HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-11-26T09:01:03.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
items: “If the culture wars ended, historians would be delighted”: the state of history in 2025
items: Week three quiz: education and school in Victorian Britain
items: Schools of hard knocks: Georgian and Victorian public schools
items: Reading, writing and retribution: inside Victorian prison schools
items: Class warfare: a day in the life of a Victorian schoolchild
items: Victorian schools: everything you wanted to know
items: Michael Wood on the rise of Britain's universities
items: War and pieces: 5 games from history that were about much more than fun
items: The violent history of student protest

Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
type: item
date: 2025-11-26T09:00:37.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Education
subject: Historical events
subject: Space
subject: The Restoration
description: From the moment it was founded 350 years ago, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich drove our understanding of astronomy, navigation and time. Louise Devoy explores eight milestones in the history of this pioneering scientific institution
encoded: The big bang moment 1675: Charles II sparks a star-gazing revolution In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britain, Charles II took a major step to ensure his realm’s position at the head of the pack. On 4 March 1675, the king signed a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as the first “astronomical observator”, tasked with “perfecting the art of navigation”. Flamsteed’s specific objective was to devise a method by which sailors could establish their longitude (east–west position) at sea – which involved measuring the positions of celestial bodies – and of knowing the time at a ship’s local position. And Flamsteed would get to carry out this vital research from the surroundings of the country’s first state-funded, purpose-built scientific institution: the Royal Observatory. It was urgent work, because England’s great rival, France, had stolen a march: Louis XIV had established an observatory in Paris nearly a decade earlier. Flamsteed was, in effect, playing catch-up. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T809MT-CMYKWeb-Ready-7606aa3.jpg" width="2663" height="1775" alt="an illustration showing a large crowd looking at several artefacts including a globe, a map, and a satellite dish" title="King Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1671. The creation of an observatory in the French capital had left England playing catch-up (Image by Alamy)" /> The size of the task facing the astronomer clearly wasn’t lost on Charles II, for the king appointed none other than the celebrated architect Christopher Wren to design the observatory. Wren’s chosen site was the hilltop ruins of Greenwich Castle – and it was here that the foundation stone was laid on 10 August 1675. With its lofty windows, royal portraits and accurate pendulum clocks, the octagonal ‘star chamber…

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“If the culture wars ended, historians would be delighted”: the state of history in 2025
type: item
date: 2025-04-23T08:00:20.000Z
creator: Matt Elton
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Education
description: The new president of the Royal Historical Society, Lucy Noakes, talks to Matt Elton about the issues facing history in Britain in 2025 – and why they will matter to the country in the years ahead.
encoded: Matt Elton: You became president of the Royal Historical Society (RHS) in November 2024 – at what, I think it’s fair to say, is an interesting moment for Britain’s relationship with its past. Before looking at some of the challenges you face, can you tell us a bit about what the RHS does? Lucy Noakes: We exist to support historians and to promote history as a subject and as a wider topic of interest among the public. We run public events throughout the year – lectures, talks and discussions – that can be joined in person and via our website. And we have a range of different grants and awards that we hand out to history practitioners at all stages of their careers. But increasingly central to our work is advocating for historians and history. That’s something that the founders of the RHS in the mid-19th century could surely not have imagined. To do this, we work with a range of other bodies – for example, the Historical Association, which represents teachers and the teaching of history in schools and sixth-form colleges. When I spoke to your predecessor, Emma Griffin, in 2023, she identified university history funding and access to higher education in Britain as key areas of work for the RHS. Is that still the case, and how big is the problem in 2025? I’m sorry to say it has only got worse. Since I became president, we have started working with two departments facing significant cuts to their programmes and, potentially, to staffing. We’ve also been in touch, informally, with two other departments that have asked for our support in the face of threats of cutting down degree programmes. Last year, the RHS published The Value of History, a report on the state of history in British universities. It’s based on feedback from our members and fellows, rather than a quantitative survey of history in those institutions. But what it reveals is that, of the 66 departments from which people respond- ed to the survey, 39 had seen cuts in what they’d been able to offer since 2020.…

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Week three quiz: education and school in Victorian Britain
type: item
date: 2024-11-19T14:08:59.000Z
creator: Rachel Dinning
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Children
subject: Education
subject: Life in Victorian Britain
description: Test your knowledge on what school and education was like in Victorian Britain with our quiz...
encoded: Watch our video lecture with Ruth Goodman on what education and school was like in Victorian Britain – and test your knowledge below with our quiz! View Riddle on the source website

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Schools of hard knocks: Georgian and Victorian public schools
type: item
date: 2024-11-18T09:00:23.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Education
subject: Life in Victorian Britain
description: Public schools in the 18th and 19th centuries exposed pupils to rampant violence and a 'curriculum' that left them sorely unprepared for the demands of modern life, says David Turner
encoded: William Conybeare, the kindly headmaster who welcomed boys through the gates of the newly opened Liverpool Collegiate Institution in 1843, lived with a very physical reminder of the fact that Britain’s public schools needed reform. He monitored the establishment of the day-school, which provided a relatively humane education marked by a minimum of corporal punishment, through only one eye. The other had been lost in a dispute with fellow pupils at Westminster School, a place where, he remembered with some bitterness, Sundays had been marked by a total absence of productive activity. As a result, “we had nothing to do, and employed the idle time in reading novels or in quarrelling”. Sometimes, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this low-level organised violence turned into something more organised and ambitious. In 1797, for instance, the boys of Rugby School took staff prisoner at sword-point. The Riot Act was read by the local authorities and a force of soldiers, special constables and farmers armed with horsewhips mustered. Winchester’s Great Rebellion of 1818, meanwhile, ended soon after the warden, the overall head of the school, was held hostage in his rooms overnight by boys armed with axes. Read more | The school leaving age: what can we learn from history? Even when the schools didn’t erupt into outright violence, the education left much to be desired. It had declined since the early centuries of the public schools – starting with the foundation of Winchester College in 1382 – when it had generally been of a very high quality. Part of the problem was that there were so few teachers to educate the pupils. Teachers cost money – and, as headmasters could pocket much of the surplus revenue from running schools, they were anxious to keep costs down. A pupil at Eton College in the early 19th century later recalled that he was only called up to have his work assessed twice a term. This is not surprising, since the headmaster, John Keate, taught up to 19…

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Reading, writing and retribution: inside Victorian prison schools
type: item
date: 2024-11-18T09:00:18.000Z
creator: Rosalind Crone
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Education
subject: Life in Victorian Britain
subject: Victorian crime and punishment
description: Many Victorian gaols provided schooling for their inmates, decades before it was mandated in wider society. So what, asks Rosalind Crone, drove this great educational crusade?
encoded: On 26 February 1848, 19-year-old Thomas Sumpter appeared in the dock at Berkshire Assizes, accused – and quickly convicted – of stealing a sheep. Nothing unusual in that, given the times: livestock theft was hardly uncommon in the first half of the 19th century. What was more curious was the apparent motive behind Sumpter’s offence. Having been recently released from Reading Gaol, he committed the crime with the express intent of ensuring his prompt return to the prison where he had been memorising sections of the Bible. He’d been receiving lessons in reading, and he didn’t want to stop. Sumpter was one of three convicts who had been given early release from Reading Gaol in autumn 1845, following an unprecedented decision by the local authorities. Having been sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment, each had served six to eight months – and in that time had become poster boys for the success of a new regime at the prison. To aid rehabilitation, education was prioritised over labour: prisoners spent large amounts of time learning to read and write, as well as memorising passages from the Bible. Having each committed to memory the whole of the New Testament up to Ephesians, at the time of their release the three men were lauded as star pupils whose characters had been transformed. That ‘transformation’, though, proved short-lived. All three soon re-offended, including Sumpter. Word spread about both the system and the unfortunate relapses, and the prison became known as the Read-Read-Reading Gaol. This account is somewhat at odds with our idea of the Victorian prison as a place of ‘hard labour, hard board and hard fare’. Yet in the 1840s, when there was no universal elementary education and many working-class children were denied the opportunity to attend school, many prisons in England and Wales had schools in which inmates learned reading, writing and sometimes more besides. And despite the scandals sparked by those three ‘transformed’ inmates, prison schools were here…

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Class warfare: a day in the life of a Victorian schoolchild
type: item
date: 2024-11-18T09:00:05.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Children
subject: Education
subject: Life in Victorian Britain
description: Victorian schools could be ideological battlegrounds, where harassed teachers did their best against a backdrop of grinding poverty. Ellie Cawthorne and Susannah Wright study an era's education
encoded: The 4th of May 1899 was not a good day for the head-teacher of St Mark’s School in Leicester. Less than two weeks into her job, she recorded in her school logbook an incident that had begun with the caning of a boy for lying and disobedience. Revolting against his punishment, the boy had started “flinging himself about”, before kicking her and even threatening her with “a clasp knife open in his hand”. To make matters worse, the child’s mother had arrived at the school to castigate the head-teacher in “abusive and threatening language” before demanding that magistrates investigate the school’s conduct. While incidents like this led to lengthy logbook entries, most school days in Victorian Britain were not so dramatic. But daily life in the elementary school classroom was often a battleground between idealistic educationalists, governmental interlopers, struggling parents and hard-pressed teachers. Not to mention the children. Over the course of the 19th century, a patchwork of school systems operated across the country, and the experience of learning in one classroom could be very different from the next. Those who could afford the small fee might attend local parish or church schools. Another alternative, for those willing to embrace a more informal approach to education, were privately run ‘dame schools’ that operated out of local teachers’ homes. From 1833 onwards, child labourers were supposed to receive schooling from their employers under the Factory Act, while those found homeless or begging might be sent to tough industrial schools to learn a trade. Another option for those unable to fund their own education was schools established by charitable organisations. Most notable were the so-called ‘ragged schools’, formed in 1844 to offer free education to Britain’s poorest children. By the 1870s, there were around 350 such institutions across the country, which (in the words of Charles Dickens) “stretch[ed] out a hand” to those children “too ragged, wretched, fil…

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Victorian schools: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2024-11-17T07:00:08.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Education
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
subject: Life in Victorian Britain
description: Rosalind Crone answers your questions on education in 19th-century Britain – from dame schools to the dunce's hat
encoded: The 19th century witnessed a revolution in Britain's schools, with the rolling out of compulsory mass education, and thousands more children learning how to read and write. But how tough was the discipline? How widespread was truancy? And did teachers get any formal training? Speaking to Spencer Mizen, historian Rosalind Crone lifts the lid on Victorian schooling.

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Michael Wood on the rise of Britain's universities
type: item
date: 2024-09-12T08:41:03.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Education
description: "Amid the torrent of fake news, a critical mind is our greatest resource," writes historian Michael Wood
encoded: In my home town of Manchester, the university celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2024, with a host of events and talks including our annual Manchester Histories festival. It provided an opportunity to think about the story of the university itself. The idea of the university, as we understand it today, evolved in western Europe – in Bologna, Paris and Oxford. There were predecessors elsewhere in the world; the historian George Makdisi saw the Islamic university in 11th–12th century Spain as a direct inspiration. But, everywhere, higher education was developed to support power. Whether teaching in Latin, Arabic or Chinese, universities trained scholars, scribes and theologians to sustain the ideologies of the state. What we might call the democratic revolution in education in Britain began in the 16th century with the spread of the grammar school. Perhaps as many as 160 were opened in Elizabeth I’s reign alone, helping create what the historian Lawrence Stone thought the most literate society that had yet existed in history. In the civil wars of the 17th century, the young men in the parliamentary armies were book readers, and for the first time in history the printing press became part of an army’s baggage train. Though the English revolution failed, that impetus continued. In the 18th century, religious non-conformists, who had been at the heart of radicalism, were barred from university. But across Britain, in the many private academies (in places such as Kibworth in Leicestershire) curricula of amazing width were taught with mechanics, algebra, physics, anatomy and even modern history. Read more | The Georgian guide to university life Out of these movements, in the 19th century a different idea of the university arose for the first time in history. The impulse was essentially practical and democratic. The modern university arose in the industrial revolution as the hold of the ruling class on our intellectual and cultural life began to loosen. And Manchester was …

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War and pieces: 5 games from history that were about much more than fun
type: item
date: 2024-08-30T11:49:01.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Education
description: Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business
encoded: Games are among our most enduring cultural technologies. They persist, in part, because they’re a way for our brains to serve themselves pleasure for free. The Greek historian Herodotus, for instance, wrote about the Lydian people, who reportedly suffered an 18-year famine. He claimed they alternated between eating food one day and playing games the next – play, in other words, lessened the sting of hunger. But games aren’t just fun: they are also essential education. Animals play to practise for the serious demands of adulthood: kittens chase yarn to drill hunting skills, and young kangaroos rough-house to prepare to box their way up the social hierarchy as adults. Read more | Ancient board games: which ones did people play for fun in the past? With the invention of games, humans brought play into the realm of thought, because games exercise various mental functions. Games are especially crucial for developing social skills. Plato believed they were the foundation of civic education, arguing that children who learned to follow game rules would grow up to be law-abiding citizens. And Plato wasn’t alone: scholars across history have lauded games for a range of educational virtues. As a result, people often endowed games with cultural principles they hoped to transmit to future generations. Games are messages from the past, and can reveal the values and beliefs of the people who play them. Senet, ancient Egypt The ancient board game that served as a map for players to pass to the afterlife Senet – likely the ancestor of backgammon – is one of the world’s oldest known board games. It originated in ancient Egypt in around 3100 BC as mammoths still roamed Siberia’s Wrangel Island, hieroglyphic writing was just emerging, and camels were first being domesticated. Senet means ‘passing’, possibly referring to the game’s race-like mechanic: players vied to be the first to move all their pieces across the board by casting sticks or knuckle bones. In the earliest known record o…

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The violent history of student protest
type: item
date: 2024-05-14T13:55:49.000Z
creator: Matt Elton
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Education
description: From a medieval massacre sparked by a tavern brawl to the horrors of Tiananmen Square in June 1989, the history of student protesting is littered with instances of violent clashes. Matt Elton hears from historians Rana Mitter and Hannah Skoda about the lineage of protest through the centuries, considering the causes driving such groups to action and why they have sparked such ferocious responses…
encoded: Matt Elton: Without going into any of the present-day politics, which historical instances of student protest do you think are particularly revealing about its wider impact, and do you think such parallels are helpful? Hannah Skoda: I've been thinking about just how active students have been over many, many centuries. I'm a medievalist in Oxford, and in 1355 the city was the location of one of the period’s most famous student protests. It’s known as the St Scholastica's Day Massacre, because things did not end well for the students. It was a horrible episode in which some students claimed their drinks had been watered down by a tavern-keeper in an ale house on what’s now Cornmarket Street. These students were so angry that they whacked the tavern-keeper over the head with a beer mug. He punched them back, and then the whole thing escalated into a massive fight, with the townspeople bringing in extra people from the countryside to join in. On the podcast | History Behind the Headlines: student protests down the centuries The whole episode went on for several days, and the level of violence was horrific. According to some accounts, the townspeople scalped some of the students. It was really nasty. But what’s striking is that it started from a sense of self-interest from these students: they were concerned about protecting their privileges as students. Because when you unpack it a bit further, you find that it wasn’t just about the watered-down drink. The students were concerned about two related issues: the assize, which was who had control over the economic weights and measures used for commercial transactions in the city, and their jurisdictional privileges, which exempted students from the usual kinds of jurisdiction [meaning they were supposedly only subject to ecclesiastical courts, and restricted the ways in which they could be punished]. So the riot started because the students were keen to defend their own interests, and the townspeople were trying to defend t…

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