HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-05-03T14:31:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Nude inspections, thigh flashers and fights to the death: 15 things you need to know about the Spartans
items: A history of the world in 7 faces: from Tutankhamun to the Virgin Mary
items: Retracing Eleanor of Castile's final journey
items: What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
items: Famous last words: what did Winston Churchill, Walt Disney and Marie Antoinette say on their deathbeds?
items: It was medieval England's worst antisemitic massacre. Here's what happened next
items: I wrote a letter to the world's most famous terrorist – and nothing could have prepared me for his reply
items: History's most notorious crime scenes: from Lizzie Borden's lair to HH Holmes's 'murder castle'
items: "It was the greatest act of violence for 66 million years": why the modern world was born of bloodshed
items: He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was

Nude inspections, thigh flashers and fights to the death: 15 things you need to know about the Spartans
type: item
date: 2026-05-03T14:30:47.000Z
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Death
subject: Historical people
description: In our minds, Sparta has become a near-mythical Greek city-state populated by the tough and single-minded ancient predecessors of today’s special forces troops. But as historian Andrew Bayliss outlines, its supposedly hyper-militarised society was stranger and more complex than its reputation suggests
encoded: 1. The ‘Spartans’ were really called the homoioi Although we know the citizens of the ancient Greek city of Sparta as the ‘Spartans’, they usually called themselves the homoioi. This can be translated as ‘equals’ or ‘similars’. As for outsiders, they usually called the Spartans ‘the Lacedaemonians’. This was because the city-state of Sparta – what the ancient Greeks called a polis – was actually called ‘Lacedaemon’. 2. All Spartan citizens were rich Although ancient sources often describe their lifestyle as austere, Spartan citizens were all wealthy men. Every citizen was required to join a mess group, where he dined each night. To keep his place, he had to supply large monthly contributions of foodstuffs from his estates: roughly 45kg of barley, 3kg of cheese, 1.5kg of figs, a small amount of pork and 37 litres of wine. Modern scholars have calculated that each Spartiate would have needed to own at least 15 hectares of land to meet his mess contributions. Such large holdings would have made them all properly wealthy by ancient Greek standards. 3. They wore their hair long – and sported striking red cloaks To reflect their relative equality as homoioi, Spartan citizens adopted a uniform appearance, keeping their hair long and dressing in red cloaks and tunics. Ancient sources claimed the Spartans’ long hair was designed to make handsome men more attractive and ugly men more frightening. Their red cloaks helped conceal bloodstains in combat. In fact, this appearance was designed to project citizens’ gentlemanly status. This is because the ancient Greeks thought it was impossible for any man with long hair to perform manual labour, while producing the red dye for cloaks was incredibly laborious, a process that required the harvesting of more than 10,000 murex shellfish to produce just a single gram of dye. 4. This was not a ‘warrior’ society Spartans are often described as ‘warriors’, but they didn’t spend all their time preparing for conflict as professional soldiers…

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A history of the world in 7 faces: from Tutankhamun to the Virgin Mary
type: item
date: 2026-04-27T16:00:55.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Burial
subject: Death
subject: Historical people
subject: Slavery
description: From a Stone Age Venus and an Egyptian death mask to an unflinchingly challenging 21st-century sculpture, Fay Bound-Alberti introduces seven depictions of the face that track humanity’s ever-evolving relationship with creativity, hierarchy and self-image
encoded: 1. The art of darkness This enigmatic head is a 25,000-year-old testament to the innate urge to capture the essence of a person in art In 1894, an archaeologist called Édouard Piette walked into a cave in the village of Brassempouy in south-west France and came face-to-face with humanity’s distant past. Lying in the darkness was a fragment of mammoth-ivory carved to depict a head. That head was tiny – so small that it could nestle in the palm of Piette’s hand – and yet it had survived for 25,000 years, carved by an artist deep in the Palaeolithic period. Piette couldn’t have been aware of it at the time, but he had just discovered one of the earliest known representations of a human face in art. That representation is both awe-inspiring – and deeply enigmatic. It would soon be known as ‘The Venus of Brassempouy’ – there were other Venuses in the same cave, with those rounded hips and breasts associated with fertility symbols – and yet we can’t even be sure if it depicts a woman. Despite these uncertainties, the fact that this rare and portable object exists at all tells us that it was important for the artist to capture something of the essence of a person – and with a level of detail that is unusual for a Venus figurine. That depth of detail is most evident in the intricate, chequerboard-patterned hair – possibly a wig or hood – from which the object derives its nickname, ‘La Dame à La Capuche’ (Lady with the Hood). The face, by comparison, is a blank canvas. It has a prominent forehead, nose and brow, but it lacks a mouth. Was this artistic decision influenced by convention? Religion? Personal style? Time? We do not know. What we do know is that the Venus of Brassempouy stands as a symbol of how representations of the face have evolved over 25,000 years. Today, we take it for granted that our face represents us – a phenomenon I have termed ‘facehood’. It is marked on our passports and unlocks our mobiles; it is captured in photographs countless times over our life…

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Retracing Eleanor of Castile's final journey
type: item
date: 2026-04-20T07:40:51.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Death
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: Alice Loxton retraces Eleanor of Castile’s 200-mile funerary journey, uncovering the life, legacy, and love story of the medieval queen
encoded: At the end of the 13th century, England was gripped by grief as news of the queen's death shook the nation. Eleanor of Castile's funeral procession from Lincoln to London would become one of the most remarkable journeys in medieval English history – and would also be immortalised in stone through the famous Eleanor Crosses. More than seven centuries later, Alice Loxton has retraced that historic route on foot – and, in her latest book, Eleanor: A 200-Mile Walk in Search of England's Lost Queen, she explores the landscapes that connect us to this past. Emily Briffett caught up with Alice to find out more about how 12 stone crosses act as enduring testaments to royal love – and the history that we can uncover for ourselves by simply stepping outside.

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What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
type: item
date: 2026-04-08T15:30:41.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British prime ministers
subject: Civil rights
subject: Death
subject: Medieval life
subject: The royal family
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors take aim at the most egregious fallacies about the past
encoded: Ancient Athenian democracy was democratic There’s plenty to criticise about that ancient approach We wouldn’t recognise the system practised in ancient Athens as democracy in the sense we understand it today. Women did not have the vote, and the entire society depended on a massive slave population to be able to function. Yet in other ways it was also more democratic than our democracies today. Every (male) citizen took an active role in governing the city, and every major decision was taken by a vote involving every citizen who attended. An even more egregious misconception is the idea there is an unbroken link between ancient and modern democracy. Athenian democracy lasted for only around 200 years; since then, through most of the rest of antiquity, the Middle Ages and more modern historical periods, democracy has not been practised. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1155876683wbebready-ecda02a-e1775040845111.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of an ancient Greek orator standing on a raised platform, wearing a robe and laurel wreath, gesturing toward a crowd of citizens and soldiers gathered below. Classical buildings and hills appear in the background" title="Demosthenes, a defender of Athenian democracy in the fourth century BC, pictured in a c1880s illustration (Image by Getty Images)" /> In more recent times, Athenian democracy has been held up as a system to avoid rather than imitate. During debates between the founding fathers about the Constitution of the United States in the 1780s, many argued that “even if every Athenian had been a Socrates [ie very intelligent], Athenian democracy would have been little more than mob rule”. It is only very recently that we have come (again) to admire Athenian democracy, and want to link our own system of government to that ancient ideal. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Most people in the past had…

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Famous last words: what did Winston Churchill, Walt Disney and Marie Antoinette say on their deathbeds?
type: item
date: 2026-04-05T12:30:45.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Death
description: The parting comments of some of history's most famous figures have been recorded for posterity. Here, Jonny Wilkes reveals a selection of the most noteworthy examples – from dying presidents to condemned prisoners
encoded: <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/Oscar-WildeGettyImages-2207162542-7ce61a2-e1775118534122.jpg" width="1500" height="1003" alt="A colourised print of Oscar Wilde, 1882. His unique sense of humour lasted until his death (Image by Getty Images)" title="A colourised print of Oscar Wilde, 1882. His unique sense of humour lasted until his death (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go” Oscar Wilde The Irish author and playwright – best known for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) – is an enduring source of witty, pithy adages, such as “I can resist everything except temptation” and “always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much”. Oscar Wilde kept that unique brand of humour until the end: on his deathbed, in a Paris hotel room, he reportedly quipped about the dingy wallpaper. Evidently, the wallpaper won the duel, since 46-year-old Wilde passed away of meningitis shortly afterwards, on 30 November 1900. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/ChurchillGettyImages-106756722-ecd2b88-e1775118778678.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An elderly person lies on a stretcher and raises two fingers in a V‑sign while uniformed officers and suited men stand around them" title="Winston Churchill giving the ‘V’ sign as he’s transported to hospital, 1962. Three years later, he would succumb to complications from his eighth stroke (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. “I’m bored with it all” Winston Churchill Winston Churchill suffered his eighth stroke on 15 January 1965, after a decade and a half of failing health. All the cigars, booze and rich meals had caught up with him. He had been the prime minister who led Britain through the Second World War with impassioned oratory and declarations of “We shall never surrender”, but, if his last words are anything to go by, his battle was f…

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It was medieval England's worst antisemitic massacre. Here's what happened next
type: item
date: 2026-03-30T14:30:26.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Column
subject: Crusades
subject: Death
subject: Judaism
subject: Medieval Life and Death
description: Kavita Puri explores York's long and complex Jewish history
encoded: On a cold, grey January day in York, I climbed the steps to Clifford’s Tower, continuing all the way to the top to enjoy panoramic views across the city. This structure was for many years a notorious prison, and housed a royalist garrison before being taken by the parliamentarians during the Civil War. Long before then, though, it was the site of one of the worst antisemitic massacres of the Middle Ages. Towards the end of the 12th century, peaking around the time of the Third Crusade, anti-Jewish hostility swelled in England. Antisemitic rioting broke out in London and across the east of the country. In spring 1190, as Jewish properties in York were looted or burned, concerned royal officers sheltered some 150 Jewish people inside a timber structure in York Castle that almost certainly stood on the current site of Clifford’s Tower, built perhaps 60 years later. Read more | “Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history A mob surrounded the tower and prepared to attack. On the night of 16 March, many of the Jews inside – seeing no safe way out of the situation – took their own lives, having set their possessions on fire, which ignited the tower itself. One of the aggressors reputedly offered an amnesty to any Jew willing to convert to Christianity – but all who left the tower to do so were murdered. However, that terrible incident did not mark the end of Jewish life in York. Within a few years, a new community was established, which endured in the city throughout the 13th century. Research from the University of York published in 2023 shows that a synagogue stood on Coney Street from 1205 to 1290 – the year when all Jews were expelled from England by order of Edward I. A commemorative plaque was unveiled at the site in 2024. Read more | The history of York: a northern powerhouse of many names Today, Coney Street is a busy commercial thoroughfare – as it was in the Middle Ages, when it was home to a clot…

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I wrote a letter to the world's most famous terrorist – and nothing could have prepared me for his reply
type: item
date: 2026-03-29T15:30:04.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Death
subject: Historical events
description: In December 1975, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – better known as Carlos the Jackal – attacked the headquarters of a global oil organisation in Vienna. Jason Burke recounts the story of the incident, and reveals how his efforts to interview the terrorist helped solve a 50-year-old mystery
encoded: About half an hour after opening the letter sent to me by one of the most notorious terrorists of all time, I realised that not only did it contain a note offering “revolutionary greetings”, but that it would lead to the solution of a decades-old mystery. It was the summer of 2023, and for months I had been trying to contact Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal. While researching my book, a narrative history of 1970s terrorism entitled The Revolutionists, I had already spoken to several of those who had bombed, hijacked and shot their way through the decade, but Ramírez Sánchez was the most iconic figure of these years. Arguably the world’s first real ‘celebrity terrorist’, Ramírez Sánchez was responsible for around a dozen major attacks in western Europe between 1973 and 1983. But despite the many articles, books and films about him, there was still much about his career of deadly violence that was unknown. As such, the letter on my doormat marked a significant breakthrough. From Caracas to Paris It had been easy to locate Ramírez Sánchez, who by that point had been incarcerated for nearly 30 years. Captured by the French intelligence service while undergoing minor surgery in Sudan in 1994, he had been convicted of multiple terrorist offences and held in several different prisons across France. Now locked away in a high-security facility in Fresnes, about 20 miles south of Paris, he was allowed a small number of visitors. To be among them, however, I needed an invitation. As a first step, I got a message to him via an intermediary to establish my bona fides. I then wrote directly, explaining my interest in hearing his own version of events. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/9-GettyImages-115106383-1d24d91-e1774617817390.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A multi‑storey brick complex with red‑tiled roofs and uniform tall windows fills the foreground. The older industrial‑style buildings sit within a to…

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History's most notorious crime scenes: from Lizzie Borden's lair to HH Holmes's 'murder castle'
type: item
date: 2026-03-22T15:30:10.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Burial
subject: Death
subject: Housing
subject: Murder
subject: The Romanovs
subject: Victorian crime and punishment
description: What is it about places marked by murder and violence that continue to pique our interest, long after the crimes have been committed? Caitlin Blackwell Baines uncovers the history behind some of the world's most morbid locations – from a crumbling Slovakian castle to Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel
encoded: 1. Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, United Kingdom Founded in AD 597, Canterbury Cathedral is Britain’s oldest and most important religious complex: the ‘mother church’ of the Anglican faith and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. With its soaring 250-foot central tower and 13,000 square feet of stained-glass windows, the cathedral draws more than a million visitors each year – some who come to worship, others simply to marvel at its serene majesty. Such a setting would seem an unlikely place for a murder, but, ironically, that murder has been a big part of the pull for the past 850 or so years. The victim was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, on the night of 29 December 1170, was hacked to death in the cathedral’s northwest transept. Once a royal favourite – Henry II’s chancellor and closest confidant – Becket ran afoul of the monarch soon after being ordained in 1162. By refusing to uphold the king’s authority over that of the church in the following years, the archbishop effectively sealed his fate. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/1-GettyImages-2188130261-ad7bb3e-e1773932992660.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A medieval illuminated manuscript shows three armored knights striking a kneeling, haloed cleric at an altar. The cleric prays as blood streams from his head. A chalice and open book sit on the altar, and the background is filled with ornate red and gold patterns" title="A medieval manuscript illumination depicts Thomas Becket’s gruesome demise. The archbishop was brutally killed in Canterbury Cathedral, turning a place of worship into a crime scene" /> “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry is reported to have ranted to his courtiers. Interpreting this as a kind of kingly hit order, four of his knights stole away under the cover of night, travelling in secret from Normandy to Canterbury, where they accosted Becket as he entered the cathedral. At first, the knights attempted to arrest t…

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"It was the greatest act of violence for 66 million years": why the modern world was born of bloodshed
type: item
date: 2026-02-25T15:30:07.000Z
subject: Industrial revolution
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Death
subject: Georgian
subject: Historical events
subject: Murder
subject: Slavery
description: In the 18th century, developments in finance, weapons and industry converged to create a modern economy born of bloodshed. Clifton Crais explores how killing powered the industrial age
encoded: Imagine you’re in Nebraska, standing on North America’s Great Plains, where the broad Platte and Missouri rivers join on their way to the mighty Mississippi. It’s 1804, and in the blistering 36°C heat of summer you’re accompanying Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark as they head west towards the Pacific Ocean, exploring the commercial possibilities of this vast new country. Stretching away in front of you is a sea of chocolate-brown: thousands of animals, each standing as high as a man and weighing upwards of 900kg. Now picture putrefying carcasses and heaps of bleached bones extending as far as the eye can see. “The bones were everywhere,” homesteaders complained, “as thick as cones under a big fir tree”, and so numerous that it was impossible to plough the land. That was mere decades after Lewis and Clark’s fabled expedition. By the end of the 19th century, America’s population of bison had been reduced from tens of millions to around 350. Much of this killing unfolded over the course of just a few years – one of the most concentrated acts of ecological destruction in history. The usual explanation for the slaughter of the American bison ties it to the government’s decision to solve its ‘Indian problem’ – kill the bison and you destroy the Indigenous peoples’ food supply. “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone,” wrote Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, who had fought in the Civil War before heading west to subdue the Native American population. But politics didn’t kill the bison. Economics did. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-515301392webready-0494d00-e1771951017974.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph showing large piles of bison hides piled up after many animals have been killed for their skins" title="Thousands of bison hides lie in huge piles in Dodge City, Kansas, 1878. Advances in chemistry enabled hides to be processed and used in belts in industrial mac…

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He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was
type: item
date: 2026-02-18T15:30:47.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Death
subject: Historical people
subject: Murder
subject: Victorian crime and punishment
description: By 1889, Jack the Ripper’s grisly murders had sparked terror across London. So when a woman’s headless, mutilated body was found near the Thames, a coded alert was dispatched to police: “Another Whitechapel.” But her killer wasn’t Jack. Lucy Worsley investigates the horrifying crimes of the ‘Thames Torso Murderer’
encoded: In the final years of the 1880s, it truly wasn’t safe for women to venture out alone onto the streets of London. Extraordinary though it seems, there was not one but two serial killers on the loose in the same corner of the capital. We’ve all heard of Jack the Ripper, the notoriously brutal criminal who cut the throats of at least five women in and around Whitechapel – and, in doing so, triggered a firestorm of speculation over his identity that continues to rage to this day. But another murderer was plying his grisly trade along the banks of the Thames. He is the scariest Victorian serial killer you’ve probably never heard of – a man who became known as the ‘Thames Torso Murderer’. Because the Ripper slayings attract so much attention, that contemporary killer has been almost completely forgotten. There may be several reasons for this. The Ripper victims were all identified, the killings took place in a shorter time within a close community, and there were various ‘clues’ and ‘sightings’. In addition, the Ripper was clearly motivated by a hot rage against women. The Torso killer, much colder and better at planning, seems less knowable. Yet though he had a very different character and method, his crimes against women were every bit as shocking. In both cases, studying the evidence for their crimes and the lives of their victims reveals a wealth of information about life on the fringes of society in 1880s London, the most populous city in the world at the time. And now, nearly 140 years since the first of the Thames Torso Murders was committed, the culprit in this very cold case has – to my satisfaction, at least – at last been identified. The evidence I’ll lay out here, which I share in my new BBC Two series, would not stand up in a court of law. But researchers using modern techniques and, in particular, analysing large sets of data, have come up with a compelling theory. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1362213-2webready…

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