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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
From Churchill to Vietnam: protests that changed the world
With the police about to be given broader powers to tackle disruptive events, the right to protest is in the spotlight. Timothy Garton Ash and Katrina Navickas join Danny Bird to discuss the history of popular demonstrations
Danny Bird: What is a protest? What distinguishes it from a riot or a revolution? Katrina Navickas: A protest is often defined by law, making it a fluid and changeable term. In England and Wales, its meaning has evolved over time. The earliest legal definition dates to the 1714 Riot Act, which distinguished a riot from other forms of protest. The modern idea of a demonstration emerged in the 19th century alongside the rise of democratic movements. Protest came to mean people gathering publicly to make collective claims – a reflection of the growing concept of ‘the people’ and their role in politics. However, what counts as a protest still depends on context: the country, the circumstances and the legal boundaries of what is permitted in public spaces. Timothy Garton Ash: Historically, revolution was associated with violence, but modern protest is defined by nonviolent action. Think of Gandhi in India, the Civil Rights movement in the US, or People Power in the Philippines [in 1986, resulting in the overthrow of the Marcos regime]. The revolutionary events of 1989 in eastern Europe were particularly notable because they brought together nonviolence and revolution for the first time. In essence, protest is about people power – collective, peaceful demonstration as a means of change. What makes a protest ultimately successful? Is it timing, tactics, leadership or something peculiar to a moment in history? TGA: In the book I co-edited with Adam Roberts, Civil Resistance and Power Politics (OUP, 2009), we examined 18 cases over a century, from Gandhi to the more recent ‘colour revolutions’ in former Soviet and Yugoslav republics. One point is clear: protest alone is never enough. It requires favourable internal and external conditions to succeed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/WHA0173278webready-6200492-e1767782763339.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a large crowd of people, standing together in white robes" title="Mahātmā Gandhi – shown on a peace march in 1947 during the partition of India – used nonviolent resistance to campaign for Indian independence and the end of British rule (Image by Topfoto)" /> For example, the 1989 revolutions succeeded where many Arab Spring protests did not because their surrounding circumstances were vastly different. Successful movements also have a clear strategy and they’re not merely expressions of anger or moral outrage. Effective protest involves understanding how to influence and divide those in power. Read more | The violent history of student protest KN: I often refer to the idea of critical mass, which is the point a movement gains enough public support to create real momentum. That usually depends on an ideological or belief shift, as well as favourable conditions. Successful protests often arise when the state is weakened – for instance, after wars or during major economic crises – creating opportunities to mobilise support. At such times, the forces of law and order may also be less capable of suppressing dissent. Even the strongest movement needs both structural openings and a sense among people that success is possible. Why does protest continue to make societies uneasy even in countries that pride themselves on free expression? KN: In Britain’s case, particularly in England and Wales, there was no statutory right to assembly or free speech until the Human Rights Act of 1998. Until then, the right to protest was effectively permissive rather than guaranteed. Throughout the 20th century, much of the legislation was designed to manage the far right and other regressive forces, which created tensions around freedom of speech and assembly. A key example came in 1936, with debates over whether Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists should be allowed to march. Questions arose over who could prevent such meetings, particularly those held in private venues, and whether police had the authority to intervene based on what was said. These tensions persist today: the balance between protecting free expression and preventing disorder remains delicate. TGA: Even in the freest societies, freedom is never unlimited. The freedoms of speech and assembly are constrained; if they were not, we would encounter philosopher Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance, where unlimited tolerance can ultimately destroy tolerance itself by empowering the enemies of democracy. In authoritarian regimes, the issue is simpler: governments fear protest because it allows people to speak and find their voice. The pivotal moment is breaking that barrier of fear. For instance, in autumn 1989 in Leipzig, two friends attended a demonstration against the East German regime. As they walked, more people joined at each street corner… 10, 12, 200, then 1,000. This ‘cascade effect’ demonstrates how critical mass can overcome fear, a prospect that terrifies authoritarian rulers: consider Romanian president Nicolae Ceaușescu’s facial expression when he realised that the crowd was openly booing him on 21 December 1989. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-2220408825webready-194c494-e1767783458422.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a group of people leaning over a large number of lit candles on the floor" title="A candlelit mass protest in Leipzig in November 1989. The Monday Demonstrations, as these nonviolent gatherings were known, played a crucial role in ending the rule of communism in East Germany (Image by Getty Images)" /> How fair is it to say Britain’s history is one of evolution rather than revolution? KN: I often blame the Victorians for the myth of steady, moderate progress. The story of peaceful reform in Britain ignored harsh realities faced elsewhere. For a long time, for instance, Ireland was treated as a testing ground for extreme policing, public order measures and restrictions on constitutional rights. Even within Britain itself, progress was rarely smooth. TGA: Protest always involves risk – putting your body in situations where you might be attacked or, in extreme cases, killed. Sometimes, violence from the state backfires, galvanising wider support. The Tolpuddle Martyrs and, in Ireland, the Bloody Sunday massacres both illustrate this. How has protest been legislated and policed throughout history? KN: In Britain, general public order legislation arrived relatively late. Historically, most laws targeted specific political or social movements rather than applying broadly. In the 19th century, measures focused on the Chartists, trade unions or suffragettes. Even in the 20th century, legislation was often aimed at particular crises: the 1936 laws addressed fascist and communist unrest in the East End of London, while measures in 1986 targeted striking miners or football hooligans. Recent legislation, including that of 2022–23, is broader in scope, but it still arises in reaction to specific groups dominating public attention – for example environmental and black rights movements. This reactive approach represents a continuity throughout British history. TGA: Authoritarian governments can invent almost any justification to suppress protest. In democracies, the situation depends on whether constitutional protections exist. In the US, the First Amendment protects free speech; in Germany, experience with two dictatorships has led to clear constitutional guarantees of assembly. The UK has no written constitution. Over the past 30 years, piecemeal legislation, often poorly drafted and confusing, has slowly restricted protest. How do the spaces in which protest occurs help to shape it? KN: All protest is, at its core, a claim to public space. Demonstrations are associated with squares, streets and civic areas – town halls, county halls and other symbolic sites. Protesters assert their presence as ‘the public’ within these spaces, often choosing locations of national significance such as Trafalgar Square, built between the 1820s and 1840s and long regarded as Britain’s foremost public space. Throughout history, protesters have deliberately occupied symbolic sites to challenge authority or reshape public narratives. In London, battles over access to Hyde Park were especially significant. Although political gatherings were banned there because it was a royal park, the Reform League’s demonstrations of the 1860s, in which supporters tore down fences to enter, forced change. Speaker’s Corner emerged from this as a legal compromise established by the 1872 Parks Regulation Act, designating a specific area where people could speak freely without permission. Even modern tactics, such as ‘locking on’, have historical roots: suffragettes chained themselves to the gates of Downing Street to demand visibility and access. From the 18th century to the present day, controlling the geography of protest has remained central to how the state manages dissent. Read more | Female activism: 10 remarkable protests from around the world TGA: Protests are also a form of political theatre, and public squares are their grand stages. Consider Tiananmen Square, the focal point of the Chinese protests in 1989. Or Wenceslas Square in Prague during the Velvet Revolution that same year, where 300,000 people gathered under the direction of Václav Havel – an actual dramatist turned leader – shaking their keys in unison to create an unforgettable sound. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-2186457134webready-3fb663a-e1767783864589.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing very large crowds, holding up orange flags outside a large stone building with many windows and arches" title="Supporters of the opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko rally at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv in November 2004, after the election run-off was thought to be rigged against him (Image by Getty Images)" /> Similarly, Ukraine’s great protests have centred on the Maidan, Kyiv’s central square, during the Orange Revolution of 2004–05 and again in the Revolution of Dignity in 2014–15, when it became known as the Euromaidan. In each case, the physical setting of the central square of the capital has been vital to the drama and symbolism of protest. The suffragettes, who used violent tactics, are often lauded for having been on the ‘right side’ of history. What does this say about the way historical protests are perceived by posterity? KN: Groups such as the East London Federation of Suffragettes carried out more spectacular actions when moderate, peaceful wings were failing to make progress. This tactical shift in the early 1900s was also highly media-savvy. The suffragettes understood early mass media, staging stunts designed to capture newspaper front pages. Other actions targeted politicians or property: Winston Churchill, post boxes, shops. Because the suffragettes ultimately succeeded, their militancy is incorporated into the national narrative as justified. Movements using similar tactics that fail rarely achieve such recognition; the losers are often excluded from stories of national progress. History can move backwards as well as forwards, but there is a tendency to view the British story as progressive, where ‘winners’ are celebrated and ‘losers’ forgotten. This explains why suffragette militancy is accepted, while comparable violence – for example, during Irish campaigns for independence – is not seen as necessary. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-591947902webready-78185f2-e1767783995489.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a woman shouting amongst a crowd. A man dressed in a dark suit and hat stands next to her" title="Sylvia Pankhurst addresses a meeting of suffragettes in July 1913. The group made smart use of the mass media (Image by Getty Images)" /> TGA: So-called ‘freedom fighters’ who take up arms for independence are often celebrated as heroes if they succeed. History tends to memorialise those who eventually win, often decades after the events. An example is Oxford’s Martyrs’ Memorial, commemorating Protestant bishops who paid the ultimate price during the reign of ‘Bloody’ Mary and were celebrated only once their cause prevailed. In Czechoslovakia, the brave student Jan Palach set himself on fire in 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion. Today, Jan Palach Square commemorates his sacrifice – a recognition that would not have been possible if the country had remained under Soviet control. There is a particular category of hero here: the martyr, someone who literally gives their life for a cause. Such figures occupy a special place in these narratives, because their extraordinary courage and ultimate sacrifice have universal resonance. How important has social class been in the history of protest? KN: When asked about the most successful protests or campaigns, examples often include the abolition of slavery and the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 19th century. These movements were largely led by well-connected, relatively wealthy men and women who could exert influence in parliament. Their campaigns were single-issue, respectable, and financially supported, which allowed them to achieve legislative change. By contrast, working-class movements faced a far longer struggle to have their voices heard. Strict class hierarchies and limited resources made it harder to fund campaigns, influence policymakers, or sustain pressure. Yet, despite these constraints, working-class activists often achieved remarkable results with far fewer means than their wealthier counterparts, making their accomplishments all the more significant. TGA: Some protest movements are class-based, with the labour movement being the clearest example. However, protests tend to succeed most when they cross class boundaries and unite different parts of society, because rulers often employ a divide-and-rule strategy. A striking example is the Solidarity movement in Poland during the 1980s. This decade-long mass popular movement succeeded precisely because it united intelligentsia, workers and peasants. KN: This also marks a key difference in 20th century protests. In Britain and Ireland prior to the 1960s, movements were largely class-based, with the labour movement being the strongest. But protests then increasingly took the form of amorphous social movements, not tied to traditional party or trade union structures. These movements sought to connect local struggles with global causes such as environmental campaigns, the anti-Vietnam War movement, peace initiatives and anti-nuclear activism. They were typically more cross-class, framed as part of a wider global struggle rather than a narrow class-based conflict. TGA: One additional factor we haven’t discussed is age. There are striking examples of generational protest movements such as the one that swept across Europe in 1968, including Britain. Climate change activism has emerged as another. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-591947902webready-78185f2-e1767783995489.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a woman shouting amongst a crowd. A man dressed in a dark suit and hat stands next to her" title="Sylvia Pankhurst addresses a meeting of suffragettes in July 1913. The group made smart use of the mass media (Image by Getty Images)" /> What can today’s protesters learn from their predecessors? KN: That raises a central question: how do you organise against repressive regimes? One key factor is achieving a critical mass – breaking out of silos of class or generation and creating a large, united group capable of overcoming fear. This remains a core goal of any successful protest movement. TGA: It is vital to learn from history. For example, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was violently suppressed, and the Czechoslovak attempt to leave the Warsaw Pact in 1968 was met with Soviet invasion. By 1980–81, activists in Poland were far more cautious, learning from these experiences. There are several key lessons. First, maintain nonviolence. As the Polish dissident Adam Michnik warned: “Those who start by storming the Bastille may end up building their own Bastilles.” Nonviolence achieves more enduring results. Read more | Boston Tea Party: your guide to the protest that ignited a revolution Second, achieve a critical mass. Cascade effects and political theatre are essential, especially in the age of social media. A flash mob may appear impactful but, without sustained engagement, it disappears as quickly as it appeared. Third, develop a strategy. Clearly identify what you aim to change and how protest can effect that change. Non-violent movements succeed by targeting potential defectors within existing power structures – those who may be persuaded to switch allegiance. Protest has a promising future, but its lessons are best understood by studying the past. Timothy Garton Ash is Isaiah Berlin professorial fellow and professor of European studies at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His latest book is Homelands: A Personal History of Europe (Bodley Head, 2023) Katrina Navickas is professor of history at the University of Hertfordshire. Her books include Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion, 2025) This article was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Father Christmas v Santa Claus: the centuries-long battle for Britain's chimneys
The true identity of the white-bearded, red-robed figure who fills children’s stockings at Christmas has long been debated. Thomas Ruys Smith sizes up the merry contenders
Tis the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature is stirring… but someone is. While the household sleeps, a jolly visitor carefully places presents in stockings hung by the fireplace. After taking a sip of whatever tipple has been thoughtfully left out for him, he pockets a carrot and disappears up the chimney. With a tinkle of sleigh bells he disappears into the night with his faithful reindeer, a merry laugh echoing across the rooftops. It’s a familiar ritual – with one fundamental point of contention. Who do you think it was that brought you these presents? Are you a Father Christmas fundamentalist or are you a Santa Claus supporter? Each figure has his passionate partisans, and each is wrapped up with issues of national and regional identity. A recent YouGov poll of around 4,000 British residents suggested that the UK is split right down the middle on the topic – though Santa enjoyed a narrow lead by a couple of percentage points. What you may find surprising is that this isn’t a modern conundrum. In fact, the ongoing battle for seasonal supremacy has created a schism in British culture since the Victorian era. Despite what some Father Christmas traditionalists might think, Santa Claus is not some recent American arriviste. The forgotten history of the friendly rivalry between this pair of festive icons goes much further back, taking us on a transatlantic journey through popular culture to a time even before our modern celebration of Christmas was taking shape. Nick of time Let’s start at the beginning – or as close as we can get to it. The figure of Father Christmas is undoubtedly more venerable than Santa Claus – in English culture, at least. References to characters who served to personify the period of yuletide feasting and merrymaking can be traced back to at least the 15th century. But Father Christmas really emerged as a champion of the season when Christmas came under threat in Britain. He joined the fray in the midst of religious and cultural arguments during the Civil War, when Puritans tried to suppress traditional Christmas celebrations. One anti-Puritan pamphlet written in 1652 lamented that Father Christmas, who could once “knock down Hercules”, was lately suffering from “a deep consumption”, his might sadly diminished. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-526608136webready-8247d2a-e1765964190971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a family gathered around a large Christmas tree. On the wall behind them is a banner that reads Merry Christmas" title="A c1895 photograph of a family at Christmas. The Victorians revived historic festive traditions as well as creating new ones (Image by Getty Images)" /> Christmas celebrations and Father Christmas both returned with the Restoration. But it wasn’t until the Victorian revival of historic traditions, and its creation of new ones, that Father Christmas was truly reinvigorated as the presiding spirit of the season. Certainly, Charles Dickens’ portrait of the jovial Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol (1843) owes a lot to the established idea of Father Christmas as the personification of yuletide celebrations – crowned with winter greenery, and accompanied by bountiful piles of food and a brimming wassail bowl. This iteration had no truck with reindeer, though, and he certainly never stuffed a stocking – at least, not until his American rival started to descend British chimneys. Read more | The history of Christmas, plus 10 festive facts you might not know Enter Santa Claus. Tracing his origins takes us across the Atlantic to 18th-century New England. Puritan colonists, in common with their English counterparts, had been positively averse to Christmas celebrations, but plenty of European immigrants imported their Christmas celebrations to America, where they took root and found new forms. A wealth of winter gift-bringers set up shop in their respective immigrant communities, from the Dutch Saint Nicholas (and his secularised counterpart Sinterklaas) to wilder figures such as Knecht-Ruprecht and Belsnickel from Germany. Undoubtedly, Father Christmas made the trip across the Atlantic, too; despite the Puritans’ best efforts, he found a warmer reception in the Southern colonies. The figure of Santa Claus emerged from this characteristically diverse American melting pot. Tantalising references to a distinctive new seasonal gift-bringer started to emerge in the late 18th century. As his name suggests, Santa Claus took inspiration from Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop of Myra (in what’s now Turkey), about whom tales were told of secret gift-giving. But elements of other European traditions are evident, too. In appearance, Santa was more rough and ready than might be imagined. And, rather than appearing on 5 or 6 December (the feast day of Saint Nicholas), when he came to homes in many parts of central Europe, Santa Claus visited American families on Christmas Eve. The age of Santa Though the exact origins of Santa Claus remain murky, 1821 certainly marked a key moment in his emergence onto the seasonal stage. That Christmas, an ephemeral publication for young readers called The Children’s Friend was published in New York. From its richly illustrated pages leapt the now-recognisable figure of ‘Old Santeclaus’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/J4X8XGwebready-62d3a57-e1765963962733.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="“Old Santeclaus” depicted in an illustration from The Children’s Friend (1821), which marked his emergence onto the seasonal stage in the US (Image by Alamy)" title="“Old Santeclaus” depicted in an illustration from The Children’s Friend (1821), which marked his emergence onto the seasonal stage in the US (Image by Alamy)" /> This character visited children on Christmas Eve, left presents in their hanging stockings, and travelled in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Whether this reflected folk traditions that were already in evidence or newly invented them for its young readers – it was probably a bit of both – the age of Santa had arrived. Almost immediately, his public profile was boosted by the 1823 publication – initially anonymous – of a poem that is still very familiar to us today: Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit from St Nicholas. Though that title called him by his older name, the newspaper in which it appeared introduced the verses as a “description of that unwearied patron of children… Sante Claus”. Moore’s timing was perfect: soon the poem became an emblem of a new kind of domestic Christmas centred on the family, the home and the excitement of children waiting for their stockings to be filled by a magical visitor. In the US, it did much to spread the legend of Santa Claus to eager young ears. “Just think of it!” exclaimed an American commentator in 1875. “Until we had heard or read this, we didn’t know much about him.” Read more | The child-eating Christmas Yule Cat: what are the origins of this Icelandic folklore? Over the decades that followed, American writers and artists continued to develop Santa’s backstory, locating his base in the north pole, revealing his workshop of elves, and even giving him a wife. By the middle of the 19th century, Santa Claus’s reach had expanded from his regional base in and around New York to become a ubiquitous figure in American Christmases. “Nobody ever saw him,” as one American described in 1853, “though everybody has heard of him.” Emboldened by such success, Santa looked to expand his empire further still. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-1283479122webready-e55e347-e1765964523934.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A picture showing a young bearded man dressed in red and green robes and a red hat, holding a book and plate of fruit in one hand with his other hand held up in the air" title="A c1890 lithograph of Nicholas of Bari, also known as Saint Nicholas of Myra. The US version of Santa Claus can trace his roots to this fourth-century bishop (Image by Getty Images)" /> American influence Then as now, the potent slices of American popular culture that crossed the Atlantic had a profound effect on the seasonal behaviour of the young – not to mention their demands on parents – in Britain. Slowly but surely, Santa Claus gained a foothold in the Old World, his legend disseminated in popular literature. Reprints of Moore’s poem were certainly circulating in Britain by the 1850s, and probably earlier. Published in the Illustrated London News in 1855, it was accompanied by some useful advice for British children looking to emulate their American counterparts: “Before going to bed, the children hang their newest stockings near the chimney, or pin them to the curtains of the bed. Midnight finds a world of hosiery waiting for favours; and the only wonder is that a single Santa Klaus can get around among them all.” One American book, now largely forgotten, seems to have had a particular impact on the profile of Santa Claus in Britain. Sisters Susan and Anna Warner shot to fame in 1850 when the former published The Wide, Wide World, one of the bestselling books of the 19th century. Hundreds of thousands of British readers read of its heroine, Ellen Montgomery, hanging up her stocking for Santa at Christmas-time – and perhaps emulated her hopeful act. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/PC600Mwebready-f75c38f-e1765965239337.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration showing three small children in white gowns, hanging a stocking from a fireplace" title="A c1870 illustration for Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, which disseminated the idea of hanging up stockings in the US. The poem had made its way to Britain by the 1850s (Image by Alamy)" /> Even more significant was the sisters’ 1853 story Carl Krinken; or, a Christmas Stocking. The tale of a poor young American boy visited by Santa Claus one Christmas Eve, it seems to have captivated a generation of young Victorians. Looking back to her mid-century childhood, British writer Sarah Tooley recalled that the Warners’ book did more than anything “to popularise the visits of Santa Claus in our own country”; when British children read the story of Carl’s adventures, it “caught their imagination, and ‘St Nick’ is now almost as popular in London as in New York”. New British editions of the book were still being produced in the closing years of the 19th century. As early as 1856, reviewing the transformations of Christmas celebrations over the previous decade or so, one Birmingham newspaper marvelled that Christmas stockings were already an established part of the season, “for Santa-Claus has had the temerity to scale the wooden walls of old England, of late years”. Having scaled those walls, Santa became a familiar presence in British Christmases for the remaining years of the 19th century. As the London Evening Standard judged in 1861, “the children of England may be pleased with the advent of Santa Claus”. Even as late as 1896, a writer for the Manchester Courier declared: “I do think that Santa Claus is the most beautiful myth which ever comes into our lives.” So, when Victorian children hung up their stockings, it was Santa Claus that they expected to fill them. Not that Father Christmas retreated entirely in the face of Santa’s celebrity. He increasingly appeared on cards and in magazine illustrations as an embodiment of the festive season. In the late 19th century, at least, there was clearly room for both figures in the landscape of British Christmas celebrations. In 1876, for example, the Darlington & Richmond Herald found space in its account of the coming “Christmastide” for a tribute to both “Old Father Christmas” as the incarnation of the “merry season” and the American newcomer who had become a central part of domestic celebrations: “We envy not the home where the Christmas stocking… is not an established institution and Santa Claus one of the patron saints of the children’s calendar.” Read more | How to host a medieval Christmas Blurred figures It wasn’t long, though, before the outlines of these defined figures, with their distinctive roles, began to blur and merge. Even in the 1880s, Father Christmas was sometimes named as the figure who filled festive stockings. The shadow of war and a growing jingoism seems to have sped up that process, and national tensions found their way into Christmas debates. In 1912, one rather confused memoirist, looking back to his childhood in the mid-19th century, declared: “I am glad to say that in those days people knew nothing (at any rate, they knew nothing in our part of England) about such German things as ‘Christmas Trees’, or such German saints as ‘Santa Claus’. Our Christmas presents were found in stockings, and put there by Father Christmas.” He was taken to task for this assertion by a correspondent to Notes & Queries magazine, who attempted to set the record straight. “I am as John Bullish as may be but I do not remember finding any gifts in my youthful socks or stockings,” they wrote, “and have an impression that my first introduction to the contemplation of such cornucopias was in the pages of an American story-book.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-90018255webready-9d925e7-e1765964970850.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An American Christmas card printed at the turn of the 20th century depicts Santa Claus as we still know him today – sporting a red outfit with fluffy white trimming, driving a sleigh loaded with presents and drawn by flying reindeer (Image by Getty Images)" title="An American Christmas card printed at the turn of the 20th century depicts Santa Claus as we still know him today – sporting a red outfit with fluffy white trimming, driving a sleigh loaded with presents and drawn by flying reindeer (Image by Getty Images)" /> Such memories soon faded, though, and by 1933 one newspaper laid out a deceptively simple answer to the question of who exactly stuffed British stockings: “Here we call him Father Christmas, in America he is Santa Claus.” The patriotic preference for a home-grown gift-bringer was, at least temporarily, in the ascendancy. Since then, the pair have been locked in a struggle for Britain’s stockings. If Father Christmas’s status rose in the 20th century, Santa Claus has clearly made inroads into the psyche of Britain’s children in recent decades; apparently, he has even gained a narrow lead this century. However, even the most ardent Father Christmas fanatic shouldn’t panic about this apparent Americanisation of British culture. Arriving from across the Atlantic at the precise moment that our modern Christmas was taking shape in the Victorian era, Santa Claus should be considered as much a part of our traditional celebrations as Christmas trees, Christmas crackers, Christmas cards – and good old Father Christmas himself. In the spirit of the season, let’s call a truce between these jovial icons. This yuletide, if you really want to honour festive tradition, raise a glass to Father Christmas in thanks for your family’s feast and the blessings of the season – but make sure to hang out your stocking for Santa Claus. Thomas Ruys Smith is professor of American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia. His new book is Searching for Santa Claus (Boiler House Press, November 2025)
AI: good or bad for history? Our experts weigh in
As artificial intelligence penetrates almost every aspect of our lives, six historians debate whether the opportunities it offers to the discipline outweigh the threats
“We must experiment thoughtfully, push back critically, and make the case that slow, humanistic thinking still matters” Artificial intelligence isn’t inherently good or bad. Like the printing press or the written word itself, AI is a force – and whether it enhances or undermines historical practice will depend on who uses it, how, and why. AI’s most obvious advantage is that it can process vast amounts of data much faster than your regular historian, which turns it into an incredible asset. The trick here is to use it as it was originally meant to be used – not to replace human interpretation but to identify patterns that humans might not notice and, thus, to enable us to come up with better, more nuanced questions. But it goes beyond that. AI is forcing historians to rethink what constitutes evidence, authorship and interpretation. In doing so, it is not just supporting existing historical methods, it’s helping evolve them. Though I am not worried that historians will be replaced by AI any time soon, there is a risk that indiscriminate use might flatten out the practice. Good history requires doubt, contradiction, ambivalence, even uncertainty, but AI models are designed to produce smooth answers even when the data is messy or the past is unknowable. Moreover, history isn’t just knowledge – it’s a method of knowing. If AI shortcuts the method, it threatens the discipline’s integrity. There is little doubt that AI will be part of historical research, but it is crucial that historians shape its use to enhance rather than undermine our craft. We should resist the urge to scale for scale’s sake, and instead use AI to deepen, not dilute, historical understanding. If we do that, and embed AI within the discipline’s values – critical thinking, reflexivity, contextual awareness – then historians will become central in answering the question of whether AI is good or bad for history. We must experiment thoughtfully, push back critically, and make the case that slow, humanistic thinking still matters, even in an age of rapid computation. I am confident that the tables will turn, and we’ll soon talk about the ways in which history is good for AI. Delfi Nieto-Isabel is a lecturer in medieval and digital history, and co-director of the Digital Lives Programme at Queen Mary University of London “The best results come when humans work alongside machine-generated intuitions” In his classic Foundation series, sci-fi author Isaac Asimov explored the idea of statistically based ‘psycho-history’, by which the future could be predicted through the mathematical analysis of data on the past and present. With the rise of generative AI, it may feel as if a dystopian version of Asimov’s future is edging towards reality, but there are grounds to be a little more positive. A great deal of what historians do is attempting to understand past societies by observing patterns in the evidence they left behind. Machines are spectacularly good at this, and the large language models of contemporary AI take this to a new level. To take an example from my own area of work, texts inscribed on stone in a variety of ancient languages survive from the Roman world in their hundreds of thousands. These are often fragmentary and difficult to interpret. To make sense of them, both individually and en masse, as evidence for ancient societies and languages, historians need to compare these texts with one another. But to do so requires familiarity with them all, and the ability to find and compare parallels or identify patterns. Large language models specially trained on this material can now offer suggestions for missing words, dates and origins of this material, precisely because they see patterns across the material that a solitary human might find only after days or weeks of library work – or not at all. Read more | Be wary of technology’s big promises, but roll with the changes The crucial point, however, is that these are suggestions – and the models can offer multiple suggestions, ranked by probability and exposing some of the underlying reasoning. The best results come when humans work alongside machine-generated intuitions. Correlation is not the same as causation, and history is a fundamentally human ‘science’. Nuance, context and, above all, humanity is fundamental to understanding our past, present and future. If that is surrendered to a machine then all of it is lost, and we are no longer writing our own history. Every generation writes its own history, it’s said. Powerful AI can stimulate that process – but it certainly cannot write it for us. Jonathan Prag is professor of ancient history at the University of Oxford, and a co-author of the Aeneas AI model for contextualising ancient inscriptions (predictingthepast.com) “Fake ‘historical’ images and texts are already circulating and, with ever-greater sophistication, they will become harder to spot” Historians have been using AI for many years as an important tool for exploring and analysing the vast digitised and born-digital materials that increasingly constitute our primary sources. For instance, using AI it becomes possible to extract the names of all members of parliament mentioned in historical Hansard, identify the themes and topics on which they have spoken, and trace changes of emphasis over time. Handwritten text recognition technologies enable the accurate transcription of manuscript collections at scale. There are many other examples. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/EMBCXW-e6484e8-e1765189009771.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A line of light blue book spines with gold words on them, each with a year and volume number on them" title="Hansard, the official record of British parliamentary debates compiled by reporters is another vast repository of information that AI can help interrogate (Image by Alamy)" /> This has been unhelpfully elided by the use of ‘AI’ as synonymous with generative AI. Machine learning, however, has not captured the public imagination in the same way as GenAI, with its easy-to-use chatbot interfaces. The speed with which GenAI has become near-ubiquitous, allowing no time to consider all of the ramifications, seems bewildering. Familiar software packages and media platforms are increasingly cluttered with invitations to ask an AI assistant for help. The AI-generated is entangled with the human-created in ways that undoubtedly pose real difficulties for the integrity of the historical record. Fake ‘historical’ images and texts are already circulating and, with ever-greater sophistication, they will become harder to spot. This is a huge challenge, but it is also an opportunity for historians to apply their knowledge and expertise to a problem that requires particular critical skills. A 2025 study sponsored by Microsoft sought to identify those occupations most at risk from GenAI. Historians came second, behind interpreters and translators. Dredge operators, last on the list, can apparently be more confident about their future role. But historians can help navigate this new knowledge landscape. Insightful source criticism, deep understanding of context, awareness of archival absence and loss, and a commitment to centring the human experience in the technological are key elements of historical research and practice. Arguably, they have never been more useful. Jane Winters is professor of digital humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London “Reading is thinking. Writing is thinking. These core skills cannot be outsourced without losing something fundamental” We seek to understand ourselves by exploring our pasts – and AI will not change this fundamental urge. The digital revolution has already transformed the historian’s work considerably, without fundamentally altering our purpose. Much change has been positive. Barriers of geography, cost and materiality have collapsed, broadening access to history as never before. Less profitably, instant access and keyword searching deprive us of context, and we are less likely to understand the systems that sort, sift and deliver our sources. Always, we shape and are shaped by our tools in a relationship that must be carefully negotiated. Read more | Artificial intelligence: a modern advance or an ancient nightmare? Utopians and naysayers are united in their confidence that AI will change everything. We must recognise such predictions as products of a moment of frenzied development and investment. Once the hype has died down, historians will adapt – just as we did to that other over-hyped but transformational technology, the internet. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-1081366104-f6643cf-e1765189043171.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The Maughan Library, King’s College London: “Students learn that critical reading and precision writing are the essential tools for engaging with the complex human past,” says Chris Sparks (Image by Getty Images)" title="The Maughan Library, King’s College London: “Students learn that critical reading and precision writing are the essential tools for engaging with the complex human past,” says Chris Sparks (Image by Getty Images)" /> We will use AI where it can help us – to automate repetitive tasks, to ‘distantly read’ sources identifying areas for closer inspection, or to hone our prose. But we will remain wary of its dangers – not least its tendency to hide its sources and make things up. Hopefully, new tools will become available that reduce our dependence on centrally controlled systems, allowing more thoughtful, bespoke and informed use. We must think carefully about how we use AI in the classroom, too. Students learn that critical reading and precision writing are the essential tools for engaging with the complex human past. Reading is thinking. Writing is thinking. These core skills cannot be outsourced without losing something fundamental. They can be honed only with practice, and we must protect space for that in our teaching. Yet we cannot simply ignore AI, because we have begun to encounter its output routinely in our daily lives. History is a project, not a product. If AI ushers in an era of fast, cheap, mass-produced text, then the skills that history teaches will only become more valuable. Chris Sparks is a senior lecturer in digital history at Queen Mary University of London “AI offers the chance to explore archives at scale, ask new questions and uncover new patterns" There are plenty of anxieties about AI. This should not surprise us: in the past, new technologies such as the railway resulted in moral panics. Rather than a threat, AI can be used – just as other technologies have been. It is important to draw a distinction between functions sometimes described as ‘generative’ and ‘hermeneutic’. The former is what first comes to mind: it can be used to write text, including historical arguments. The latter is using AI to ‘distant read’ large bodies of texts, including archives. Much criticism levelled at AI tends to focus on generative AI – for example, teachers’ fears that students will ‘cheat’ on essays, simply entering the assigned title and word length as a prompt, then leaving AI to produce a passable composition within seconds. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-569178239-233888a-e1765189068133.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman holds up an old passport in front of her face. On the left page there is a black and white photo of a young girl" title="A Jewish woman holds a copy of fake papers enabling her to flee the Netherlands after the Nazi invasion: AI helps researchers search huge archives of testimonies by Holocaust survivors (Image by Getty Images)" /> Where AI has greater value for historians is as a hermeneutic tool. It is helpful to remember a point that Todd Presner makes to scholars in his 2024 book Ethics of the Algorithm: Digital Humanities and Holocaust Memory – that computers ‘read’ differently from humans, but neither better nor worse than us. The challenge facing historians is how to use this technology to ask new questions, particularly to interrogate vast archives that cannot be comprehensively searched through more traditional methods. One area in which I, and other interdisciplinary teams, have been experimenting is using digital methods to access stories of Holocaust survivors in oral history collections. These are typically too large for any one person to watch in their life. The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, for example, contains more than 55,000 interviews, each 2–3 hours long. Read more | "A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions": the future of history Rather than replacing close reading – or watching and listening – of these interviews, AI offers the chance to explore archives at scale, ask new questions and uncover new patterns that invite close reading. For example, what pronouns – I or we – do men and women use to tell what is variously a solo or shared story? Where and why do silences occur in oral history archives as the past becomes too hard to retell? Critical use offers opportunities to do history differently. Tim Cole is professor of social history at the University of Bristol “AI promises to make history faster, but also shallower” AI is often hailed as the next great tool for historians. It can scan entire archives in seconds, collate references across databases, and generate polished prose at the click of a button. On the surface, this seems like liberation from drudgery. But, in speeding up our work, AI also risks hollowing it out. History is not simply a matter of data extraction. The working historian does more than harvest facts: we interrogate silences in sources, wrestle with contradictions in established narratives, and read against the grain of the archive. AI machine tools excel at spotting patterns but fail at understanding nuance. They can tell you how often a phrase appears in a colonial newspaper, but not why irony mattered to the writer, nor how absence itself can be evidence. Outsourcing too much to algorithms risks confusing fluency with insight. The bigger danger, however, lies in how AI will shape the dissemination of history. Museums, publishers and even classrooms may come to rely on AI-generated summaries to teach the past. This could democratise access, but it could also flatten differences and sanitise conflict. History risks being repackaged into uniform, bite-sized ‘lessons’ optimised for clarity rather than complexity. That should alarm any historian who believes that the discipline’s value lies in argument and debate. AI will certainly change the rhythms of our work. It helps me, as a historian of modern subcontinental Buddhism, to map far-flung connections between texts in English, Hindi and Sinhalese. But if I do not remain critical, it is all too easy to mistake the machine’s quick outputs for deeper interpretation. And if the wider public comes to accept AI’s versions of the past as authoritative, the historian’s role as interpreter and critic could be diminished. The challenge for us is clear. AI will not replace historians, but it could deskill us if we let it. Indeed, it promises to make history faster, but also shallower. Our task is to ensure that the speed it offers does not come at the cost of depth – because history done fast is rarely history done well. Bhadrajee Hewage recently completed a DPhil in history from Trinity College Oxford, researching trends in subcontinental Buddhism during the late colonial and early postcolonial periods This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Who should decide the stories museums tell?
Increasingly, museums are being challenged on how they select, display and interpret their collections. Six historians explain how these institutions can adapt to suit 21st-century audiences
“If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full life history of every object in their collection” – Justin M Jacobs It has become fashionable today for critics of major western museums to call for a ‘reckoning’ or ‘coming to terms’ with the imperialist and racist histories of some institutions. This approach is rooted in the idea that, every time a museum chooses to tell a particular story, this story inevitably reflects the unconscious biases of the curators who tell it. There’s much to recommend this approach – but there’s also a problem. Too often, institutions simply replace the bygone voices of long-dead white men with the present-day voices of people descended from the communities or nations that originally produced the artefact on display. But is this really a more inclusive approach? Scholars who study the history of artefacts in museums are acutely aware that nearly every object on display has served different functions and had a different symbolic value down the years. In addition, many diverse peoples have owned or interacted with these objects. It follows that choosing to tell only a single story closely associated with present-day ideological agendas does a great disservice to the museum-going public. Take the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles, for instance. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, they have played an integral role in embodying the political power and cultural beliefs of the ancient Athenians, Romans, Christians, Muslims, British and modern Greeks. Yet according to current intellectual fashions and political sympathies, only one of these stories is deemed legitimate: that promoted by the modern Greeks. This, of course, is merely a reflection of the unconscious bias of our own day and age, which consistently promotes the alleged authenticity of nation states that didn’t even exist prior to the modern era. This is the very antithesis of an inclusive approach. If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full life history and evolving symbolisms of every object in their collection – even when these stories don’t reflect the ideological trends of the present moment. Justin M Jacobs is a professor of history at American University in Washington, DC, and the author of Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures (Reaktion Books, 2024) “There is something colonial about leaving decisions on displays to only those who can afford to work in museums” – Christienna Fryar Few institutions teach more people about the past than museums. Historians may wish otherwise, but more people pop into a museum or National Trust property on a day out than read the latest scholarship. It’s their importance that has made the question of who decides what stories museums tell so vexed in recent years. These questions are necessary, because museums are colonial institutions. They flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries as repositories for the so-called curiosities European collectors had purloined from territories abroad. Museums in the west still claim to be the best protectors of treasures that countries of origin want back. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/J4X823-CMYK-80ca370.jpg" width="3286" height="2190" alt="A painting showing a group of people crouched down in a large forested area, poised to attack" title="A painting shows members of the Maroon community of formerly enslaved Africans during an ambush in Jamaica, 1795. Christienna Fryar argues that museums should cover their story more (Image by Alamy)" /> Then there’s the matter of who works in museums. Entry-level museum jobs are often poorly paid and based in expensive cities – not very attractive to people whose families cannot subsidise their lives. There is also something colonial about leaving decisions on displays to only those who can afford to work in museums and who received traditional university educations. Museums must work more consciously, consistently and collaboratively with descendant historians (those who research people they descend from), curators, artists and storytellers. Many institutions now cite co-production as a key value, but employing these experts and paying them appropriately is as important as working with local volunteer groups to design exhibitions. Descendant experts often use family histories and community knowledge to tell stories ignored by traditional scholarship. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history Take the history of enslavement. Too often, the focus in Britain is on the goods that circulated the Atlantic basin in the so-called ‘Triangular Trade’ (often sidestepping the brutality of the trade in humans) and the money that changed hands. But what about the swamps and the mountains where fugitives from slavery established Maroon communities? Museums are also responsible for telling these stories of survival, daring, skill, environmental know-how and community. Christienna Fryar is a historian of Britain and the Caribbean, and CEO of the Liverpool charity Mary Seacole House “In the 21st century, there need to be multiple stories in and about the museum – and multiple storytellers” – Adam Mosley The origins of today’s museums lie in pre-modern princely and scholarly collections. Historically, the collectors – along with the curators they employed and those who followed them – exerted considerable power over the museum as a space in which the world was represented and knowledge was produced. Curators still play a key role in choosing and shaping the stories their institutions are best positioned to tell. Many are enormously knowledgeable about the objects in their care, and it would be a tragedy to disregard their expertise, or that of academics, when using heritage collections to illuminate past, present and future. However, most curators and scholars know that they cannot and should not monopolise the generation of stories. It would be futile, in any case, for curators – let alone politicians – to attempt to dictate absolutely the message conveyed in any exhibition. Visitors bring with them their own memories, insights and perspectives. Their knowledge can supplement or correct that of ‘experts’. They may connect with displays emotionally in unexpected ways. They have stories of their own to tell about what they find in a museum. Increasingly, museums work in partnership with the public to tell new stories with their collections, to give a voice to those historically under-represented and excluded, and to unlock the meaning of their holdings for diverse audiences. Histories get rewritten in the museum, just as they do in universities. Sometimes these fresh interpretations can cause discomfort to those who would prefer museums to retell familiar stories. New perspectives can also challenge the very grounds on which a museum claims the right to hold particular objects. The ways in which museums are responding to these kinds of dialogues constitutes an evolving story in itself – one concerned with whose views matter and how to deal with problematic legacies from the past. In the 21st century, there need to be multiple stories in and about the museum – and multiple storytellers, too. Single-voice stories are no longer sufficient. Adam Mosley is an associate professor in history at Swansea University “Two-thirds of curators in the UK are women – but museum leadership is still largely an old boys’ club” – Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth Henry Cole, the first director of the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) from 1857, once declared that museums should be a “schoolroom for everyone”. But that begs a question: who sets the curriculum? Who is making the decisions on which stories museums tell, and why? Is it the curatorial team, senior management, external funding bodies or the gift shop? And what is the demographic of these groups? Although two-thirds of museum curators in the UK are women, museum leadership is still largely an old boys’ club. Recent reports by Art Fund and the Museum X project have shown that cultural diversity across the sector is at an all-time low. Can we ever truly diversify the stories that museums tell without first achieving greater diversity in the museum workforce? Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue" My own research focuses on art collectors, particularly the agency of women, non-binary and trans people. This topic is being explored across more museums thanks to schemes such as Katy Hessel’s audio series Museums Without Men. The National Gallery, too, is conducting research into female benefactors, noting the fact that only 27 out of its 2,300 paintings are by women. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/MP38ER-CMYK-a676a50.jpg" width="1899" height="1266" alt="A 1782 self-portrait by French artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun – one of only 27 works by women among the National Gallery’s 2,300 paintings (Image by Alamy)" title="A 1782 self-portrait by French artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun – one of only 27 works by women among the National Gallery’s 2,300 paintings (Image by Alamy)" /> It’s 140 years since Lady Charlotte Schreiber, one of the greatest Victorian collectors, split her trove of 5,000 objects between the V&A and the British Museum. Charlotte was determined that the artworks she spent decades researching should become the property of the nation. Honouring the spirit of that act of generosity, surely we have a duty to be in dialogue with the public and to keep them at the forefront of the stories that museums choose to tell? I believe that the future lies in collaboration and co-creation through public engagement. Museums are most successful when they reach out and establish meaningful dialogues with local communities, artists, academics, PhD students, schoolchildren, youth groups and more. Museums should be places of curiosity, creativity and connection that are always changing and evolving – just like the stories they should tell. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth is a senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of Lady Charlotte Schreiber (Lund Humphries, 2025) “Museums need to be alert to the risk of a fragmentation of culture and history” – Jeremy Black Museums should inform, educate, inspire, entertain and preserve – but this says nothing about how best to do this. Which objects in the permanent holding should be shown? How should museums drum up interest? How should holdings be curated, and how best explained? What temporary exhibitions should be commissioned? How should collaborations be organised? Who should be guest curators? What role should the public or government play? In 2024, Birmingham Museums established a Citizens’ Jury. This summer, the National Gallery announced the launch of NG Citizens – the first time a UK gallery or museum has set up a national citizens’ assembly. These bodies will presumably question the aesthetic judgment of curators. There will be lapses and controversies. Nevertheless, it is always good for an institution to find out what its potential audience wants. Of course, not everyone is happy about such initiatives, but their legitimacy is difficult to deny in a democracy. The National Gallery has a clue in the name: it is supposed to be national. More generally, developing processes that promote and support public involvement puts institutions in a solid position when defending the way they present their collections, put on and organise exhibitions or justify funding applications. An institution is harder to criticise if a cross-section of the population has advised it. In pursuing such public involvement, it is necessary to avoid ‘pillarisation’ – a term borrowed from the Dutch verzuiling, which describes a society in which different groups have their own distinct social institutions and organisations. Apply this to museums and there’s a risk of different interest groups, however defined and represented, putting on exhibitions or organising collections to reflect what they prefer. Museums need to be alert to the risk of a fragmentation of culture and history, which can in turn create an endless spiral of groups spawning sub-groups, and museums becoming mired in controversy. Yet, though democratic processes of consultation pose many problems, the alternatives are worse. Jeremy Black is a historian, formerly a professor at the University of Exeter, and the author of more than 180 books “Ideas once thought impossible, such as the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, are now frequently discussed” – Mirjam S Brusius For a long time, museums have suggested that each object has just one official story – the one written on its label. Large institutions such as the British Museum often present themselves as neutral spaces that show the world simultaneously from ‘nowhere and everywhere’. Yet this approach rarely acknowledges how these objects were collected, nor how museums reshape the objects’ presentation to fit particular narratives. So who really speaks through the labels we see in museums? Is it a team of curators, one individual or the institution as a whole? And why do labels usually rely on expert voices instead of including personal accounts by those who used these objects, or the histories of how the objects entered the collection in the first place? These questions feel especially urgent today. Museums are under growing pressure to confront their colonial legacies, to consider returning certain objects, and to tell stories that include more perspectives. Ideas once thought impossible – such as the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece – are now frequently discussed. Still, while demands for repatriation have been voiced for decades, many communities remain unheard, many stories untold. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year It is time for museums to rethink how they frame their collections. This means creating space for voices from the global south where many of these objects originated, and acknowledging their cultural and historical significance beyond western narratives. We have an opportunity today to reimagine these institutions as spaces for dialogue, reflection and accountability. One way forward is through even more participatory approaches, involving both visitors and source communities in shaping museum narratives. New tools – digital platforms, interactive displays, labels that offer multiple perspectives – can help objects tell more than one story. This approach could not only enrich our understanding of the past but also transform museums into more inclusive, honest and engaging spaces. Mirjam S Brusius is a historian and one of the initiators of 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object (100histories100worlds.org)
Just how many Bayeux Tapestries were there?
As a new theory, put forward by Professor John Blair, questions whether the embroidery was unique, David Musgrove asks historians whether there could have been more than one ‘Bayeux Tapestry’
The Bayeux Tapestry is an amazing artefact – and it’s exceptional not least because of its very existence today. Precious few pieces of embroidery from the medieval period survive, let alone ones that are almost 70 metres long. And, of course, the story it tells – of the conquest of England by the Normans – is one of immense historical significance. So we rightly celebrate it, and excitement about its forthcoming loan from Bayeux to the British Museum is high. But what if this artefact wasn’t really so very exceptional at the time it was made? What if it was just one of several embroideries produced to commemorate the Norman victory over the English at the battle of Hastings in October 1066? Professor John Blair, an expert in the Anglo-Saxon period at the University of Oxford, believes that might be the case. “This is a reaction against the idea that the Tapestry had to be something extraordinary or unique, beyond the fact that it is an extraordinary and unique survival,” he says. “There are abundant references to decorative domestic hangings, but of course they had virtually zero chance of survival. The Tapestry is a wonderful piece of design, but the actual stitching isn’t particularly fine, and a big team of embroiderers in a workshop could have done it quite expeditiously.” Purported patron Why did the Tapestry survive when so few other embroideries did? Well, most scholars agree that it was probably made some time after the battle that it records, so in the mid-late 11th century, and likely on the orders of – or to curry favour with – Bishop Odo of Bayeux. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Odo-blessing-the-feast4548webready-e50a4fb.jpg" width="1921" height="1281" alt="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. It’s thought that Odo commissioned the Tapestry to be displayed in his new cathedral in Bayeux (Image by Bayeux Museum)" title="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. It’s thought that Odo commissioned the Tapestry to be displayed in his new cathedral in Bayeux (Image by Bayeux Museum)" /> Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror, was made Earl of Kent after the conquest. The case for him being the Tapestry’s patron rests on the fact that he plays a particularly prominent role in the embroidery. Additionally, three lower-profile characters called Wadard, Vital and Turold are specifically (and surprisingly, given their status and role in the story) named in the Tapestry. These three men are thought to have been Odo’s followers. Read more | “I counted the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry and I have no regrets”: what one Oxford professor found when he studied the rudest bits of the embroidery One line of thought suggests that the Tapestry was made to be displayed in Odo’s new cathedral in Bayeux on its consecration in 1077. We know nothing of what happened to the embroidery in the four centuries that followed – until the late 15th century, when we have a documentary reference to it in an inventory of that cathedral, noting that it was displayed annually on a specific feast day. It’s possible that the Tapestry survived for such a long time because, except for its annual airing, it was kept in a chest in the church. It therefore wasn’t subjected to the wear and tear of daily display that might have caused other contemporary embroideries to fray and fall apart. One theory even has it that the Tapestry might have been walled up in a crypt below Bayeux Cathedral for centuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-2154318346webready-cc73479.jpg" width="5600" height="3733" alt="Bayeux Cathedral, consecrated in 1077 by Bishop Odo but largely reconstructed in the 13th century (Image by Getty Images)" title="Bayeux Cathedral, consecrated in 1077 by Bishop Odo but largely reconstructed in the 13th century (Image by Getty Images)" /> So, if Professor Blair is right in his theory that the uniqueness of the Tapestry rests principally in its survival, what does he think about its original manufacture? Where was it made, by whom – and was it one of a kind? “Since it seems most unlikely that none of the other members of the Norman elite had embroidered hangings representing the Conquest,” he explains, “the possibility struck me that there might have been a set of stock designs, which the workshop then customised for each individual patron: we just happen to have the one made for Odo. “On that argument, the scenes highlighting Odo – the meal before the battle, Odo brandishing his club, and so on – and Odo’s named followers Wadard, Vital and Turold would be insertions into the standard sequence,” he continues. “To take that further would need a closer analysis of design, sequence, correlation with the borders and so on than I have done. But the Wadard scene definitely does have possibilities, since the mounted knight captioned ‘Hic est Wadard’ does rather look as though he has been interposed into a sequence of three houses and three followers.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/3AJKTPH-Doctored-CMYKbrightwebready-1eecbc0.jpg" width="1771" height="1181" alt="Our doctored version of the Tapestry (below) shows how it might have looked without Odo’s follower Wadard (on horseback in the upper, existing iteration), illustrating the idea that he might have been inserted into a stock design on Odo’s orders (Image by Alamy)" title="Our doctored version of the Tapestry (below) shows how it might have looked without Odo’s follower Wadard (on horseback in the upper, existing iteration), illustrating the idea that he might have been inserted into a stock design on Odo’s orders (Image by Alamy)" /> To see how that might have worked, we’ve doctored that section of the Tapestry (above) so that you can compare the original sequence with a version in which the mounted Wadard has been removed. Mass production Gale Owen-Crocker – professor emerita of the University of Manchester, one of the most respected and well-published Tapestry scholars, and author of the forthcoming book The Design of the Bayeux Tapestry – likes the idea. “I am sure that there were workshops making these woollen hangings,” she says. “The workmanship is too assured for the Bayeux Tapestry to be a one-off.” She has previously argued, along with her co-author, Maggie Kneen, that the Tapestry designers employed templates for the motifs and images that were most likely drawn onto the linen cloth as guides for the final stitching by the embroiderers. That, too, accords with Professor Blair’s theory. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry: a political football for 900 years Manchester Metropolitan University’s Dr Alexandra Makin, an authority on early medieval embroidery and author of The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World, is minded to agree in broad terms: “There’s no denying that the Bayeux Tapestry is an important embroidery, but we have evidence that indicates wall hangings that told stories were a popular way of memorialising the heroic deeds of family members,” she says. “An example is the Byrhtnoth wall hanging that was made by that ealdorman’s wife, Ælfflæd, and possibly other women in the household. It depicted the ‘great deeds’ of the ealdorman, and was given to the monastery at Ely at some point after his death at the battle of Maldon in 991. “Meanwhile, in a poem written by Baudri of Bourgueil to William the Conqueror’s daughter, Adela of Blois, Baudri describes three different wall hangings, one of which is very similar to the Bayeux Tapestry,” she adds. “The way the Bayeux Tapestry’s narrative is set out also brings to mind the woven tapestries found in the ninth-century Oseberg ship burial in Norway, which are thought to tell stories relating to warrior ideology in the Viking world,” Dr Makin continues. “The Bayeux Tapestry sits in a long tradition of telling heroic stories through textiles, so early medieval people were well aware of this and understood what it was telling them. This also suggests that other people could have commissioned embroidered or woven wall hangings to tell their own story of what happened in 1066. Whether these were as big as the Bayeux Tapestry is another question.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/hengteMennv005rework-Credit-Stig-Saxegaard-og-Kulturhistorisk-museumwebready-38495e2.jpg" width="5353" height="3569" alt="A colourful tapestry showing groups of people and a tree-like structure in the middle. On the right, there is a large blue horse. The border at the top and the bottom of the tapestry is blue, with a zigzag pattern on it" title="A reconstruction of a woven tapestry found in the ninth-century Oseberg ship burial in Norway, reflecting the tradition of telling heroic stories through textiles (Image by Stig Saxegaard & Museum of the Viking Age, University of Oslo)" /> According to Dr Makin, the way the embroidery was made lent itself ideally to the purpose for which it was designed. “The materials and stitches used to create the Bayeux Tapestry are perfect for the job,” she says. “They are bold, quick to work, cover the ground fabric easily and would be seen from a distance. This is not a fine piece of work like the 10th-century gold-and-silk embroidered stole, maniple and ribbons found in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral – but using tiny stitches would not have worked for a wall hanging that was meant to be seen by lots of people at a distance. “When the stitching is examined, its precise execution, and the economical use of thread, demonstrates that the Bayeux Tapestry is an accomplished piece of work,” Dr Makin concludes. “But we simply cannot compare it to pieces made from gold and silk threads. They were meant to do a different job.” Evidence for uniqueness Professor Michael Lewis, another leading Tapestry expert based at the British Museum, is less convinced by Professor Blair’s theory. He contends that Bishop Odo’s presumed key role in the making of the Tapestry actually argues for it being a one-off embroidery: “We know from Domesday Book that Bishop Odo, the Tapestry’s likely patron, was a cultured man with the considerable wealth needed for the creation of a monumental artwork like the Bayeux embroidery,” he says. “Surely it was his unique position as Earl of Kent that also enabled access to the illuminated manuscripts that were evidently used in the Tapestry’s designs. Perhaps he could have granted similar access to other potential patrons – but is that likely or realistic? “Another aspect to consider – key, perhaps – is whether the Tapestry was ever actually used for its original purpose, presumably to be displayed from place to place as an advocacy piece for Odo’s role in the Conquest,” he continues. “The likely period of its creation (1072–77) was within a new political environment in which William was moving towards a more oppressive regime than in the early days of the Conquest. Yet the Tapestry’s story seems to reflect a pre-1070s narrative, with William hoping to bring the English around by more persuasive means. So maybe it was never toured [because it didn’t reflect the newly prevailing narrative] and was unlikely to be emulated.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/ManiplePetertrans1137webready-d304d89.jpg" width="756" height="504" alt="The 10th-century maniple found in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral exhibits much finer needlework than the Bayeux Tapestry (Image by Stig Saxegaard & Museum of the Viking Age/Bayeux Museum)" title="The 10th-century maniple found in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral exhibits much finer needlework than the Bayeux Tapestry (Image by Stig Saxegaard og Kulturhistorisk museum/Bayeux Museum)" /> Professor Lewis further wonders whether the scale of the embroidery and, thus, the resources required would have made duplicate versions less likely: “It is true that the Bayeux embroidery uses relatively simple materials – flax for linen, wool for its threads, and plant material as dyes – but its scale, which could have been even larger than its extant 70m, suggests a different level of resources than might have been typical,” he notes. “This has not been explored in any meaningful way, and surely it is an opportunity not to be missed [when the Tapestry is conserved in 2027] for scientifically investigating its materiality?” If Professor Blair’s theory does hold water – and clearly more research is needed to bolster the case – it demands that we consider the Tapestry and its message in a different light. As it stands, the Bayeux Tapestry is a key source for our understanding of the Norman conquest. The narrative it offers, which is at once celebratory for Duke William, conciliatory towards King Harold, and exclusionary of other dimensions to the story – the most obvious omission being Harald Hardrada’s invasion in northern England before Hastings – has had a significant influence on the way we see 1066. If it was only one of a number of similar but different embroideries, then we need to review our interpretative framework, and consider why this particular version showed this particular narrative. Read more | Why the Nazis fell in love with the Bayeux Tapestry “Should this idea turn out to be right, it would emphasise both the sophistication and the complexity of 11th-century life, with major embroideries produced for several aristocratic households on a factory-line basis,” Professor Blair remarks. “When trying to understand material culture in the early Middle Ages, we have to remember what a minute and unrepresentative sample has come down to us.” Hopefully, this article might lead to further research on this interesting theory. In the meantime, if anyone reading happens to be descended from one of the leading Norman families of the 11th century and has an unopened chest lying around, please feel free to have a look – and get in touch if it contains a 70 metres long embroidery. This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history
If you’ve ever posted a comment on social media, you’ve created a potential source for future historians. But what problems does this mass of new material pose? Matt Elton asked historians Jane Winters and John Wills about how recent archives differ from those of the past – and how experts might make sense of them
Matt Elton: How do the kinds of records created now and in the recent past differ from those left in previous centuries? Jane Winters: Records and sources now come in a whole range of formats. In some cases, they are very familiar analogue sources that have become digital, whereas in others they are in a completely new format. Newspapers offer a great example of how this has changed: we used to read them only in physical form. Then those physical newspapers were digitised, keeping essentially the same structure. We now have both physical and digital newspapers, which differ in both form and content. An issue of The Guardian published in print today will not contain the same information as the online version: there will also be multimedia material and lots of online comments and conversations, whereas in the past you would have had only letters to the editor, for instance. And to take the example of people’s reflective writing, that’s a type of source that has also moved into new formats. A diary is not exactly the same as a blog entry or a post on social media, for instance. John Wills: One example that offers an interesting way of thinking about some of these issues is the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon – the point in 2023 when the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer were released at the same time. That’s a very recent instance of the kind of cultural moment that’s really interesting to research – but doing so is not easy, because you’re dealing not just with the films themselves but also the digital content produced by the films’ fandoms, the actors’ response to that content, and the wider public responses to those two movies, in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/2RKFGYE-8d3d650.jpg" width="4475" height="2983" alt="A movie poster shows characters from the films Oppenheimer and Barbie, creating a layered montage to promote "Barbenheimer". That word is written in pink across the bottom" title="A poster by graphic designer Sean Longmore celebrating the simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer in 2023. Today’s wealth of online content is a boon and a challenge for historians (Image by Alamy)" /> Jane Winters: An important characteristic of a digital archive that doesn’t have an analogue or print equivalent is the mixture of formats it contains. It’s not just text, images and moving images, but also all the other novel elements and forms of communication – memes, gifs, emojis – and they’re not all always available in an easy-to-search format. The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) is one of the major online archives, and it contains a huge amount of this kind of material – but in a very unstructured form. Focusing on the new kinds of sources that emerged in the late 20th and 21st centuries, are there particular examples that reveal new things about society? John Wills: One of the areas I explore is the history of video games, which we still tend to see as a recent phenomenon despite it dating back at least 50 years. It’s a medium in which the huge volume of material can be both a great opportunity and faintly overwhelming. There are a few ways in which video games can be useful historical sources. First, a game set in the past can reflect cultural views about that period of history at the time the game was made. Read more | Artificial intelligence: a modern advance or an ancient nightmare? Second, they can also provide ways for the public to get into history: the Red Dead Redemption game series [set on the US frontier in the late 19th and early 20th century], for example, has proved to be an entry point to ideas about and narratives of the American West for many people in the same way that TV or film can. And finally, you can sometimes go into the online world of a game itself and talk to its players about their memories and experiences of that game. That’s so different from how we would have worked on the history of memory in previous decades! These kinds of unique opportunities are why we’ve started to build video games into our understanding of history over the past few decades. Jane Winters: Another recent source of data that’s particularly exciting for historians is social media, because the voices and stories of people who would never have previously ended up in archives – unless they encountered the state at some point –are now doing so. It’s easy for anybody with access to the internet to create all kinds of content, and there are chances that at least some of it will end up in a national archive. That brings its own problems, because people aren’t always considering this when posting an angry Instagram comment! But that really rich conversation is something we haven’t had before, and has huge potential. There are substantial social media archives already, and they are going to grow. This presents a few challenges. One is an issue of preservation and storage: how much do we want to keep, particularly given the environmental impact of digital archiving? We often think of digital records as existing in the ‘cloud’, but that’s in many ways a very unhelpful term, because of course they exist in physical infrastructure. Another key issue is that this is often not a truly global record: there is inequity in terms of who has access to the internet, and therefore who is able to have their voices recorded in this way. As a concrete example, an exercise led by the International Internet Preservation Consortium collected the websites and other digital media produced in response to the Covid pandemic. It’s a pretty diverse collection, but there’s almost nothing from Africa and very little from China. So it skews in its story about that pandemic – which was, of course, a global phenomenon. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-2666817webready-aee0983.jpg" width="3458" height="2305" alt="A black and white photograph shows four men huddled around a newspaper" title="Men read a newspaper during the UK general strike, 1926. Historian Jane Winters highlights print media as a particularly revealing example of how online records have changed across recent decades (Image by Getty Images)" /> Despite these limitations, is the depth and extent of this inclusion in the historical record unprecedented? Jane Winters: I think so, and certainly in the sense that people are now creating the material themselves rather than being described by someone else, such as a state body. That ability to tell your own story, and the fact that different kinds of people will routinely end up in archives, is exciting. John Wills: I agree – particularly about the issues of inclusivity and diversity. Historians have always been making those kinds of choices about how to process that historical record, so in some ways that’s nothing new. What potential issues face historians using records created with, or stored on, more recent forms of technology? Jane Winters: A key issue is that digital records are often embedded in systems and structures, and we need to navigate those in order to replay them. Indeed, it’s very striking that the word ‘replay’ is used a lot in relation to web archives – it’s less about accessing material, and more about replaying content. I think this is only going to increase as we move as a culture towards using more and more multimedia platforms, so we need to collect the information that lets us understand the structures and systems used to store this content. One really useful way of framing this is the idea of the ‘material culture’ of these records. We need to preserve the original form of these digital records so we understand how to work with them and how to reuse them. Memory institutions – places such as the British Library and the National Archives – are making sure they have rooms with equipment and versions of particular computers to replay floppy disks, for example. Things like digital forensics come into play, too, to make sure that you are not altering a file when you open it. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history John Wills: Video game consoles, for example, have very short lifespans. Even one that sells well might be publicly available for only 10 years, and will then degrade. An emulator can show what a game was like, and you can watch people playing it on YouTube, but that will give you only one view of that game world – what one player did, rather than a wider sense of what the game’s about. Institutions have been set up to preserve video games and their history – for example, Sheffield’s National Videogame Museum. But this is a vast history – one console might play a few thousand games – and there are questions about who’s responsible for preserving the technology, and how. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/ACNSCREENSHOT141206230815PMCESTcmykwebready-6b6395b.jpg" width="1924" height="1283" alt="A soldier wearing gold and red armour and mask and a red and black headdress holds a sword up, fighting an unseen opponent" title="A scene from 2023 video game Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR. Such electronic forms of entertainment can prove to be useful historical sources, argues John Wills (Image by Games Press)" /> So for these sources to be as useful as possible, we need to preserve and understand the context in which they were made and used? Jane Winters: Yes – and there’s a concern that context disappears very easily from digital records. ‘Context collapse’ is something that gets talked about in relation to social media – the idea that it doesn’t take long before something is completely decontextualised and reused. It can become hard to trace where a digital record started, particularly if a crucial piece of information has gone – for example, if the original account was closed, it might exist in a very different context from that in which it was created. Because so much of this is happening in commercial platforms, there isn’t the attention to public documentation that you would get in a library or an archive. Talking about commercial platforms, there’s been a recent phenomenon of TV and film companies deleting material from their archives – or, in some cases, not releasing films at all. Does this point to any specifically 21st-century issues? John Wills: This is something you could call ‘digital demolition’, because it can be very conscious and deliberate. It’s sometimes the result of restricting access to archive material in order to create a paywall and charge for access. The online archive of MTV News, which is an incredible resource for people trying to understand the entertainment of the 1980s and 90s, was removed from the internet last year, for example. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t new, and that TV and film records have often been lost. We’ve got very few of the silent movies of the early 20th century, and Charlie Chaplin destroyed one of his own movies [as a tax write-off], for instance. One of the dangers is that we often don’t see TV or film productions as useful or valuable. A classic example is the tranche of Doctor Who episodes that went missing in the late 1960s and early 70s. Jane Winters: We also have a tendency to think about online platforms and content-creation companies as archives. They’re not, and they don’t have an archival remit or responsibility – they think of that data in very different ways from historians. In 2019 [social media site] Myspace lost years of photos, video and music because of a faulty server migration, for example. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/B261CNwebready-e53ca76.jpg" width="5102" height="3401" alt="Social network Myspace hit headlines in 2019 for losing 12 years’ worth of user content. Such platforms should not be seen as archives, says Jane Winters (Image by Alamy)" title="Social network Myspace hit headlines in 2019 for losing 12 years’ worth of user content. Such platforms should not be seen as archives, says Jane Winters (Image by Alamy)" /> Another issue is the vast volume of records. How will experts make sense of all of the data being created and stored? Jane Winters: The National Archives described this volume as a “tidal wave of digital material… which in its scale, diversity of format, and complexity of structure will overwhelm many existing recordkeeping institutions and practices”. And the scale is mind-boggling: The Wayback Machine has more than 946 billion web pages, largely accessed through keyword searching. You can find what you’re looking for, but you may have no sense of how vital or representative it is because there’s so much material. We will have to develop strategies to find out what’s in some of these digital archives before we can start to dig into them and do the kind of research we want to. We talk about ‘web archives’, but they’re not archives in a traditional sense, and that creates interesting challenges for researchers, both now and in the future. Read more | Eastern promises: the long and troubled history of Britain's relations with China Can we identify a moment when this avalanche of records began? Jane Winters: It’s not been the same in different sectors: the British Library was collecting millions of websites as early as 2013, so that’s already a huge collection. But I think the anticipated digital deluge of government records hasn’t really happened yet, though it is coming. John Wills: It does depend on the area. If you’re working on events in the 1980s or 90s, which saw the advent of 24-hour news coverage, the volume of visual culture can sometimes seem overwhelming. And that information may be supplied in an unreliable way. One of the big new challenges facing historians and other experts is the way that platforms and algorithms work, because they can potentially mislead us as scholars by pushing the most common citation or the view that’s been promoted hardest. We’re not necessarily getting an open, full picture of the past – we are getting a version shaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of machine learning. The data has already gone through a level of selection and adaptation – and that’s a real issue for us. Is AI going to become a growing problem for historians? Jane Winters: It will be a huge issue. That’s not to say there isn’t already misinformation in archives – we need only think about fraudulent medieval charters, for instance! But the scale is different, as is the entanglement between trustworthy information and misinformation. It’s not the role of archives to say if material can be trusted, but as historians we need enough information to make judgments for ourselves. We have the skills – we spend our time assessing information – but we need to have enough contextual material to judge its validity. Finally, considering all these challenges, how might historians in the future make sense of the late 20th and early 21st centuries? John Wills: It’s interesting to think about the image we have of future historians. An episode of recent Star Trek series Discovery features an ‘eternal gallery and archive’: a beautiful repository of items and books from around the universe, all presented uncritically as completely reliable information. It’s an example of the idea that we’ll have access to sources in a utopian way, whereas the reality looks like being one in which, as Jane says, things are complex and entangled, and historians have to negotiate increasingly problematic routes to access material. Jane Winters: Historians thrive on challenges: having to put together evidence and perhaps take it in a different direction because you found a new piece of information. We’ve only ever been able to tell partial stories; the challenge for us now is to think about how partial those histories might be. That’s why discussions like this are so important – to think about how we can ensure that as much of the material as possible is preserved, where the conversations around that need to happen, which organisations should be involved, and really work together. So many communities of practice are developing around this, and I have confidence that the work happening in our national libraries, archives and other places will ensure that historians of the future will have enough material to work with. Jane Winters is professor of digital humanities at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London John Wills is professor of American media and culture at the University of Kent This article was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
To celebrate a quarter-century of BBC History Magazine, we asked 25 expert contributors to nominate the most important historical discoveries and revelations since the publication launched in 2000
1. Women played major roles in the Viking Age Just 25 years ago, there seemed to be little new to say about the Vikings – and that was particularly the case for Viking women. The centuries-old consensus was that Viking wives and daughters stayed at home, passively watching as the Viking Age unfolded around them. New technologies have forced a rethink, though, completely revolutionising what we know about Viking women. The first significant discovery came from a systematic survey of a nationwide database of metal-detected female dress jewellery. This demonstrated for the first time that Scandinavian women migrated to England in substantial numbers. Next, isotope analysis of teeth from the graves of Viking women showed that they had formed a key part of the migration process elsewhere, too, moving across the Viking world alongside their families. The most dramatic and most debated discovery, however, came through analysis of ancient DNA. In Birka, Sweden, an individual buried in a high-status warrior grave turned out to be biologically female. This led to a worldwide discussion of the roles of Viking women: we now agree that, though many certainly did stay at home, some played active roles in trade, craft and manufacturing processes, and even held military positions. Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, author and TV presenter. Her books include The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons (William Collins, 2023) 2. Britain has been culturally diverse for far longer than most believed The murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 signalled a turning point in the way the histories of people of African descent were taught and perceived across Europe. From that moment, the British press and institutions felt that they had to engage better with narratives about minority ethnic communities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1292414316-CMYK-6ff23f7.jpg" width="1451" height="967" alt="A black and white photograph of a man sitting in a chair, leaning on one arm. He is wearing a suit." title="Walter Tull, an English footballer of Caribbean heritage, c1908–11 and (below) with the FA Amateur Cup-winning Clapton FC team of 1908–09. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British Army, he was killed in action in France in March 1918" /> A renewed interest in personal histories and trajectories of people of African descent in Britain showcased stories about their links to major events – from the celebrated story of the British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole during the Crimean War to the experiences of black British football player Walter Tull and other soldiers of Caribbean and African descent who fought for Britain during the world wars. We also saw a number of new black history courses launched in UK universities, and school classes featuring black, Asian and minority ethnic histories. Uncovering these multiple trajectories further highlights how culturally diverse Britain has been over many centuries, and why sharing stories about a common past can bring communities together. Olivette Otele is a distinguished research professor at SOAS University of London. Her books include African Europeans: An Untold History (Hurst, 2020) 3. The Tudors got Richard III wrong We learned many things from the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton beneath a Leicester car park 13 years ago. We learned about the king’s physique, his diet and the injuries he sustained while fighting for crown and country at Bosworth against a foreign-backed invader. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/BAL1066157-CMYK-2-7311920.jpg" width="2889" height="1925" alt="A painted portrait of Richard III. He is wearing a red top with a gold cape around his shoulders, with a black cap that includes a gold jewel on the front" title="Richard III, portrayed after 1510 – long after his death at Bosworth. “History can make no progress unless it’s ready to test and deconstruct generally held assumptions,” says Philippa Langley (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> But, for me, two lessons in particular stand out from the discovery. The first is that history can make no progress unless it’s ready to test and deconstruct generally held traditions and assumptions – even those held by historians and archaeologists. Those of us working on the Looking for Richard Project trusted only our own painstaking, personal research in primary sources. Second, we learned that Shakespeare’s hunchback and withered arm never existed. Analysis of Richard’s skeleton – which had lain underfoot and peacefully undisturbed for 500 years – revealed that his limbs were sound, and that his spine showed a scoliosis that was invisible to onlookers. Richard’s makeshift burial in the wake of his defeat at Bosworth, in a grave cut too short, was hugely revealing. It speaks across the centuries of a victor’s disrespect for a fallen king. Philippa Langley is a historian, author and producer. Her latest book is The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case (The History Press, 2023) Read more | The final mystery of Richard III: how 21st-century science cracked a 500-year-old cold case 4. Magna Carta was only part of a truly revolutionary settlement King John’s Magna Carta is perhaps the best-known document in world history, generally regarded as the first attempt to place kingship itself under the rule of law. Not surprisingly, it has been much studied. Yet a torrent of new evidence has been brought to light over the past 20 years, transforming understanding of both the document and its wider context. We now know of many more ‘original’ Magna Cartas (from its subsequent reissues) than were previously dreamed of. And incidental discoveries in archives from Paris to New England have reshaped our appreciation of what actually happened in 1215. A fortuitous discovery in Lambeth Palace Library, for example, reveals that the charter was part of a truly revolutionary settlement, with the barons briefly permitted dual control of local government in tandem with the king. We know, too, that John himself made no attempt to publish the charter. On the contrary, it was the bishops who ensured its distribution, preservation and even, in some cases, its physical copying. The archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, is unmasked not so much as an honest broker between king and barons but as an ideologically committed adherent of the anti-royal party. By such means can new evidence help us rewrite the past – even for the oldest and best-known stories. Nicholas Vincent is professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. His books include John (Allen Lane, 2020) 5. We ignore the past at our peril Most compellingly, the past 25 years have reminded us that history matters. Every life-sapping conflict since the millennium – Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Ukraine, Gaza – has its roots deep in the past. Of course, the past does not determine the future, but the future is shaped by the past. Merely railing against adversaries or shouting ‘victory’ from the rooftops may make for good headlines but, in the absence of some understanding of ‘how we got from there to here’, such indulgence is vacuous grandstanding. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-2198688988-CMYK-2766b77.jpg" width="3500" height="2331" alt="A group of Sudanese women and children dressed in bright clothing sit on the ground together. They all look serious." title="Women and children displaced by the civil war in Sudan, February 2025. The roots of such conflicts lie deep in the past, says Jonathan Dimbleby (Image by Getty Images)" /> The past has never been ‘another country’. This is especially true of Europe, where the tectonic plates did not stop shifting with the end of the Second World War in 1945 or the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The events of the past 25 years have demonstrated only too cruelly that our continent is inherently, and sometimes alarmingly, unstable. All leaders claim to act in what they believe to be the national interest. The. less they make ill-judged declaratory statements of intent and the more they demonstrate a realistic vision of the future, based on a clear awareness of the past, the better it will be for all of us. History is a great mentor. Jonathan Dimbleby is a historian, biographer and broadcaster. His latest book is Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War (Viking, 2024) 6. Hitler tapped into hard-wired emotions to stir up hatred For my new book, I found it tremendously helpful to talk to academic psychologists and neuroscientists about the insights we can gain, in general terms, from their disciplines. For instance, I learned how Hitler – without knowing the science behind his actions – tapped into a profound truth about the way the brain works. In stirring up hatred against Jews and Bolsheviks, Hitler targeted the amygdala – the part of the brain that immediately processes feelings of anxiety, fear and anger. These powerful emotions are produced almost instantly, because it’s the amygdala that helps us avoid sudden danger. It’s a survival mechanism that, as the neuroscientist Professor Robert Sapolsky explained to me, is “hard-wired into us… and we’ll never get rid of it”. Hitler capitalised on this neurobiological tendency, and in the process did his best to subdue the parts of the brain that offer a more logical analysis. Indeed, he seemed to confirm that he was well aware of the immense power of this approach when he remarked, during a private speech to the Hamburger Nationalklub in 1926, that “the only stable emotion is hate”. Laurence Rees is a historian, author and documentary film-maker. His new book is The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History (Viking, 2025) 7. Hunter-gatherers and farmers joined in wild rituals 12,000 years ago Around the turn of this millennium, in a remote south-eastern corner of Turkey, an astonishing discovery was being made – one that stretched the story of humanity back more than 12,000 years. Still today, only about 5 per cent of the archaeological site known as Karahantepe has been excavated – but even that tiny fraction is changing our understanding of the beginning of society as we know it. Emerging from the earth is a giant chamber with 11 huge stone phallus columns, overlooked by the face of a man with a splendid handlebar moustache and the body of a snake. The head of a big cat is visible in the centre, and carvings on 250 obelisks in the area could be mistaken for gargoyles on any medieval cathedral.We expect the female equivalent of the chamber to be unearthed soon. Karahantepe, it turns out, is just one site in a constellation of a hundred or so – the Taş Tepeler – which together are rewriting the story of human collaboration. The orthodoxy used to be that hunter-gatherers invented farming, then settled down, then manifested religion to establish common mores to live by. But the discoveries seem to show that hunter-gatherers and the very first farmers gathered together in huge, collective spaces for wild ritual parties to share know-how and ideas. This is one of the joys of history: it is constantly protean. Every year, new finds reveal earlier and earlier evidence of human achievement and sophistication. Bettany Hughes is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her latest book is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (W&N, 2024) 8. Returning stolen artefacts to Africa is no longer a naive dream Some 25 years ago, when I was starting my career in museums, a sense of optimism and renewal imbued the sector – yet the restitution of stolen African objects did not seem a realistic possibility. Today, the culture has changed profoundly. My old employer, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, has returned its contested Benin plaques; the Dutch, Germans and French have either begun programmes of return or discussed the possibility. In Britain, the Horniman has returned ownership of its Benin plaques, and the V&A and the British Museum (both restricted by law from giving collections permanently) have entered into long-term loan agreements with the Asante royal family in Ghana. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1432612271-CMYK-85c7997.jpg" width="2806" height="1869" alt="A collection of Benin Bronzes – objects stolen by British troops in 1897 – displayed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC in 2022 before repatriation to Nigeria (Image by Getty Images)" title="A collection of Benin Bronzes – objects stolen by British troops in 1897 – displayed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC in 2022 before repatriation to Nigeria" /> Conversations that were inconceivable a generation ago – about ethics, about custodianship, about narrative, about ghosts – have begun to happen. We have to find ways to tell complex stories of empire, enslavement and colonialism more effectively and inclusively. It’s important that museums can craft their curatorial narratives with moral confidence, and the resolution of such thorny, long-term issues is vital. There is still much to do. Our museums must go further in building partnerships and programmes with museums across the African continent. We need to learn from African expertise – and in turn we must share our resources and expertise to improve the telling of these rich and amazing histories everywhere. Gus Casely-Hayford is a curator, historian and broadcaster. His books include The Lost Kingdoms of Africa (Bantam, 2012) 9. Anne Boleyn was a proto-feminist heroine Anne Boleyn is unique among English queens, and her story is remarkable, but much of the modern fascination with that tale lies in perceptions of her fuelled by films and novels. She is now revered as a feminist heroine – a concept I would once have dismissed as anachronistic. When I said as much to the historian Sarah Gristwood, she replied: “Well, actually…” and very generously allowed me a preview of her research for her marvellous book Game of Queens (Oneworld, 2016), which inspired me to find out more. Feminism was unknown in Tudor England. But in early 16th-century Europe, where Anne spent her formative years, there was an intellectual debate that questioned traditional attitudes to women, and looked forward to an era – the ‘reign of virtue’ – in which they would enjoy more power and equality. In this age of female rulers, Anne had two shining examples to study: Margaret of Austria and Marguerite of Valois, both of whom she served or knew. We have to study her in this European context in order to understand the cultural influences to which she was exposed, giving her the confidence to pursue her brilliant career. Alison Weir is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Cardinal: The Secret Life of Thomas Wolsey (Headline, 2025) 10. Mary Seacole was a true heroine of the Crimean War One of the most significant changes over the past 25 years is the extent to which researching and writing black history has opened up. This is partly down to the dedication of historians determined to extend knowledge of the black experience by digging deeply and stubbornly into little-consulted sources. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2PJ0WEX-CMYK-06a24e3.jpg" width="2422" height="1614" alt="British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole, who cared for sick and wounded troops in Crimea. Digitisation of sources helped Helen Rappaport paint a more rounded portrait of her (Image by Alamy)" title="British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole, who cared for sick and wounded troops in Crimea. Digitisation of sources helped Helen Rappaport paint a more rounded portrait of her (Image by Alamy)" /> In my own case, 20 years of concerted searching across digitised newspapers and in genealogical archives gave the lie to the till-then widely perpetuated view that Mary Seacole had been wildly overrated and undeserving of the ‘Greatest Black Briton’ sobriquet awarded her in 2004. For decades, detractors dismissed her as a colourful but largely irrelevant presence who had done little more than ‘sell tea and buns’ to the soldiers in Crimea. But my searches, enabled by digitisation of sources, brought me to a more complete view of a woman who deserves to be viewed as a heroine. She journeyed 1,600 miles to Crimea under her own steam and at her own expense to set up shop in the middle of a war zone – a lone black woman facing prejudice and risking her own safety to help the wounded, sick and dying. Delving into previously unseen sources over an extended period enabled me to challenge the conventional sanctification of ‘the black Florence Nightingale’ and present a fully rounded personality. Helen Rappaport is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Rebel Romanov (Simon & Schuster, 2025) 11. Public history can play a major role in understanding the past One great change over the last 25 years has been the huge growth in public history – not just as an academic discipline, though of course it rests on the work of professional historians, archivists and museum workers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-473083908-CMYK-5eef700.jpg" width="5184" height="3454" alt="A woman wearing plain clothing and with her hair in a bun sits at a spinning wheel" title="A re-enactor at a recreation of a medieval German monastery village. Such projects contribute to public – and academic – understanding of the past (Image by Getty Images)" /> Public history is the product of us all. It is about public interaction with the past, its interpretation and popularisation – changing our understanding not only of the past but also of our own times. It’s about the link between historians and the general public. Films, podcasts, radio, heritage societies, living archaeologists, local history and re-enactment groups – even readers of this magazine – are all part of it. Good popularisation is the necessary link between professionals and the population at large, without which history becomes a closed debate between historians. And in a democracy, that link is vital: it’s part of a healthy information ecosystem, our reality check in the face of the tide of fake history on social media. Perhaps not surprisingly, in Trump’s America the US National Council on Public History is becoming more important in keeping minds open. When I hear people argue that you can’t rewrite history – though that is our actual collective job as makers of history! – it makes me think that perhaps we should have one here, too. Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. Read his column from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine here 12. Charles I wasn’t so very chaste Traditional accounts of Charles I, the so-called ‘martyr king’, have always presented him as a grave, austere and chaste figure – the very opposite of his indecorous, bawdy father, James VI & I, and his dissipated, promiscuous son, Charles II. Charles’s marriage to his wife, Henrietta Maria, was undoubtedly a happy one and, until the royal couple were torn apart during the Civil War, he does indeed appear to have remained true to her alone. However, in an article published in 2006, the historian Sarah Poynting revisited a series of encrypted letters written by Charles in late 1647 and 1648, while he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight after his defeat by the parliamentarians. Previous attempts to decipher these letters had not been entirely accurate, Poynting showed, and in fact one of them revealed that Charles had been attempting to inveigle the royalist agent Jane Whorwood into his bed. Using the frankest language, Charles went so far as to suggest to Jane that she should secretly conceal herself in the ‘stool-room’ adjoining his chamber while he was out on his daily walk so that, after his return, he could dally with her at length. It was a remarkable discovery – and one that suggested previous characterisations of the king as “blamelessly uxorious” may well have been a little wide of the mark. Mark Stoyle is professor of history at the University of Southampton. His latest book is A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549 (Yale University Press, 2022) Read more | "Tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy": was Charles I really that bad? 13. Mesolithic Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes One of the major scientific advances in archaeology over the past 25 years has been the ability to extract and analyse DNA from the remains of long-dead people from the distant past. Such ancient DNA can shed light on how people were related to one another, on a family or population scale, and provide insights into the migration and movement of people over time. It can also tell us what diseases they had and – perhaps most compelling – what they looked like. In 2018, researchers at the Natural History Museum revealed that one of the inhabitants of Mesolithic Britain, a man who lived around 10,000 years ago, had dark skin and blue eyes. This individual – known as ‘Cheddar Man’, because his remains were discovered in a cave in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset – is represented by one of the oldest complete skeletons ever identified in Britain. Earlier results from remains found from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary confirm that most hunter-gatherers in Mesolithic Europe looked this way. The genes for lighter skin pigmentation arrived thousands of years later, in waves of migration from the east during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. In addition, natural selection over time favoured lighter tones that allow more Vitamin D synthesis in the skin, essential in northerly climes. Susan Greaney is a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Exeter 14. Premodern Japan was surprisingly progressive One of the most fascinating and dynamic periods of Japanese history was the Meiji Restoration, which began with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and ended with the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912. Japan opened up as never before to diplomatic and trading relationships with the west and, over little more than four decades, modernised its economy and society at an astonishing rate. By 1912, it had become one of the world’s great powers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-566421965-CMYK-53c95d9.jpg" width="2704" height="1802" alt="A print showing a large blue river with little boats on it. A large arched bridge crosses the river. In the background, a volcano can be seen" title="An 1856 print of rural Japan by Hiroshige. Under the Tokugawa shogunate that preceded the 1868 Meiji Restoration, Japan enjoyed an artistic and intellectual flourishing (Image by Getty Images)" /> For a long time, this explosion of activity was contrasted with the preceding 250 years of the Tokugawa shogunate. That system was regarded as feudal, backward and badly out of date, requiring rescue at the hands of modernising and westernising reformers. Much though this view of history suited western historians across the 20th century, and flattering as it was to western modernity, since 2000 historians have increasingly been exploring the myriad achievements of the shogunate. Across two and a half centuries of peace, Japanese commerce, intellectual life and the arts enjoyed extraordinary growth and creativity, from theatre through to a tourism industry and a publishing boom. Without the commercial and technical expertise, high literacy rates and great bustling cities that developed under the shogunate, the Meiji Restoration could not have happened in the way that it did. Christopher Harding is senior lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh and creator of the IlluminAsia newsletter and podcast (illuminasia.org). His latest book is The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) 15. Egypt’s great pyramids at Giza weren’t built by foreign slaves Dominating the Giza Plateau for almost five millennia, the great pyramids still capture imaginations around the world. For centuries, archaeologists and historians have tried to determine how these magnificent monuments, including the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World, were created – and now we know who built them. Contrary to popular depictions, construction wasn’t completed by foreign slaves but by Egyptian employees. Excavations of a workers’ village over the past couple of decades, and the discovery of builders’ tombs in 2009, have transformed the narrative. The village, dating from the Fourth Dynasty (starting c4,600 years ago), boasted bakeries, breweries, butchers and a hospital. In the burial sites, skeletons show signs of hard labour, as one might expect, but they’re also accompanied by jars of bread and beer, ready for the afterlife. There are female skeletons, too, confirming that women played roles in building the pyramids. Hieroglyphs suggest a system of skilled labourers and artisans, from “overseer of the side of the pyramid” to “inspector of the craftsmen”. It’s also clear that villagers from surrounding areas came here to work in construction, usually in three-month stints. Their graffiti indicates that each cadre might associate themselves with one particular pharaoh or pyramid: the “friends of Khufu”, for example, or “drunkards of Menkaure”. The inscriptions confirm that the pyramid builders were Egyptian. And the manner and location of the burials, in the shadow of the great pharaohs, puts the slave myth to bed. Islam Issa is professor of literature and history at Birmingham City University. His latest book is Alexandria: The City that Changed the World (Sceptre, 2023) 16. Personal links to empire can reshape old narratives Astonishingly, I completed my entire education without learning about the British empire. I don’t even have a recollection of hearing the world ‘empire’ mentioned at school – and I studied History A-level! I now know that my experience is not unique. In the past 10 years or so, though, I have gained a growing understanding of not only what happened and how it shaped Britain today, but also of my own personal connection to empire and its tumultuous end. I feel lucky to be making programmes and writing books at a time when there is a greater interest in knowing about Britain’s imperial past – not that it is without complications or controversies. And things continue changing: a new generation of historians is exploring archives and asking different questions. Teachers are choosing to explore empire in all its complexity, and conversations are being had between people in the diaspora and their family members about a time when they were subjects of empire. I am learning that, just because an area of history is overlooked or not spoken of, it doesn’t always have to be that way. Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4. Read her Hidden Histories column from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine here 17. Stonehenge was built in an already sacred area The past two and a half decades have seen a transformation in our understanding of one of the most iconic ancient monuments in Britain and, indeed, the world: Stonehenge. Archaeological research has revealed that the 4,500-year-old prehistoric ‘temple’ stood at the heart of a sacred landscape infinitely richer than previously thought. Scores of ritual monuments have been discovered in a vast halo scattered across the countryside around the monument. Even more extraordinarily, tests have revealed that one of Stonehenge’s most important stones was transported all the way from what’s now northern Scotland – and that a large number of the smaller stones had probably originally formed part of another stone circle in south-west Wales before being brought here. And research shows that some of the Neolithic people buried at Stonehenge did not come from the area but from western Britain, possibly from modern-day Wales – significant, given the origins of many of its smaller stones. We now know, too, that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were active in the Stonehenge area some 5,000 years before the monument existed. This remarkable new information, together with earlier evidence that a series of Mesolithic wooden obelisks may have stood adjacent to the site of Stonehenge, suggests that the area had been sacred for millennia. David Keys is the archaeological correspondent for The Independent 18. The tide seems to have turned against the British empire By the year 2000, the British empire – formerly a global superpower – had been transformed into an organisation with entirely voluntary membership, the Commonwealth. At the time, academic assessment of this extraordinary transformation resulted in a number of books – including my own – which concluded that British imperialism had been overall, and in a remarkable variety of ways, both a blessing and a curse. In the 25 years since that relatively benign consensus, however, there has been a profound anti-imperial swing resulting in a wholesale condemnation of British imperial history – shifting the dial remarkably. It is, however, vital to understand that, even at its Victorian zenith, the empire faced trenchant criticism from within. Anti-imperial attitudes were commonplace on the left wing of the Liberal Party, the infant Labour Party and the generally hostile Irish Nationalist Party. Nonconformist churches – Methodists, Congregationalists and, above all, Quakers – voiced criticisms of imperial aims and methods. Internal opposition, from resentful Afrikaners, French Canadians and diverse displaced and conquered Indigenous peoples, also inevitably arose. To cope with such internal opposition, and to prolong its existence, the imperial system undertook much self-correction – a process that led to mass devolution, the end of empire and the birth of today’s Commonwealth. In short, we are now keenly aware that there is no neat and fireproof analysis of the nature, governance and purpose of the British empire. It was such a huge, complex and long-lived organisation that almost every criticism, as well as almost every justification, has some validity somewhere and at some time. Denis Judd is professor emeritus of imperial and Commonwealth history at London Metropolitan University, and author of Empire (IB Tauris revised paperback edition, 2012) 19. The world is in danger of reverting to its darkest days After the collapse of Soviet-style communism in Russia and eastern Europe in 1989–91, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man. In it, he predicted optimistically that the demise of the Soviet system meant that western liberalism would roll out across the world, and that the future belonged to progressive democracy, with no rivals to challenge it. In fact, since the first issue of BBC History Magazine was published in 2000, history has evolved along a drastically different path to the one that Fukuyama predicted. So far, the 21st century has belonged to resurgent strongmen. In country after country, authoritarian regimes led by dictatorial rulers have come to power – and stayed there, with scant regard for democracy. Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Erdogan’s Turkey, Kim’s North Korea and Sisi’s Egypt are leading examples of a worldwide trend that shows no sign of ending. So what we have learned from history in this century is a rather troubling lesson. After the terrors of the 20th century, the world is not moving into broad, sunlit uplands but is in danger of reverting to the darkest days of the past. Nigel Jones is a historian, journalist and former reviews editor of BBC History Magazine. His latest book is Kitty’s Salon: Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich (John Blake, 2023) 20. Technology enables deep-sea shipwreck discoveries – but we should beware hubris In recent years, sophisticated modern technologies have allowed humans to dive deeper, explore the seabed autonomously, and locate shipwrecks. Lost in 1915 in the Weddell Sea, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance made headlines when its wreck was rediscovered in 2022. Recovering or even visiting the wreck, which lies at a depth of 3,000 metres, are major challenges. But submersible robots were able to photograph the Endurance from every angle, enabling scientists to create a digital model of the whole vessel as well as many artefacts preserved just as they were when the crew abandoned ship. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1137373443cmyk-1b64874.jpg" width="5248" height="3496" alt="Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance clamped in a fatal ice embrace in 1915. The discovery of its wreck on the Antarctic seabed in 2022 made headlines (Image by Getty Images)" title="Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance clamped in a fatal ice embrace in 1915. The discovery of its wreck on the Antarctic seabed in 2022 made headlines (Image by Getty Images)" /> The wreck of the Gloucester, lost in 1682 after hitting a sandbank while transporting James, Duke of York and his court, was discovered in 2007. Future excavation of the site could provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore a Restoration royal court frozen in time. Just as the Mary Rose Museum has captured the public imagination, making Henry VIII’s warship part of British national conversations, telling the Gloucester’s stories could transform public understanding of a historical period that laid the constitutional foundations of modern Britain. In 2025, mid-point in the United Nations ‘Ocean Decade’, a key task is to meaningfully integrate Britain’s remarkable maritime cultural heritage into ocean governance to help create a sustainable blue economy. Nonetheless, humanity should remain humble in the face of the ocean’s uncontrollable forces. The implosion in 2023 of the submersible Titan on its expedition to the wreck of the Titanic – resulting in the death of all on board – is a cautionary tale. Some 3 million shipwrecks around the world prove that the sea – so elemental, so powerful – shouldn’t be disrespected. Claire Jowitt is professor of Renaissance studies at the University of East Anglia 21. We now know how many enslaved African people were trafficked across the Atlantic The transatlantic slave trade was one of the largest forced movements of people in world history – yet for decades it was difficult to quantify. Then, in the early 1990s, an international team came together to solve this problem. The result was the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which showed that 12.5 million people were transported. Of those, 10.7 million survived the journey and arrived in the Americas. Many people, particularly in the US and the UK, assumed that most enslaved people were trafficked to the United States. In fact, the database showed that fewer than 400,000 Africans were forcibly taken directly to mainland North America; about 4.8 million arrived in South America and 4.7 million in the Caribbean. First published as a CD-ROM in 1999, the database was greatly expanded in the early 2000s to include the Portuguese trade in the South Atlantic. Re-released as an open-access website in 2008, including details of an additional 7,000 journeys, it has been described as one of the greatest historical achievements of the 21st century. Though the database does not give us a rich picture of the experiences of enslaved peoples, it has been critical to understanding the scale of one of the world’s worst human-rights violations. Hannah Cusworth is a historian, curator and history education consultant Read more | The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation 22. Richard III was behind the disappearance of the princes in the Tower… probably It’s history’s most compelling missing persons case: what happened to Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, after they were placed in the Tower in 1483 on the orders of their uncle, who soon afterwards seized the throne as Richard III? The mystery has been the subject of intense debate ever since. Some three decades later, Thomas More had established the narrative that Richard had his nephews murdered with the help of his henchman, James Tyrell. There was no shortage of other suspects but, though every scrap of evidence has been pored over by generations of historians since, the trail was already cold. Recently, Tim Thornton, professor of history at the University of Huddersfield, took a novel approach. Rather than researching the events leading up to the princes’ disappearance, he traced the lives of those involved in the years that followed – and found links between Thomas More and the two men he claimed had carried out the murder for Tyrell. Then, last year, Thornton came across a book of wills in the National Archives that included one made in 1516 by a wealthy London widow, Margaret Capel, half sister-in-law of Sir James Tyrell. Among her chattels listed in the will was “the chain of Edward V” – the only one of the boys’ possessions referenced in sources after their disappearance. The fact that it turned up in the family of the prime suspect makes it close to a ‘smoking gun’. Tracy Borman is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her documentary The Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery is on My5 23. History can help veterans cope with PTSD A remarkable discovery made this century is that history can be hugely therapeutic for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It might seem deeply counterintuitive but when veterans undertake top-level archaeological research on battlefields, rather than re-igniting their traumas it often tends to work in positive ways for them psychologically, and can be a useful step on their road to recovery. The work done by the organisation Waterloo Uncovered, founded in 2015 by former Coldstream Guards captain (and PTSD sufferer) Mark Evans, has been instrumental in this regard. Its mental-health experts found that, after helping to discover facts that are useful to military historians – the musket-ball scatter-pattern outside the orchard at the Hougoumont farmhouse in a key sector of the Waterloo battlefield, for example – veterans often saw improvements in their mental conditions. There are various theories about the mechanisms of this effect. Perhaps such work reminds veterans that their predecessors two centuries ago encountered much the same kind of perils they did themselves in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Evans also noted that the project provided a safe and structured environment in which veterans with shared experiences could start to open up to one another about the challenges they faced. Whatever the reason, history is helping in a tangible way today. Andrew Roberts’ latest book, with General David Petraeus, is Conflict: The Evolution of War-fare from 1945 to Gaza (William Collins, 2024) 24. Technology has revolutionised how historians work and collaborate One of the great things about historical research is that it keeps on moving. When I was a young historian, looking back in time required me to handle complex written materials and work out how to supplement them with reference material culture, to archaeology or to finds such as coins and lead seals. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-3433569-CMYK-2f40b22.jpg" width="2726" height="1815" alt="A sketch shows a massive explosion with black smoke billowing into the air" title="The catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, depicted in a contemporary lithograph. Technological advances enable historians to better understand the impacts of such events (Image by Getty Images)" /> The past quarter-century has revolutionised the tools available to historians. Huge advances in the sciences, combined with plunging costs, mean that we now have access to data sources that don’t just provide new insights into topics such as human migration or the spread and lethality of pandemic diseases, but also enable us to do so with increasing accuracy. These are tools we must learn to rely on. Many of these new materials are related to climate archives, enabling historians to reconstruct past periods of environmental change – or even, in some cases, to better understand the effects of single, one-off extreme events such as floods, storms or volcanic eruptions. That, in turn, has changed how historians work, not least in the ways we can collaborate more often and more meaningfully with colleagues across research groups. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a historian – to be part of the community of people interested in the past. Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at Oxford University. His latest book is The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (Bloomsbury, 2023) 25. Powerful female leaders weren’t the sex-crazed failures of (manmade) myth Our understanding of queenship has, thankfully, moved forward in the past 25 years – just as women’s history has also moved forward. Female rulers such as Cleopatra and Mary, Queen of Scots have all too frequently been cited as cautionary tales about what follows when you give women power: sex and death. But in recent years, revisionist historians such as Kara Cooney, Joyce Tyldesley and Joann Fletcher have written brilliant accounts of Cleopatra, challenging the perception of her as a sex-mad failure. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-544268988-CMYK-27bfceb.jpg" width="3025" height="2016" alt="A woman with red hair tied back into a bun, wearing a brocaded red dress with a high white collar, and a lot of jewellery" title="Mary, Queen of Scots, painted c1558–60. Historical female rulers must be seen in context, says Kate Williams (Image by Getty Images)" /> Mary, Queen of Scots was surrounded by men attempting to seize her power – and, when she had a son, she was set on a course that led to her being deposed in favour of him. Lord Bothwell made her go back to his castle, where he assaulted her in an attempt to force her to marry. Past historians framed her for setting up this event. Today, though, we understand that a woman who had been seized and sexually assaulted was expected to agree to marry the man who attacked her. In Mary’s case, all of the lords were in agreement with that course of action – so what choice did Mary have? As we are increasingly coming to understand, female rulers need to be seen in context. If they lost to the powerful men of the time or, indeed, the Roman empire, we need to grasp why that happened. Such insights can shape perceptions of the past – and a future with women in power. Kate Williams is professor of public engagement with history at the University of Reading. Her latest book is The Royal Palaces: Secrets and Scandals (Frances Lincoln, 2024) This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified?
For years debate has raged over whether the US was right to drop two atomic bombs on Japan during the final weeks of the Second World War. The first bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, resulted in a total death toll of around 140,000. The second, which hit Nagasaki on 9 August, killed around 50,000 people. But was the US justified? We put the question to a panel of expert historians...
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in August 1945 brought the Second World War to a sudden and devastating close, and sparked a moral and historical debate that has continued since. Well over 100,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed instantly or in the immediate aftermath, with many more suffering from long-term effects of radiation exposure. The decision by US president Truman to authorise the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was unprecedented. It marked the first (and so far only) time that atomic bombs have been used in warfare. The justification offered at the time was that the bombings would force Japan’s surrender and avoid a prolonged and bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland. Yet the question remains: was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? Historians continue to debate the military necessity, political motivations and moral implications of the bombings. Was it a strategic decision to end the war quickly and save lives? Or a demonstration of power aimed as much at the Soviet Union as at Japan? Here, a panel of historians offers their perspectives on one of the most controversial chapters of the Second World War, and considers whether the US was right to bomb Japan in 1945. Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? “Yes. Truman had little choice” – Antony Beevor Few actions in war are morally justifiable. All a commander or political leader can hope to assess is whether a particular course of action is likely to reduce the loss of life. Faced with the Japanese refusal to surrender, President Truman had little choice. His decision was mainly based on the estimate of half a million Allied casualties likely to be caused by invading the home islands of Japan. There was also the likely death rate from starvation for Allied PoWs and civilians as the war dragged on well into 1946. Read more | The Manhattan Project: your guide to the building of the first atomic bomb What Truman did not know, and which has only been established quite recently, is that the Imperial Japanese Army could never contemplate surrender, having forced all their men to fight to the death since the start of the war. All civilians were to be mobilised and forced to fight with bamboo spears and satchel charges to act as suicide bombers against Allied tanks. Japanese documents apparently indicate their army was prepared to accept up to 28 million civilian deaths. Antony Beevor is a bestselling military historian, specialising in the Second World War. His most recent book is Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble (Viking, 2015) “No. It was immoral, and unnecessary” – Richard Overy The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified at the time as being moral – in order to bring about a more rapid victory and prevent the deaths of more Americans. However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu. And it wasn’t necessary either. WW2 | The Big Questions Member exclusive | Historian and broadcaster Laurence Rees explains major moments of the global conflict in this five-part series. Listen to all episodes now Militarily Japan was finished (as the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that August showed). Further blockade and urban destruction would have produced a surrender in August or September at the latest, without the need for the costly anticipated invasion or the atomic bomb. As for the second bomb on Nagasaki, that was just as unnecessary as the first one. It was deemed to be needed, partly because it was a different design, and the military (and many civilian scientists) were keen to see if they both worked the same way. There was, in other words, a cynical scientific imperative at work as well. I should also add that there was a fine line between the atomic bomb and conventional bombing – indeed descriptions of Hamburg or Tokyo after conventional bombing echo the aftermath of Hiroshima. To regard Hiroshima as a moral violation is also to condemn the firebombing campaign, which was deliberately aimed at city centres and completely indiscriminate. Of course it is easy to say that if I had been in Truman’s shoes, I would not have ordered the two bombings. But it is possible to imagine greater restraint. The British and Americans had planned in detail the gas-bombing of a list of 17 major German cities, but in the end did not carry it out because the moral case seemed to depend on Germany using gas first. Restraint was possible, and, at the very end of the war, perhaps more politically acceptable. Richard Overy is a professor of history at the University of Exeter and editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of World War Two (OUP, 2015) More from us HistoryExtra members can explore this topic further with exclusive content from our archives WW2 the big questions: final stages of the conflict What if...The Enigma code had not been cracked by Alan Turing and Bletchley Park? Oppenheimer | Is Christopher Nolan perpetuating a historical myth? The PoWs who survived Nagasaki "We’ve come to think that peace is normal, but that's not the reality": Margaret MacMillan on humanity's compulsion to go to war Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers “Yes. It was the least bad option” – Robert James Maddox The atomic bombs were horrible, but I agree with US secretary of war Henry L Stimson that using them was the “least abhorrent choice”. A bloody invasion and round-the-clock conventional bombing would have led to a far higher death toll and so the atomic weapons actually saved thousands of American and millions of Japanese lives. The bombs were the best means to bring about unconditional surrender, which is what the US leaders wanted. Only this would enable the Allies to occupy Japan and root out the institutions that led to war in the first place. Timeline | The countdown to the bombing of Hiroshima The experience with Germany after the First World War had persuaded them that a mere armistice would constitute a betrayal of future generations if an even larger war occurred 20 years down the line. It is true that the radiation effects of the atomic bomb provided a grisly dividend, which the US leaders did not anticipate. However, even if they had known, I don’t think it would have changed their decision. Robert James Maddox is author of Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism (University of Missouri Press, 2007) Video: Could the Nazis have built the first atomic bomb? View Green Video on the source website “No. Japan would have surrendered anyway” – Martin J Sherwin I believe that it was a mistake and a tragedy that the atomic bombs were used. Those bombings had little to do with the Japanese decision to surrender. The evidence has become overwhelming that it was the entry of the Soviet Union on 8 August into the war against Japan that forced surrender but, understandably, this view is very difficult for Americans to accept. Of the Japanese leaders, it was the military ones who held out against the civilian leaders who were closest to the emperor, and who wanted to surrender provided the emperor’s safety would be guaranteed. The military’s argument was that Japan could convince the Soviet Union to mediate on its behalf for better surrender terms than unconditional surrender and therefore should continue the war until that was achieved. Read more | How and when did the Second World War end? Once the USSR entered the war, the Japanese military not only had no arguments for continuation left, but it also feared the Soviet Union would occupy significant parts of northern Japan. Truman could have simply waited for the Soviet Union to enter the war but he did not want the USSR to have a claim to participate in the occupation of Japan. Another option (which could have ended the war before August) was to clarify that the emperor would not be held accountable for the war under the policy of unconditional surrender. US secretary of war Stimson recommended this, but secretary of state James Byrnes, who was much closer to Truman, vetoed it. By dropping the atomic bombs instead, the United States signalled to the world that it considered nuclear weapons to be legitimate weapons of war. Those bombings precipitated the nuclear arms race and they are the source of all nuclear proliferation. The late Martin J Sherwin was co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer (Atlantic, 2008) Read more | 6 terrible choices people had to make during the Second World War “Yes. It saved millions of lives in Japan and Asia” – Richard Frank Dropping the bombs was morally preferable to any other choices available. One of the biggest problems we have is that we can talk about Dresden and the bombing of Hamburg and we all know what the context is: Nazi Germany and what Nazi Germany did. There’s been a great amnesia in the west with respect to what sort of war Japan conducted across Asia-Pacific. Bear in mind that for every Japanese non-combatant who died during the war, 17 or 18 died across Asia-Pacific. Yet you very seldom find references to this and virtually nothing that vivifies it in the way that the suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been. Read more | What was the Truman doctrine? With the original invasion strategy negated by radio intelligence revealing the massive Japanese build-up on the planned Kyushu landing areas, Truman’s alternative was a campaign of blockade and bombardment, which would have killed millions of Japanese, mostly non-combatants. For example, in 1946 the food situation would have become catastrophic and there would have been stupendous civilian deaths. It was only because Japan surrendered when it still had a serviceable administrative system – plus American food aid – that saved the country from famine. Read more | Stalin’s famine: a brief history of the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine Another thing to bear in mind is that while just over 200,000 people were killed in total by the atomic bombs, it is estimated that 300,000–500,000 Japanese people (many of whom were civilians) died or disappeared in Soviet captivity. Had the war continued, that number would have been much higher. Critics talk about changing the demand for unconditional surrender, but the Japanese government had never put forth a set of terms on which they were prepared to end the war prior to Hiroshima. The inner cabinet ruling the country never devised such terms. When foreign minister Shigenori Togo was told that the best terms Japan could obtain were unconditional surrender with the exception of maintaining the imperial system, Togo flatly rejected them in the name of the cabinet. The fact is that there was no historical record over the past 2,600 years of Japan ever surrendering, nor any examples of a Japanese unit surrendering during the war. This was where the great American fear lay. Richard B Frank is a military historian whose books include Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (Random House, 1999) “No. Better options were discarded for political reasons” – Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Once sympathetic to the argument that the atomic bomb was necessary, the more research I do, the more I am convinced it was one of the gravest war crimes the US has ever committed. I’ve been to Japan and discovered what happened on the ground in 1945 and it was really horrifying. The radiation has affected people who survived the blast for many years and still today thousands of people suffer the effects. Read more | “My God, what have we done?” The moral dilemma of Hiroshima There were possible alternatives that might have ended the war. Truman could have invited Stalin to sign the Potsdam declaration [in which the USA, Britain and Nationalist China demanded Japanese surrender in July 1945]. The authors of the draft of the declaration believed that if the Soviets joined the war at this time it might lead to Japanese surrender but Truman consciously avoided that option, because he and some of his advisors were apprehensive about Soviet entry. I don’t agree with revisionists who say Truman used the bomb to intimidate the Soviet Union but I believe he used it to force Japan to surrender before they were able to enter the war. The second option was to alter the demand for unconditional surrender. Some influential advisors within the Truman administration were in favour of allowing the Japanese to keep the emperor system to induce so-called moderates within the Japanese government to work for the termination of the war. However, Truman was mindful of American public opinion, which wanted unconditional surrender as revenge against Pearl Harbor and the Japanese atrocities. Read more | The Nuremberg Trials: the real history behind the post-WW2 tribunal that brought Nazi leaders to justice Bearing in mind those atrocities, it’s clear that Japan doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to immoral acts in the war. However, one atrocity does not make another one right. I believe this was the most righteous war the Americans have ever been involved in but you still can’t justify using any means to win a just war. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Harvard University, Press 2005) “Yes. The moral failing was Japan’s” – Michael Kort Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb was the best choice available under the circumstances and was therefore morally justifiable. It was clear Japan was unwilling to surrender on terms even remotely acceptable to the US and its allies, and the country was preparing a defence far more formidable than the US had anticipated. Read more | Who was Hermann Göring? The truth about Hitler’s drug-fuelled enforcer who met his downfall at Nuremberg The choice was not, as is frequently argued, between using an atomic bomb against Hiroshima and invading Japan. No one on the Allied side could say with confidence what would bring about a Japanese surrender, as Japan’s situation had been hopeless for a long time. It was hoped that the shock provided by the bombs would convince Tokyo to surrender, but how many would be needed was an open question. After Hiroshima, the Japanese government had three days to respond before Nagasaki but did not do so. Hirohito and some of his advisers knew Japan had to surrender but were not in a position to get the government to accept that conclusion. Key military members of the government argued that it was unlikely that the US could have a second bomb and, even if it did, public pressure would prevent its use. The bombing of Nagasaki demolished these arguments and led directly to the imperial conference that produced Japan’s offer to surrender. Read more | The science behind the bombing of Hiroshima The absolutist moral arguments (such as not harming civilians) made against the atomic bombs would have precluded many other actions essential to victory taken by the Allies during the most destructive war in history. There is no doubt that had the bomb been available sooner, it would have been used against Germany. There was, to be sure, a moral failing in August 1945, but it was on the part of the Japanese government when it refused to surrender after its long war of conquest had been lost. Michael Kort is professor of social science at Boston University and author of The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (Columbia Press, 2007) HistoryExtra readers George Evans-Hulme and Roy Ceustermans debate... George Evans-Hulme: Yes, it was justified. The US was, like the rest of the world, soldiering on towards the end of a dark period of human history that had seen the single most costly conflict (in terms of life) in history, and they chose to adopt a stance that seemed to limit the amount of casualties in the war, by significantly shortening it with the use of atomic weapons. It was certainly a reasonable view for the USA to take, since they had suffered the loss of more than 418,000 lives, both military and civilian. To the top rank of the US military the 135,000 death toll was worth it to prevent the “many thousands of American troops [that] would be killed in invading Japan” – a view attributed to the president himself. This was a grave consequence taken seriously by the US. Ordering the deployment of the atomic bombs was an abhorrent act, but one they were certainly justified in doing. Roy Ceustermans: No, the US wasn’t justified. Even secretary of war Henry Lewis Stimson was not sure the bombs were needed to reduce the need of an invasion: “Japan had no allies; its navy was almost destroyed; its islands were under a naval blockade; and its cities were undergoing concentrated air attacks.” The United States still had many industrial resources to use against Japan, and thus it was essentially defeated. Rear Admiral Tocshitane Takata concurred that B-29s “were the greatest single factor in forcing Japan's surrender”, while Prince Konoye already thought Japan was defeated on 14 February 1945 when he met emperor Hirohito. A combination of thoroughly bombing blockading cities that were economically dependent on foreign sources for food and raw materials, and the threat of Soviet entry in the war, would have been enough. The recommendations for the use of the bomb show that the military was more interested in its devastating effect than in preparing the invasion. Therefore the destruction of hospitals and schools etc was acceptable to them. Read more | 7 of the best WW2 films GEH: The USA was more interested in a quick and easy end to the war than causing untold suffering. They had in their hands a weapon that was capable of bringing the war to a swift end, and so they used it. The atom bombs achieved their desired effects by causing maximum devastation. Just six days after the Nagasaki bombing, the Emperor’s Gyokuon-hōsō speech was broadcast to the nation, detailing the Japanese surrender. The devastation caused by the bombs sped up the Japanese surrender, which was the best solution for all parties. If the atomic bombs had not had the devastating effect they had, they would have been utterly pointless. They replaced thousands of US bombing missions that would have been required to achieve the same effect of the two bombs that, individually, had the explosive power of the payload of 2,000 B-29s. This freed up resources that could be utilised for the war effort elsewhere. RC: After the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the death toll on both sides was high, and the countries’ negative view of one other became almost unbridgeable, says J Samuel Walker in Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and The Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. Therefore, the US created unconditional terms of surrender, knowingly going against the Japanese ethic of honour and against the institute of the emperor, whom most Americans probably wanted dead. Consequently, the use of the atomic bomb became a way to avenge America's fallen soldiers while also keeping the USSR in check in Europe. The Japanese civilian casualties did not matter in this strategy. Also, it did not prevent the Cold War, as the USSR was just a few years behind on a-bomb research. Read more | Before the atomic bombs, the USA hit Japan with one of the most overlooked (but deadly) campaigns in WW2 At the time, revenge, geopolitics and an expensive project that could not be allowed to simply rust away, meant the atomic bomb had to be hastily deployed “in the field” in order to see its power and aftermath – though little was known about radiation and its effects on humans. GEH: Admittedly, the US did use the atom bomb to keep the USSR in line, and for that it served its purpose. It may not have stopped the Soviets developing their own nuclear device, but that’s not what it was intended for. It was used as a deterrent to keep the (sometimes uneasy) peace between the US and the USSR, and it achieved that. There are no cases of a direct, all-out war between the US and the Soviets that can be attributed to the potentially devastating effects of atomic weaponry. The atomic bombs certainly established US dominance immediately after the Second World War – the destructive power it possessed meant that it remained uncontested as the world’s greatest power until the Soviets developed their own weapon, four years after the deployment at Nagasaki. It is certainly true that Stalin and the Soviets tried to test US dominance, but even into the 1960s the US generally came out on top. RC: The price to keep the USSR in check was steep: the use of a weapon of mass destruction that caused around 200,000 deaths (most of them civilians) and massive suffering through radiation. However, it did not stop the USSR from creating the same weapon within four years. It might be argued that, following the explosions, Japan virtually disappeared from the world stage while the USSR viewed the bombing as an incentive to acquire the same weaponry in order to retaliate in equal force if the atomic bomb was ever used again. Considering the tension between the two countries, a similar attack with tens of thousands of civilian casualties would have created a nuclear apocalypse. If the US had organised a demonstration, as they had briefly considered, the USSR would still have responded in the same manner, while Japan – which had made clear overtures for a (un)conditional surrender – could have been spared. Furthermore, by postponing the use of the bomb, scientists would have had time to understand the test results, meaning further anguish, like the Bikini Atoll [a huge US hydrogen bomb test in 1954 that had major consequences for the geology and natural environment, and on the health of those who were exposed to radiation] could have been avoided. GEH: The large civilian death toll that resulted from the bombings can be seen as a small price to pay by the United States in return for their assertion of dominance on the world stage. The USSR’s development of an atomic weapon had been underway since 1943, and so their quest for nuclear devices cannot be solely attributed to the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It should also be considered that the Soviets’ rapid progress in creating an atom bomb was not exclusively down to their desire to compete with the United States, but from spies passing them US secrets. Postponing the use of the atom bomb would only have prolonged the war and potentially created an even worse fate for the people of Japan, with an estimated five to 10 million Japanese fatalities – a number higher than some estimates for the entire Soviet military in the Second World War. Ultimately, the atomic bombs did what they were designed to do. They created such a high level of devastation that the Japanese felt they had no option but to surrender unconditionally to the United States, hence resulting in US victory and the end of the Second World War. RC: Of course civilian casualties of another nation would have been acceptable to the USA. Japan had made clear overtures to peace, but cultural differences made this nearly impossible (the shame of unconditional surrender goes against their code of honour). The determination to use an expensive bomb instead of letting it rust away; the desire to find out how devastating it was and the opportunity to use the bomb as a strong showcase of US supremacy, made Japan the ideal target. Obviously, the USSR would eventually succeed in creating the a-bomb. Therefore, making Hiroshima & Nagasaki the example of the tremendous power of the bombs would make it clear to the USSR that they too needed such weapons to defend themselves. Moreover, other countries claimed the right of nuclear weapons to defend their citizens. Consequently, the tragic bombings became the example of an arm’s race instead of peace. Furthermore, since Japan was already on the brink of collapse the bombing was unnecessary, and peace talks would have taken place within a decent time frame (even after the cancelled Hawaii summit). The millions of deaths calculated by Operation Downfall [the codename for the Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of the Second World War, which was abandoned when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] actually show that only desperation and honour stood between Japan and unconditional surrender. George Evans-Hulme has a passion for military and political history, and enjoys visiting historical sites across the UK. Roy Ceustermans has a master's degree in the history of the Catholic Church, an advanced master's degree on the historical expansion, exchange and globalisation of the world, and a master’s degree in management.
“I don’t underestimate how difficult it is to satisfy everybody” | Simon Sebag Montefiore on writing the history of Jerusalem
More than a decade since its original publication, historian and broadcaster Simon Sebag Montefiore’s updated biography of Jerusalem charts events right up to the present day. Why did he choose to examine such a contentious past? And is it possible to remain entirely impartial? Matt Elton caught up with him to find out
You’ve just published a new edition of your history of Jerusalem. What were your aims in updating it? The book is a history of the Middle East, the Holy City and Holy Land across 3,000 years – from the Canaanites to the 2020s, encompassing all faiths, all religions, all conquerors, all empires and all states. Where possible, it’s mainly told through the stories of individuals. The previous version of the book came out in 2011, and largely ended in 1948 – though it did include a brief section on the Israeli conquest of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967. So its coverage of the 20th century was incomplete, which seemed okay when I wrote it – but so much has happened since then that I began to think I should update it. I was in the process of doing that when the attack by Hamas in southern Israel happened on 7 October last year. Since then there’s been such a deluge of misinformation and, frankly, ignorance and bias from all directions that it seemed even more urgent – particularly because, in the year after that attack, the book sold out many times in Britain and the US. Read more | Israel and the Palestinians: a history of conflict in 8 key episodes For better or worse, the book is one of the few balanced accounts that attempts to tell the story of the creation of the Israeli nation and the Palestinian nation. Nothing is perfect, of course, and it would be hubristic and arrogant to think that anyone could write a perfectly balanced history. But I think this is as close as it gets. This is among the most contested areas of world history, so how did you navigate the process of writing this book in a balanced way, fending off potential accusations of bias – from all sides? First, you have the manuscript read by experts on both sides, who will hopefully advise you if you’ve got something wrong. But it’s also a matter of respect. When writing any book, if I recognise a preconception I have, I try to wipe it out and start looking at the evidence both ways. The tragedy of the Holy City and the Holy Land is that, historically, this was always an incredibly cosmopolitan area – a multi-ethnic, multi-faith patchwork that developed across thousands of years. So it’s deeply depressing to chronicle the increasingly binary nature of what’s happening today: the way in which the other ethnic groups have been forgotten in this story, which has been reduced to this terrible battle between Israelis and Palestinians, each with their own version of history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-1483142338-97e7eab-e1732102463186.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The arched entrance into Jerusalem's Old City. Benjamin Disraeli claimed that the history of the city is the history of the world (Photo by Kirk Fisher/Getty Images)" title="The arched entrance into Jerusalem's Old City. Benjamin Disraeli claimed that the history of the city is the history of the world (Photo by Kirk Fisher/Getty Images)" /> So I’ve read everything I can on all dimensions of these subjects. I’ve aimed to ensure that all narratives are respected and, wherever possible, I’ve set out to get as close as possible to what really happened – even if it offends both sides. And hopefully this book will offend both sides. As I say, I don’t underestimate how difficult it is to satisfy everybody. The increasing ferocity of the conflict in our times also makes it harder and harder to tell this history – but this is a very serious effort to do so. While writing this book, I had a piece of paper next to me on the desk – a story about the first British governor of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs. When he arrived in Jerusalem [as military governor] in 1917, he was initially quite popular – with Arabs, Christians, Jews, Muslims, everyone – but within a few months he was hated by all sides. Read more | How Britain stirred the cauldron of conflict in Palestine So he went back to London to see the prime minister, David Lloyd George, and said: “I just have to resign.” And the PM replied: “Well, you’ve got to carry on with your job – but as soon as any one side stops hating you, I’ll sack you.” That story, I think, sums up the challenge of writing a history of Jerusalem. In the new section, you write: “If this book has any mission, I passionately hope that it might encourage each side to recognise the ancient heritage of the other.” Can you expand on what you mean by this? If you look at a social-media site such as X [formerly Twitter], you’re constantly reading posts written from ultra-nationalist Israeli or ultra-nationalist Palestinian viewpoints, denying the history of the other in Jerusalem and in the wider Holy Land. There are also many pro-Israeli histories that minimise the real story of the Islamic presence, and many pro-Palestinian histories that make all sorts of bizarre claims about ancient history and the very existence of the first and second Jewish Temples. Amid all this, I’m trying to get as close as possible to what really happened. And at the very heart of the story is the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif, around which the competition of different faiths, cultures and civilisations is incredibly complex and intense. This site has been home to such a range of different places of worship – and provides just one example of the need to get a very complex story absolutely correct. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/JX6Y84-2-a7fa55f-e1732102531485.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 14th-century illustration of Frederick II meeting Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil. Though the encounter never occurred, the two sides did peacefully agree to divide Jerusalem between the religions in 1229 (Photo by Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A 14th-century illustration of Frederick II meeting Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil. Though the encounter never occurred, the two sides did peacefully agree to divide Jerusalem between the religions in 1229 (Photo by Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> You asked at the start of our conversation about what I set out to do with this new version. Well, of course, missing from the 2011 edition were all of the characters from the past 50 years that we now think of as being massively important: [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat, [Israeli general and prime minister] Ariel Sharon, [Syrian president] Bashar Assad, [current Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and Saddam Hussein, right up to Joe Biden. As well as bringing the story up to date, I also wanted to set the Holy City and the Holy Land into the context of the wider region – because it’s impossible to understand the creation of the modern Middle East without understanding the region. All of its modern states were created at the same time, essentially by the colonial powers, and most had never existed before. Does setting this recent history into a longer narrative sweep reveal any continuities or echoes? An episode that I recount in the earlier section of the book is the peace deal between Ayyubid Sultan al-Kāmil and Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Jerusalem, who in 1229 agreed to divide the city between the religions. It’s one of several examples from across the centuries that I think can provide inspiration to us today – showing that these kinds of things have been attempted in different eras. Your recent conversation on X with fellow historian William Dalrymple, in which you disagreed on an aspect of Middle Eastern history, was praised for remaining cordial. How unusual is that kind of civil online discourse when discussing complex historical subjects? It’s very unusual – but, of course, the internet is the worst forum on which to discuss the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Social media is the very last place where peace will ever be negotiated, because social media – and its algorithms specifically – are created to enrage and provoke, and to funnel people into echo chambers and concrete, fortified positions. So it’s almost impossible to understand a complex historical subject such as the Middle East and its nuances on that kind of digital platform. William and I have known each other for almost 40 years, and decided there was no point in falling out now – because so many people have fallen out over this subject. The only way it’s going to work is if people learn about each other and respect their narratives. That’s the entire mission of the book. We’re trying to set a small example of how being civil to one another, criticising each other in a polite way, can be done. Do you think this increased division and intensification means historians increasingly find themselves on the front line? I do think many of us feel like we’re involved in some kind of battle. I also write about Russian history, and my history of the world [2022’s The World: A Family History] touched on empire and slavery – subjects that have become very fraught in recent years. Indeed, I think the two books are complementary. Benjamin Disraeli famously said that the history of Jerusalem is the history of the world, and while that’s not quite true – eastern and southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa don’t play any role in the history of Jerusalem, for instance – they overlap. Read more | Historians debate: how do intractable conflicts come to an end? Of course, when you look to the past, you realise history has always mattered. That’s why figures such as Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong took history so seriously, and wrote books attempting to supervise which stories are told. One of the great influences on my writing is the [14th and 15th-century] north African Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun. His brother, also a historian, was assassinated by a fellow historian. And if you look to China, its great [second and first-century BC] historian Sima Qian was arrested by the emperor for criticising his rule. Offered the choice of execution or castration, Sima Qian chose the latter – so he could finish his book. These stories show us that the writing of history has always been fraught. We think today’s battles over history are unique, but it has been always thus. Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian, author and broadcaster. His latest books is an updated edition of Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024) This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine