HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-02-27T10:15:19.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Is the Bayeux Tapestry in "mortal danger"? I think that's the wrong question to ask
items: "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history
items: Virtual museum and monument tours: how to explore the wonders of history from your home
items: Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: 10 things we learned
items: Wonders of the Middle Ages
items: In pictures: The Terracotta Warriors
items: No Man’s Land: Women photographers in the First World War
items: In pictures: shoes through history

Is the Bayeux Tapestry in "mortal danger"? I think that's the wrong question to ask
type: item
date: 2026-02-26T17:24:25.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
subject: Historical events
subject: Trends-News
description: Rather than focusing on the risk to the Bayeux Tapestry in its forthcoming loan to the British Museum, David Musgrove argues that we should be talking about how the massive media interest in the exhibition will surely be a huge reward for the venerable embroidery – and guarantee its long-term survival
encoded: It’s not often that a medieval embroidery gets broadcast across the huge electronic billboards at Piccadilly Circus. But that’s what happened on the morning of 26 February, as the British Museum made its first big splash to announce details of its forthcoming blockbuster Bayeux Tapestry exhibition (tickets go on sale 1 July). I was there to enjoy the experience, and it was a delight to see an artefact that I’ve spent a long time thinking about getting the full film-star treatment (I’m co-author of The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry). The exhibition is not without controversy. Questions have been raised by French campaigners and one celebrated English artist (David Hockney) on how fit the Bayeux Tapestry is to travel, and whether it’s right to subject this venerable artefact to the rigours of a trip from Normandy to London. These are reasonable concerns, but they miss the point. Yes, there is risk, but what about the reward? What does the Tapestry gain from being transported and displayed in such a high-profile way? I’d argue that, rather than putting the Tapestry at mortal danger of destruction, the loan guarantees its long-term survival and will be a boon for the tourist business in Bayeux to boot. What other medieval artwork or contemporary documentary source could hope to receive the wall-to-wall media exposure that the Tapestry is currently receiving? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/20260226090016-92f3207-rotated-e1772119755759.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A busy city street with pedestrians and vehicles passes beneath a large digital billboard mounted on the side of a modern building. The billboard displays an advertisement for the British Museum, featuring a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, with figures in period clothing and the words “REX,” “HAROLD,” and “The British Museum – From Egypt to…”. Surrounding buildings include shops with street‑level storefronts, and a white truck and van are visible in the foregr…

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"Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history
type: item
date: 2025-07-30T08:00:36.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
description: Kavita Puri on a groundbreaking museum initiative by the V&A
encoded: Museums are magical places. They are the keepers of so many histories and stories from near and far. However, there’s a large part of every museum that most people never see. Behind the scenes lies another world: one of conservation, upkeep, research and the moving around of collections, perhaps for an exhibition or to loan to another museum. But what if you could walk around those areas in which objects are stored and restored? What if you could hold the object that you wanted to study or observe up close? That’s now possible in the new V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. This huge space spanning four levels is home to some 250,000 objects and 350,000 books from the museum’s collection. Its 1,000 archives document a diverse array of subjects, including the Glastonbury Festival and the world of theatre and performance. Read more | Michael Wood on the future of the Parthenon Sculptures Dotted throughout the building are 100 mini-displays on topics ranging from resistance movements to the artistry of east London, charting how and why items are collected and preserved, and outlining the latest scholarship on their stories. They also explore the ways in which archives and collections are part of creative expression and understanding, and how we describe and contextualise the past. The workings of museum practice are made transparent here. As a trustee of the V&A, I have been watching this remarkable and ambitious project unfold across recent years. I’ve admired the extraordinary care taken in all aspects of the process, from the moving and installation of objects to consideration of how the visitor experience can be enhanced. The first object moved into the V&A East Storehouse was a very large installation. It’s a significant example of brutalism: a two-storey section of a maisonette from Robin Hood Gardens. This housing estate in Poplar, east London, was completed in 1972 and demolished from 2017 as part of the redevelopment o…

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Virtual museum and monument tours: how to explore the wonders of history from your home
type: item
date: 2020-04-21T13:29:16.000Z
subject: Magazine
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
description: Many museums have opened up their doors to the wonders of virtual reality, letting you ‘walk around’ and admire exhibitions from the comfort of your own home. Emma Slattery Williams of BBC History Revealed shares just a few of the museums, artefacts and historical spaces that you can explore from afar…
encoded: The Vatican Where? Vatican City What? A virtual reality tour You don’t need to be in Rome to visit the smallest sovereign state in the world. The Vatican has created a series of virtual tours that let you loose inside the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church – the home of the Pope and one of the most important churches in Christianity, St Peter’s Basilica.The Vatican City traces its history back to the fourth century, when a church was built over the tomb of St Peter – one of Jesus’s 12 apostles and widely regarded as the founder of the Catholic Church. In the 16th century, a new church replaced the 1,200-year-old one, and it’s still standing today. This is the current St Peter’s Basilica – and the tomb of St Peter is believed to be directly under the high altar. The basilica is a renowned piece of Renaissance architecture. A range of 360° virtual tours will transport you around some of the grand rooms and chapels within the Vatican, allowing you to admire the exquisite paintings and sculptures of one of the largest art collections in the world. You can also take a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel; one of the highlights of a trip to the Vatican, the chapel is perhaps most famous for its impressive ceiling mural, painted by Michelangelo. It’s also where the papal conclave (the election of a new pope) typically takes place. The Vatican boasts many museums within its complexes, too, and it has opened up a number of these collections to virtual visitors. One that you can peruse through your phone is the Pio Clementino Museum. Named after the two popes who supervised its creation, Clement XIV and Pius VI, it houses ancient Greek and Roman sculptures as well as the finely-carved sarcophagus of St Helena – the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was famously the first Roman ruler to adopt the Christian faith. Petra Where? Petra, Jordan What? A virtual reality trek and tour The ancient city of Petra in Jordan is one of the world’s most valuable archaeologica…

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Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: 10 things we learned
type: item
date: 2018-12-20T16:45:19.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
description: To coincide with the British Library’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition – a feast of Anglo-Saxon art and treasures – an international conference was held earlier this month to showcase the very latest research on manuscripts from the period. Dr Colleen Curran shares 10 revelations, from the material used to create the huge Codex Amiatinus Bible to the surprisingly close ties between Anglo-Saxon England and the continent…
encoded: It's one of the finest exhibits at the British Library. Aimed at both specialists and non-specialists, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms – curated by Clare Breay alongside Jo Story and Alison Hudson – takes viewers on a familiar historical journey that includes memorable kings like Alfred and Edgar, and features locations with recognisable names. Alongside all this, the exhibition presents the period's manuscript and book culture to provide a narrative that explores the extensive networks of influence at home and abroad that gave rise – and fall – to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Read more: "An absolute gem": Anglo-Saxons at the British Library What did the Anglo-Saxons ever do for us? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/10/Alfred-Jewel-9209687.jpg" width="799" height="799" alt="The ninth-century Alfred Jewel, adorned with the inscription: "Alfred ordered me to be made". This masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon art is thought to have been an aestel, a pointer used to follow text. (Picture by Alamy)" title="The ninth-century Alfred Jewel, adorned with the inscription: "Alfred ordered me to be made". This masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon art is thought to have been an aestel, a pointer used to follow text. (Picture by Alamy)" /> To explore the historical, literary, art historical, and cross-cultural contexts that gave rise to these Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the exhibition organisers arranged a two-day conference – Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms – in mid-December, followed by a one-day Early Career Researchers symposium, to highlight the current scholarship on some of the manuscripts present in the exhibit. Here’s some of what we learned… The Codex Amiatinus was written on predominantly parchment made from goats, not calves For decades, scholars believed that the Codex Amiatinus – one of three huge Latin bibles produced at the twin monasteries of Wearmouth-Jarrow in the north-east of England in the early eighth century – was written on calf skin, hence wh…

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Wonders of the Middle Ages
type: item
date: 2018-12-18T09:28:09.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
description: Kathleen Doyle and Tuija Ainonen discuss a project that has made hundreds of medieval manuscripts available to view online
encoded: Kathleen Doyle and Tuija Ainonen discuss a major Anglo-French project that has made hundreds of medieval manuscripts available for the public to view online.

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In pictures: The Terracotta Warriors
type: item
date: 2018-02-16T17:00:20.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Exhibitions
description: An exhibition featuring China’s famous Terracotta Warriors has gone on display in the UK. Here, we take a closer look at some of the artefacts on show...
encoded: A new exhibition featuring artefacts from one of the world’s greatest archaeological excavations has gone on display at Liverpool’s World Museum. China’s First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors opened to the public earlier this week, showcasing a group of 10 Terracotta Warriors plus material from museums and institutes from across Shaanxi Province, China. Created to guard the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of a united China, the spectacular warriors offer an insight into life in the country more than 2,000 years ago. The vast army was discovered by chance in 1974, and consists of 8,000 life-sized pottery figures, around 700 terracotta horses and 130 terracotta chariots. China’s First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors is open at Liverpool’s World Museum from 9 February until 28 October 2018

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No Man’s Land: Women photographers in the First World War
type: item
date: 2017-11-09T10:25:36.000Z
subject: First World War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
subject: Photography
description: A new exhibition exploring female perspectives on the First World War has opened at Impressions Gallery in Bradford, featuring images taken by women working on the frontline, as well as contemporary artists directly inspired by the conflict. We talked to Dr Pippa Oldfield, curator of the exhibition, to find out more… Please note this article contains images of a sensitive nature
encoded: Irene ‘Winkie’ Gartside-Spaight in no man’s land. Photograph by Mairi Chisholm, c1916. (The National Library of Scotland) Q. What was the inspiration for the exhibition? A. We wanted to commemorate the centenary of the First World War at Impressions Gallery, but take a different angle. We decided to look at women’s experiences of the First World War through their photography. There has been quite a lot of focus recently on women’s roles in the first world war, but their contribution to war photography seems to have been ignored in favour of photos made by men. As a curator, what I was interested in doing was finding out what kind of pictures women took and how their use of photography would express their own experiences and perspective. That was the question that kicked off the project. Q. What do these photographs tell us about women’s experiences? A. Women couldn’t join the armed forces as soldiers during the First World War, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get involved in other ways. While many women worked on the home front, others volunteered for overseas positions. The women in our exhibition – Mairi Chisholm, Florence Farmborough and Olive Edis – were all working overseas during the war and taking photographs coming from different angles. Mairi Chisolm is a particularly interesting case study. She was this intrepid ambulance driver who volunteered to join the Flying Ambulance Corps when she was 18-years-old. She then went with her friend Elsie Knocker to set up a first aid post in Belgium just yards away from the trenches, and she used a snapshot camera to take photographs of the kind of things she was seeing and experiencing. Some of her images are horrific – particularly those depicting dead soldiers and no man’s land – but they also depict plenty of fun moments too. There are quite a few photographs that she took that show Elsie joking around with the Belgian soldiers. Her images show how people can make the best of difficult and traumatic circumstances…

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In pictures: shoes through history
type: item
date: 2015-05-01T09:14:38.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
description: Some 200 pairs of shoes go on show at the V&A, London, this June in an exhibition that considers the cultural significance and transformative capacity of footwear throughout history
encoded: ‘Parakeet’ shoes by Caroline Groves, 21st century © Photography by Dan Lowe French evening shoe of beaded silk and leather, Roger Vivier for Christian Dior, 1958-60 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Ancient Egyptian sandal, gilded and incised leather and papyrus, c30 BC–AD 300 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Red ballet shoes made for Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) in The Red Shoes, 1948 © Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of Northampton Museums and Art Gallery Wedding toe-knob paduka from India, silver and gold over wood, 1800s © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Gilded and marbled leather men's shoes, 1925 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Chopines, punched kid leather over carved pine, Venice, Italy, c1600s © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Shoes: Pleasure and Pain is on show at the V&A Museum, London, from 13 June–31 January 2016. For more information, and to book tickets, visit the museum website

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