes this moment in history even more interesting. Because when we’re being carried along by the churning currents of time, it’s not always possible to tell which events and dates will mean the most to those looking back. Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024) 1066 Conquest, castles, class shifts and chivalry For British history, at least, the answer is 1066. This might seem surprising to people who remember only the battle of Hastings, the death of King Harold and the accession of William the Conqueror, but the regime change that followed the Norman takeover went far beyond just a new royal dynasty. As Domesday Book shows, by 1086 the old ruling class of Anglo-Saxon England had been replaced almost entirely, and more than 90 per cent of the land was now held by continental newcomers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/HYH4NP-CMYK-04891b5-e1772549396426.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry shows soldiers attacking a fortified structure. Armoured figures with spears and shields climb ladders toward battlements, while others fight at the gate below. The stylized medieval architecture frames the action, and a line of Latin text runs above the figures." title="A scene in the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a motte-and-bailey. The proliferation of castles was among the major changes that swept England after the Norman conquest (Image by Alamy)" /> This had an immediate effect on the country’s physical appearance. Castles, which had hardly existed in England at all before 1066, were constructed in their hundreds. Cathedrals and abbeys were ripped down and rebuilt in a new Romanesque style. Notoriously, the north was brutally harried into submission and turned into a desert. Less perceptibly, but even more importantly in the long run, the Conquest also introduced new ideas about how society should be regulated. Slavery, which had been commonplace among the Anglo-Saxons, disappeared over the next half-century. The custom of sparing the life of a defeated opponent became the new norm among the ruling elite. The rapid adoption of these new attitudes by the English set them apart from their insular neighbours, who continued to slaughter their enemies and practise war as slave-hunt. The novel perception of the Welsh, Scots and Irish as uncivilised barbarians was a direct result of the Norman conquest, and fuelled the aggressive English colonisation of those countries in the centuries that followed. Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster Read more | Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066 1945 World war, international aftermath At a global scale, the Second World War was the most momentous period in history. So it follows that the year of its conclusion – 1945 – was the most important year. The list of transformations that took place because of that war is truly astonishing. There were massive advances in computer technology, radio technology, plastics research, jet planes, rocket science and the production of antibiotics. Nuclear power quite literally exploded into our consciousness in 1945. Super Glue was discovered during the war, as was the technology behind microwave ovens. And it was the final victory in 1945 that allowed such innovations to be released from the secrecy of wartime and into the wider world. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-2161195064webready-ac6bc7d-e1772538184798.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph of a man seated at a large round table signing a document while several men in formal military and civilian attire stand behind him. Numerous national flags hang in the background along with a large United Nations emblem." title="Delegates from 50 nations gather in San Francisco in 1945 to agree and sign the United Nations Charter, part of a postwar process to restore international order (Image by Getty Images)" /> Alongside new technologies came huge social and geopolitical changes. It was in 1945 that today’s map of Europe was drawn during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. At the same time, the communist takeover of eastern Europe began. This was the year when the nations of Asia and Africa, inspired by wartime rhetoric, began their final push towards decolonisation. The international order was reborn with the establishment of the United Nations that summer, and a whole network of affiliated organisations followed. The list goes on. The Second World War cast a shadow on the world so long that it still affects us to this day. The memory of 1945, and of all that it represents, is preserved in our culture of storytelling, movie-making and novel writing, and we still commemorate it annually. No other single year in history has ever held such power over us – nor is ever likely to do so again. Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017) 31 BC Actium: turning the tide of Roman history At noon on 2 September 31 BC, Marcus Agrippa stood aboard his flagship and gazed towards the Greek promontory of Actium. Some 60 of his enemy’s warships were speeding over the Ionian waves in the direction of the 400 vessels led by him and Octavian, who was watching from an advantageous point on land. Those approaching were part of the fleet of 230 led by Mark Antony, Octavian’s former Roman ally, and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. As they reached the melee, Cleopatra’s ships sailed straight into the middle of the battle line – and for a moment it seemed as if the tide might turn. Instead, they surged straight through and into the open sea: Cleopatra was escaping. Panicked, Mark Antony abandoned his flagship and followed her with several smaller vessels, leaving their remaining fleet to face the onslaught alone. Surrender followed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/E75F2Xwebready-cd56f0d-e1772549167562.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A carved marble relief shows several ancient ships packed with soldiers in battle. Warriors hold shields and weapons as the vessels move through stylized waves. One ship carries a large horse, and fortified walls and towers rise behind the fighting, suggesting a coastal city under attack." title="Octavian’s forces triumph at the battle of Actium, shown in a first-century AD Roman relief (Image by Alamy)" /> At the time of the battle, the Roman empire was divided between Octavian in the west and Mark Antony in the east. With the suicides of Cleopatra and Mark Antony in 30 BC following their defeat at Actium, Octavian became sole ruler of Rome and conqueror of Egypt. Three years later, the Roman senate conferred on Octavian the title Augustus, officially marking the end of the Republic and the start of the Roman empire. Had Antony prevailed, Rome’s centre might have shifted eastwards. Alexandria might have become a second capital, Rome’s ambitions would likely have turned towards Mesopotamia and Persia rather than Germania and Britannia, and today Europe might instead have a Greek rather than Latin language base. Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author 1453 Bye bye Byzantines, all hail the Ottomans It is, of course, an impossible task to select one specific year. Momentous happenings do occur, but they’re made possible by structural changes – political, economic, cultural – over many decades or even centuries. Having said that, I’d pick 1453. That was the year in which the Hundred Years’ War ended – but also, even more significantly, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. That marked the end of the Byzantine empire – the last remnant of the Roman realm – which had lasted for more than 1,000 years. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/JR3129webready-fd2997a-e1772549266648.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustrated battle scene shows two opposing armies fighting outside a fortified city. In the foreground, soldiers in turbans and bright clothing wield curved swords, while behind them a dense line of armored troops with helmets advances. Domed buildings and towers rise in the background, suggesting the clash is taking place at a city’s walls." title="A 19th-century illustration shows Ottoman troops surging into Constantinople, sealing the fall of the Byzantine empire (Image by Alamy)" /> The city became the capital of the growing Ottoman empire, which endured until 1922 as a major global power. The religious make-up of the region changed dramatically, though it remained a melting pot of peoples of different cultures and faiths. The fall of Constantinople led to an influx of Greek scholars to Europe, who brought deep learning and fresh ideas that added extra stimulus to the Renaissance. It also represented a tectonic shift in global geopolitics, changing the balance of power in the Middle East and radically reconfiguring trade routes between Europe and Asia. Some argue that growing complications involved in trading along overland routes through Eurasia stimulated European Atlantic exploration. It also contributed to a reconfiguration of the medieval slave trade. As it became harder for European traders to traffic people via the Black Sea, they turned increasingly to the coast of west Africa – fuelling the growth of one of the most appalling and tragic phenomena in human history. Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford 1533 The wedding that reshaped England’s religious, social and political life It’s for good reason that the dawn of the Tudor era has widely been considered to mark the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern age. The 118 years when this celebrated dynasty occupied the throne witnessed unprecedented change in every aspect of English life. And no single year was more transformative than 1533. In 1527, Henry VIII had first petitioned the pope for an annulment from wife number one, Catherine of Aragon. He was driven by his all-consuming desire for a son and his obsession with Anne Boleyn, a woman of his wife’s household who had told him that if he wanted her, he’d have to put a ring on it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-463925937webready-63091c6-e1772538301249.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait of a woman in Tudor‑style dress, shown from the waist up. She wears a dark gown with a square neckline, a pearl necklace with a gold pendant shaped like the letter B, and a black headdress trimmed with pearls. She faces forward against a dark background." title="Henry VIII's determination to marry Anne Boleyn (above) had lasting consequences (Image by Getty Images)" /> Henry eventually took matters into his own hands by breaking with Rome and setting up a new Church of England, with himself as the supreme head. On 25 January 1533, he married Anne Boleyn. In May, his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was formally annulled and Anne was confirmed as his legitimate queen by the archbishop of Canterbury. She was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 1 June, by which time she was visibly pregnant. On 7 September, the new queen gave birth – not to the hoped-for son but to a daughter, the future Elizabeth I. This proved to be the beginning of the end for Anne. But her marriage to Henry had sparked a seismic shift in England’s religious, political and social life that would reverberate down the centuries. It also produced a monarch who ruled for longer than any of her Tudor predecessors and blazed a trail for future queens regnant. Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster Read more | Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn: the Tudor queen’s undying love for her mother 1858 Dawn of the Information Age On 16 August 1858, Queen Victoria sent a message to US president James Buchanan. Ordinarily, it would have taken about 10 days for such a communication to cross the Atlantic by ship – but this one arrived in only 16 hours. It was sent to mark the connection of the first transatlantic telegraph cable – a direct line between the Old World and the New. Shorter connections had already been completed between Britain and mainland Europe, including a cross-channel line in 1850, but the Atlantic presented a tougher challenge. For years, engineers including Samuel Morse had debated whether it was possible to lay 2,500 miles of cable beneath the ocean. The first attempt in 1857 failed when the line snapped. But now, at last, it was done. Some commentators hailed it as the Eighth Wonder of the World. An excited newspaper in Boston announced simply: “THERE IS NO MORE SEA!” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-90739586webready-a414067-e1772538374282.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A wooden display case with a blue background holds several cross‑sections of thick telegraph cables and related components. Each piece is mounted with a small printed label, and the items are arranged in two rows, including cable segments from different years and a metal grapnel model used for cable recovery." title="Submarine cables and grapnels used in 19th-century attempts to lay transatlantic telegraph lines (Image by Getty Images)" /> This first transatlantic cable failed after only three weeks, and it wasn’t until 1866 that a permanent line was established. But a precedent had been set: it would now be possible to connect every corner of world in an ever more extensive network of telegraph cables, eventually allowing huge volumes of information to pulse around the globe at previously unimaginable speeds. It was many years later before this vision was fully realised, but in 1858 we see the beginning of the new Information Age – a recognisably modern moment that culminated in the arrival of the internet. Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University 1917 When revolution reshaped alliances, identities and ambitions In this pivotal year, Russia stopped fighting in the First World War and the US entered it. Neither country ranked much as a world power at the time, but wartime actions sparked global transformations. President Woodrow Wilson’s championing of international cooperation and American-style democracy (universal in rhetoric but deeply racialised in practice) signalled US ambitions for the world stage. But the big story was Russia: its economy shattered by the war, its people toppled the tsar in March (February in the Julian calendar then in use), setting the stage for the Bolsheviks to seize power in November (Julian: October). The Russian Revolution – the most important event of the 20th century – was complete by the end of 1917, and the Soviet Union was secured by 1922. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-526928472webready-bdd9558-e1772538521653.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A stylized poster shows a red figure raising a large hammer above their head, standing over broken black chains. The figure wears clothing marked “1917.” Red star shapes around them contain English and Russian words including “Socialism,” “Democracy,” and “Peace.” The background is light with bold graphic contrasts." title="A Soviet poster celebrates the Russian Revolution of 1917, which inspired anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa (Image by Getty Images)" /> Neither the civil rights movement nor decolonial struggles would have unfolded as they did without the Soviet Union, whether as foil or ally. In the US, for example, communist organising and Soviet propaganda forced segregationists to either justify or modify their system of racial division. In the world subject to European empire, Soviet communism offered intellectual and material resources to anticolonial nationalists. Cold War historians tend to focus on the ascendant US and its Soviet nemesis duking it out for global hegemony via conflicts in Latin America, Africa and Asia. More salient are the ways in which the revolutionary model and the revolutionary challenge pushed communities, groups and nations to articulate who they were and who they wished to be. The Russian Revolution helped remake the world – and we live out its legacy. Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University Read more | Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s all to do with the Vikings 490 BC Marathon: a victory for democracy Six decades after Cyrus the Great had founded the Achaemenid empire, the Persian forces of King Darius I – also ‘the Great’ – were pushing west to conquer all of Greece. Their primary aim was to lay waste to Athens, which had had the temerity to support a revolt against the empire that by then controlled swathes of the region. But they hadn’t banked on the determination and tactical nous of their opponents. By September 490 BC, the Persian fleet had landed on the coast of Attica about 17 miles north-east of Athens, its troops disembarking onto the plain of Marathon. Around 10,000 Athenian men mustered in the surrounding hills, joined by 1,000 from Plataea – but were still vastly outnumbered. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-475596641webready-ac6297a-e1772538584504.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A carved stone relief showing several human figures in a crowded, dynamic scene. At the center, an older bearded man sits upright while other figures around him lift, support, or carry objects resembling large torches or cornucopias. A reclining figure appears at the lower right. The relief is detailed with drapery, musculature, and expressive poses, and a decorative frieze of circular and floral motifs runs along the top edge." title="The battle of Marathon, in a sarcophagus relief from the second century BC (Image by Getty Images)" /> On learning that the Persian cavalry was absent, Greek warriors led by Athenian general Miltiades swept down on the enemy. Against the odds, the Persian troops were routed – reputedly at the cost of only 192 Athenian dead. This was a critical moment in ancient history: it gave confidence to the Greeks that they could stand up to the mighty Persian empire and, thanks to their part in the victory, the Athenians emerged as the most important polis in Greece. It also provided momentum for Athens’ emerging democracy. In the mid-19th century, English philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that “as an event in English history, the battle of Marathon was more important than the battle of Hastings” because Greek (and, particularly, Athenian) victory in that clash was so linked to the development of democracy. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices
In the first of a new monthly series, we asked an expert team of historians to tackle one of the big questions about the past
Homer Composite figment of imaginations The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated historical figure. That’s mostly because it’s likely that there was no one person called Homer. Careful study of those works, as well as other surviving epic fragments, has shown that they weren’t written at a single time by one person. Instead, it is likely that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed over generations by poetry performers known as rhapsodes. Each of these improved on the work of their predecessors, curating these epics and honing them to a point of perfection. From that time, probably around 700 BC, these works started to be transmitted in a more stable format. By around 550–500 BC, they were written down for the first time. By then, the belief was circulating that their genesis lay with one particular poet, Homer – not least because the idea of a single, genius author is simpler and more attractive than a slow process of evolution involving hundreds. A whole narrative was woven about the likely fictitious Homer: that he lived on Chios, that he was blind, even that he may have had some divine parentage. In fact, the notional Homer became so popular that later rhapsodes, doing performances of these now ‘finished’, stable poems, liked to claim themselves as ‘sons of Homer’ to give themselves more gravitas and fame. Ancient historians even wrote biographies of Homer as a historical figure, and busts were created of him. Yet, as a single man, he probably never existed at all. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Charles Dickens Verbose Victorian who distorted views of his era At the risk of being tarred and feathered next time I show my face at a Victorian history conference, I’d have to say that Dickens is overrated. It’s not that I dislike his work. Critics usually object to his long-winded prose, or baulk at the mawkish sentimentality of characters such as Little Nell, but I enjoy his writing. The callous way he treated his wife is harder to forgive – but his claim to greatness never rested on his qualities as a husband. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-171097572webready-65ad489-e1770634197183.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph of a middle aged man with a beard, wearing a three piece suit, and sitting at a desk. He is facing the camera, with one arm resting on the back of his chair and the other on the desk" title="“Many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty,” says Bob Nicholson (Image by Getty Images)" /> No, my objection to Dickens is one that he – always a relentless self-publicist – might actually enjoy. He is simply too famous. Dickens is often feted as the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol have been inflicted on generations of schoolchildren and adapted into endless period dramas (the best of which feature Muppets). As a result, many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty. I’ve spent my career as a historian trying to reveal the lighter sides of Victorian life – to prove that things weren’t as miserable as some of Dickens’ more pointed critiques suggest. Dickens was just one of many great writers who made their names in the Victorian era. I’m not suggesting that we consign him to the dustbin of history – but perhaps the time has come to stop him from hogging all of the limelight. Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University Mary, Queen of Scots Unwise architect of her own downfall Some historical figures, such as Richard III and Anne Boleyn, attract a cult following. Mary is another. She’s typically presented as a tragic heroine: a woman of courage who battled against adversity throughout her life, only to have it savagely cut short by her cold-hearted cousin, Elizabeth I. Yet the truth is far removed from this beguiling image. Yes, Mary was dogged by tragedy in her life, but much of it could have been avoided if she had shown greater wisdom and restraint. Instead, she made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/gr0174359Hwebready-fecd19a-e1770634443642.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a woman in a black dress with a white ruff and gold chains, holding a small child dressed in red and gold. Both are staring at the viewer" title="A 16th-century painting of Mary with her infant son, later King James VI & I. “She made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life,” says Tracy Borman (Image by Topfoto)" /> After a pampered upbringing in France, Mary returned to her native Scotland in 1561, aged 18. She then married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, one of the most unsuitable consorts in history, before eloping with the chief suspect in his murder, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell. Read more | Mary, Queen of Scots: your guide to her life and times Having lost all credibility, and been forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James, Mary fled to England, naively expecting that Elizabeth would help her regain her throne. She spent almost 19 years a prisoner there, during which time she was involved in numerous plots against the English queen, finally leaving a paper trail exposing her parts in conspiracies. Mary’s execution in 1587 propelled her to the status of Catholic martyr and tragic heroine. In truth, she was not the hapless victim of circumstance but the architect of her own downfall. Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster Petrarch Painted a dim picture of the Middle Ages The writing of early Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) is certainly not overrated. He was responsible for an exquisite body of lyric poetry, an extraordinary scholar who rediscovered the letters of Cicero, and one of the greatest contributors to the Italian language. Reading or listening to his poetry truly feeds the soul. As a medieval historian, though, I am bound to take issue with Petrarch’s comments on the nature of history – because these truly are overrated. His remarks have long misled and deceived, producing a vision of world history that has become embedded in the European and American historiographical imagination. It was Petrarch who came up with the idea of the ‘Dark Ages’. He described the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual obscurity in which the glories of the great Roman empire had been forgotten, inhabited by benighted and stupid people. “This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever,” he opined. “When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.” This condemnation of 800 years of history was taken up by 16th-century Protestants and then 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. It’s still common today, with the Middle Ages often dismissed as poorly documented, boring and dogmatic. It’s just not true! These were centuries of extraordinary intellectual discovery, of philosophical thinking about the nature of the self and society, of artistic vibrancy and sophisticated political theory. The Middle Ages matter: we study them to challenge our assumptions and better understand our common humanity. Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford Cicero Rome’s most shameless self-promoter The first-century BC Roman statesman and writer is often hailed as the voice of Republican virtue and a defender of democracy, justice and reason in a corrupt age. But this reputation owes more to his own words than to his actual achievements. In truth, Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of history’s most successful self-publicists. Cicero was elected consul in 63 BC. It was a remarkable achievement for a novus homo (‘new man’ without aristocratic ancestry) – and he never stopped reminding people of it. That same year, he crushed a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, and had several citizens executed without trial – an act he later declared showed moral courage. In reality, it was a serious abuse of power, and deeply divisive. Despite his modest background, Cicero consistently sided with Rome’s conservative elite, opposing reforms that might have redistributed wealth or power to the poor. He praised virtue, yet defended the clearly guilty Milo on a murder charge. He was undeniably a gifted speaker and writer, but as a statesman he was relatively irrelevant. He had no army, no loyal faction and little influence over the major figures of his time, such as Caesar, Pompey and Octavian (later Augustus). More than 800 of his letters and 58 speeches survive, far more than those left by any contemporary, giving his version of events an over-amplified voice. Through them he cast himself as the Republic’s moral guardian – but without them he’d be remembered as what he truly was: a gifted lawyer with more bluster than power. Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author Winston Churchill A flawed leader who could never live up to his idealised image Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes. He’s the subject of countless movies and television shows. His statue stands in Parliament Square. In a nationwide poll in 2002, he was voted the greatest figure in British history. Ever. Though I have great respect for Churchill as a symbol of British courage and determination during the Second World War, the man himself cannot possibly live up to this image. In many ways, he was a terrible politician. Even by the standards of the time, his views were objectionable. He actively opposed equal rights for women, and he frequently made racist comments – particularly about Indians, calling them a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. During most of the 1930s he was shunned by the political establishment, including many in his own party. He was often drunk on the job. There is no question that Britain needed a leader with Churchill’s energy to see it through the war. Yet his own Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, claimed that Churchill often made it impossible for the armed forces to do their work. He came up with ridiculous plans, then acted “like a spoilt child” when military experts pointed out that they were impossible. Read more | Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history? Churchill was certainly a heroic figure. He was one of the very first to oppose Hitler, and his inspiring speeches galvanised the country in its hour of need. But can he live up to our idealised image of him? Of course not. How could anyone? Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017) Erik Bloodaxe Spectacular nickname, underwhelming legacy I love a Viking-Age hero with a dramatic nickname as much as the next person, but let’s not kid ourselves: they were masters of their own propaganda. Look for the men behind the myths (and we are mostly talking men here) and the historical reality can be a little… underwhelming. Take Erik Bloodaxe, twice ruler of Northumbria in the mid-10th century. Most of what we think we know about his colourful life comes from the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, recorded long after his lifetime. In these, he’s portrayed as a larger-than-life character: favourite son of King Harald Fairhair, slayer of his own brothers, locked in a bitter feud with Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrimsson. His wife, Gunnhild, is depicted as a shapeshifting, murderous sorceress said to have commissioned another source for Erik’s life – or, rather, afterlife – the poem Eiríksmál (‘The Lay of Erik’), in which the god Odin orders his warriors and Valkyries to prepare Valhalla for the arrival of this great hero. But beyond the vivid details of his legend, what do we know about the historical figure? Coins and chronicles tell us that he was a key political player in 10th-century Northumbria. But his brief reigns (947–48 and 952–54) were turbulent, to say the least, challenged by Anglo-Saxon Wessex to the south and Viking Dublin to the west. In 954, he came to a sticky end, driven from York and ambushed in the wilds of Cumbria. His death brought an end to Viking rule in the north of England. So, not a brilliant legacy. But still a great nickname. Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024) Ronald Reagan Seemingly a candidate for sainthood – but with questionable principles Making heroes out of historical figures requires some selective forgetting. In the US, where the cult of Ronald Reagan has many adherents, forgetting is almost an art form. Popular writing treats Reagan as a principled example of free-market rectitude who ended the Cold War and heralded morning in America. Critics of the contemporary Republican Party often invoke Reagan to signal how far his heirs have gone astray. The GOP is “no longer the party of Reagan”, critics lament in publications such as The Washington Post, Time or USA Today. Rhetorically, harking back to Reagan makes a claim of legitimacy and ideological fidelity. To invoke Reagan is to touch the hem of the saints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-515176604webready-fb0e4e7-e1770638568611.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a man in a grey suit and red tie, standing alongside a woman in a black and white checked dress. They are holding a series of papers between them, looking at a speech" title="Ronald and Nancy Reagan prepare a 1986 speech. Modern rhetoric “gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his”, says Adriane Lentz-Smith (Image by Getty Images)" /> This gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his, and overlooks wrongdoing that was. Did Reagan end the Cold War? Many would argue that dynamics within the USSR – Mikhail Gorbachev’s embrace of democratic socialism, for example – sparked the transformation of the Soviet Union more than any external force did. Was Reagan’s administration principled? Anyone recalling the manipulative illegality of the Iran–Contra Affair might marvel at the question. Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'? Did Reagan mean “morning in America” to apply to all Americans? As candidate, he gave a speech celebrating “states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Mississippi near where three voting rights activists had been murdered in 1964. For years, he publicly ignored the decade-defining public health crisis that was the HIV epidemic. He scaled back on social programmes while intensifying the war on drugs. He busted unions while preaching ‘trickle-down’ economics. Without selective forgetting, the Reagan era feels less like the antithesis of our present and more like its progenitor. Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University Simon de Montfort A history of violence Some 760 years after his death, Simon de Montfort still enjoys a fairly sturdy reputation as a social reformer – the man who summoned what’s claimed to have been the first English parliament. A portrait of him is carved above the doors of the US House of Representatives, among a pantheon of democratic worthies. An English university was named after him as recently as 1992. But this reputation rests almost entirely on modern myth. Kings of England had been summoning consultative assemblies for hundreds of years before Montfort did so in 1265, and were calling them parliaments as early as 1236. Montfort’s contribution was long reckoned to have been the introduction of representation by including knights and townsmen, but both these groups had already been attending parliaments for several decades. Montfort was undoubtedly a skilled politician – clever, persuasive and quick-witted – but his preferred method of getting things done was usually violence. He had put himself into power in 1263 by leading attacks on the supporters of his brother-in-law, Henry III, and he reduced Henry to a puppet the following year by defeating him in battle. Montfort was also a pioneering antisemite. As soon as he became Earl of Leicester in 1231, he expelled all of the Jews from that town – the first such expulsion in England – and in the 1260s he led violent massacres of other Jewish communities. A capable warrior and a charismatic leader, Montfort was expert at exploiting the grievances of others for his own ends. A founder of parliamentary democracy he was not. Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
The prince and the brothel: 6 scandals that rocked the British monarchy
At a time when the royal family is under significant strain, historians shine a spotlight on some of the biggest crises to have enveloped the British monarchy over the past three centuries
The prince, the brothel and a culture war Katie Hindmarch-Watson describes a sex scandal that consumed Queen Victoria’s grandson On 7 July 1889, a policeman arrested a sometime telegraph boy, Henry Newlove, at his mother’s house in Camden Town. Newlove had been recruiting younger telegraph boys at London’s Central Telegraph Office to provide sexual services for affluent male clients at a brothel on Cleveland Street. Defiant, Newlove said that he thought it “very hard that I should get into trouble while men in high position are allowed to walk around free… Why, Lord Arthur Somerset goes regularly to the house at Cleveland Street; so does the Earl of Euston and Colonel Jervois.” Within months, Newlove was in prison and Somerset was in exile. Yet Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, triumphed in a libel suit that exonerated him from any “gross indecency”, and Colonel Jervois received no further mention in police records or the press. However, another man in high position became the focus of speculation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL11686324webready-dfc0737-e1770036564257.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A newspaper depicting several scenes of men in top hats and young boys standing in the street" title="The Cleveland Street Scandal, as reported in The Illustrated Police News on 25 January 1890. The affair – which embroiled Prince Albert Victor – “evolved into a morality tale about rich men’s predatory vices” (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> We still don’t really know why Prince Albert Victor – or ‘Eddy’, grandson of Queen Victoria and oldest son of the Prince of Wales – became linked to the story. Arthur Somerset had been his father’s equerry, but there is no evidence that the two men associated with one another, and no proof has emerged one way or another about Eddy’s propensity for sex with teenage telegraph boys. The Cleveland Street Scandal evolved from Newlove’s revelations into a morality tale about rich men’s predatory vices, unequal treatment before the law, and the public’s right to private revelations. Prince Eddy was a potent symbol in a class culture war that pitted aristocratic privilege against aspiring youths in a modernising city. The rumours were enough to spark royal intervention. The Prince of Wales instructed courtiers to keep his son’s name out of the British press, and crown prosecutors used coded language to discuss the persistent suggestion that Eddy was involved. Eddy’s death of pneumonia in 1892 quashed any further need to protect his reputation – but something shady still clings to his memory. Katie Hindmarch-Watson is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University Did Queen Victoria marry her servant? When the widowed monarch fell for the son of a farmer, the nation was scandalised, says Fern Riddell Just a few years after Prince Albert died, the widowed Victoria found herself in the middle of a huge scandal. She was accused of falling in love – and even marrying – her Highland servant, John Brown. For the Victorians, the idea that their monarch might be having a passionate love affair with the son of an Aberdeenshire farmer was truly shocking. Their society was ruled by class, and John was very clearly outside Victoria’s. Her court despised John for his ordinary background, and her government was convinced that he was a threat to both her security and that of the crown. Rumours filled the newspapers that Victoria was mad, and that John was her keeper. Meanwhile, gossips insinuated that he was using supernatural powers to control her and make her fall in love with him. Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: historian Fern Riddell explains all For 20 years, John stood at Victoria’s side in silence, enduring personal attacks in the press and the threat of violence from Victoria’s public, who believed that he was the reason she was living in seclusion. But Victoria refused to listen to the criticism. She didn’t care who hated John – her family, her court, her government or her people. She refused to be parted from him. By the time John died in 1883, many were convinced that they had privately married. When Victoria attempted to publish a manuscript exposing their life together, the papers were seized and burned by her private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, to avoid another terrible scandal. Twenty years later, when Victoria left private instructions for her own burial, she directed that she should be buried with John’s mother’s wedding ring on her finger, and with a lock of his hair and his photograph in her hand. For the next 150 years, John’s family kept a secret archive of Victoria’s letters, jewellery and artefacts about their relationship. They believed that it was too dangerous to expose the truth of their love for one another – until today. Luckily for us, what was scandalous for the Victorians has now been revealed as the greatest love affair of Victoria’s reign. Fern Riddell’s latest book is Victoria’s Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen (Ebury, 2025) Edward VIII puts love before duty The king’s insistence on marrying Wallis Simpson caused a constitutional crisis, writes Alexander Larman The expulsion of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) from the royal family has undoubtedly been the most scandalous story that ‘the Firm’ has weathered in decades. But it does not even come close to 1936 in constitutional significance. Andrew is, after all, the second son of the late Elizabeth II, whereas Edward VIII was king – albeit a reluctant one. After ascending to the throne following the death of his father, George V, he made it clear that ruling was of secondary importance to his love affair with the married American socialite Wallis Simpson. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-141556826webready-4b8a928-e1770036748150.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The former Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson on their wedding day, 3 June 1937. The monarchy’s current woes don’t “even come close” to Edward’s abdication in constitutional significance, writes Alexander Larman (Image by Getty Images)" title="The former Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson on their wedding day, 3 June 1937. The monarchy’s current woes don’t “even come close” to Edward’s abdication in constitutional significance, writes Alexander Larman (Image by Getty Images)" /> It was a sign of the respect in which the monarchy was held at the time that no mention of that relationship was ever made in the British papers, despite it being common knowledge (and freely speculated upon in the European and American media). Had the king been content to keep Wallis as his mistress, the press magnates Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere would have continued to keep the potentially embarrassing story quiet. Yet Edward would not agree to be crowned king in 1937 unless Wallis could become queen. This was impossible for both religious and social reasons, so he announced his intention of abdicating. Constitutionally, this was more difficult than he had imagined, because of the settlement following the deposition of James II & VII, which ensured that the king ruled by consent of parliament. Only the interventions of the king’s lawyer, Walter Monckton, and prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, allowed Edward to quit the throne, assume the title of Duke of Windsor, and marry Wallis. He left England still well regarded by his subjects, but later revelations about his alleged support for the Nazis irrevocably tarnished this affection. The Duke of Windsor is today regarded as one of Britain’s least popular – if most consequential – monarchs. I suspect that Edward and the abdication will be remembered long after Andrew has become a footnote in royal history. Alexander Larman is a historian, journalist and author of books including The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication (W&N, 2020) The Prince Regent’s marital misery Few royal marriages can have been more hellish than that of Caroline of Brunswick and the wastrel Prince Regent, writes Nigel Jones Thanks to the brilliantly illustrated scandal sheets of Regency Britain, the disastrous marriage of the Prince Regent, later King George IV, to Princess Caroline of Brunswick kept the country entertained and outraged for a quarter of a century. George, a spendthrift wastrel, was hopelessly in debt. Though secretly married to the Roman Catholic Maria Fitzherbert, in 1795 the prince reluctantly took (sight unseen) a legitimate, Protestant bride – his first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick – in the hope that her money would pay off his creditors. It was hate at first sight. George told Lord Malmesbury, who had brought his bride from Germany, “Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy.” Equally unimpressed, Caroline found her husband fatter than she’d been led to believe. Meanwhile, Malmesbury noted her poor personal hygiene. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-464476543webready-588f5c4-e1770036889924.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful cartoon showing a couple in the centre, each being dragged in opposite directions by other couples" title="An 1820 cartoon pokes fun at George IV’s attempt to dissolve his marriage to Caroline of Brunswick. The disastrous union “kept the country entertained and outraged for a quarter of a century”, says Nigel Jones (Image by Getty Images)" /> Despite drinking for three days before their wedding, George performed his marital duties: nine months later Caroline gave birth to a daughter, Charlotte. But he made his wife’s life so hellish that she soon went into exile in Europe. She settled in a lakeside villa near Como, met (and joked about having sex with) the pope, and reportedly threw parties at which she danced topless. Read more | The illness and decline of King George III George sent spies to report on her misdeeds, hoping to obtain evidence for a divorce. Caroline’s lovers reputedly included a young Italian and – more scandalously still – Marshal Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law and ruler of Naples, at a time when Britain was at war with France. When George III died in 1820, Caroline returned to claim her place as queen. But not only did the new king have her tried by the House of Lords for adultery, he had the doors of Westminster Abbey barred when she tried to attend his coronation. The hypocritical adultery accusations having been dropped, Caroline was cheered by the London mob, who saw her as a symbol of opposition to the king. Broken by her humiliation, though, she died three weeks later. Nigel Jones is a historian and writer. His books include Kitty’s Salon (John Blake, 2023) Georgian Britain’s disobedient rake The disreputable Duke of Cumberland caused no end of trouble, writes Felicity Day George III started his reign with noble ambitions: to be a moral leader, faithful to his wife and head of a united royal family. Regrettably, not all of his clan got the memo. George’s younger brother Henry, Duke of Cumberland was notionally a naval officer but in reality a rake-about-town. A dispute with a courtesan had already dragged him into the newspapers before he hit the headlines in 1769 over a more scandalous affair with Lady Grosvenor. The couple were caught by her husband’s servants in a bedchamber in a coaching inn in St Albans, their clothing in disarray. Henry was hauled into court to account for his ‘criminal conversation’ with another man’s wife. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL416311webready-df88fb0-e1770036955185.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a young woman in a gold dress, with a high, grey hairdo" title="In 1771, George III’s younger brother Henry secretly married widow and commoner Anne Horton (shown in a c1777 portrait). Henry’s spirited antics strained the public’s tolerance for the monarchy (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> With revelations ranging from the disguises he donned for secret trysts to the inarticulate and ungrammatical style of his love letters, the duke was made to look ridiculous. A £13,000 bill for damages and costs had to be covered from the Civil List – and, to the king’s further shame, the press was filled with comment about un-princely conduct dragging the nation into disrepute. Then, in 1771, it emerged that Henry had secretly married. His bride was the widow Anne Horton – a commoner, and daughter of a notorious libertine. Furious, the king exiled them from court, and refused to provide financial support. In an attempt to prevent any further such disobedience, he pushed his government into passing the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which made it illegal for royals under the age of 25 to wed without the monarch’s consent. Read more | Charlotte and Diana: the parallel lives of two Princesses of Wales whose deaths sent the nation into mourning It didn’t stop the outcast couple causing trouble. The Cumberlands set up a lively rival court, consorting with opposition politicians and befriending the future George IV and his eldest brothers – who followed their uncle into lives of gambling, womanising and general extravagance, causing countless more PR crises and pushing public support for the royals to the brink. The determined respectability of Victoria’s court was without doubt a direct reaction to their steady drumbeat of scandals. Felicity Day is a journalist and author of The Game of Hearts: True Stories of Regency Romance (Blink Publishing, 2024) Elizabeth II misreads the public mood When the Queen seemed to stay silent in the wake of Princess Diana’s death, she was seen as out of touch, says Shrabani Basu It was meant to be a lazy Sunday at the end of the summer holidays. But on 31 August 1997, Britons woke to the shocking news that Diana, Princess of Wales had died following a car crash in a Paris tunnel. Her friend Dodi Fayed and the car’s driver Henri Paul had also lost their lives. Diana had rarely been away from the headlines. From the Panorama interview in which she famously said that “there were three of us in this marriage”, to the latest round of holiday photos with Dodi Fayed, the end of her fairy-tale wedding to Prince Charles had fuelled tabloid sales for years. Now a pall of gloom descended over Britain. Within hours of the crash, Kensington Palace had turned into a shrine for the late princess. Everyone from Mother Teresa to heads of state was expressing their grief. But though a short statement expressing shock and distress was issued from Buckingham Palace, Diana’s former mother-in-law remained at Balmoral Castle, 500 miles from London, seemingly unmoved. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-73389657webready-1d8b4e5-e1770037044850.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing lots of flowers and written tributes along a spiked metal fence. To the right, a young boy ties something around one of the fence posts" title="A boy attaches a tribute to the railings of Kensington Palace following the death of Princess Diana, 1997. This would “become one of the most trying moments in Elizabeth II’s reign”, writes Shrabani Basu (Image by Getty Images)" /> The Queen was following the rule book – Diana was technically no longer a royal. But the press reflected public sentiment. “Where is our Queen?” screamed The Sun. “Show us you care,” demanded The Express. For once, Elizabeth had not read the national mood. Speculation mounted in the vacuum, with some blaming Charles for his infidelity and for driving Diana into Dodi’s arms. All in all, it would become one of the most trying moments in Elizabeth II’s reign, when the monarchy seemed to have lost the plot. Eventually, an intervention by the newly elected prime minister, Tony Blair, convinced the Queen that she needed to be heard. Four days later Elizabeth appeared at the gates of Balmoral and looked at the wreaths. Five days after Diana’s death, she finally made a live broadcast from Buckingham Palace, speaking as a “Queen and as a grandmother”. The people forgave her, and faith in the monarchy was restored. Shrabani Basu is author of Victoria & Abdul: The Extraordinary True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant (The History Press, 2010) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine