HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-31T15:08:40.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: From Joan of Arc to Brigitte Bardot: meet the trailblazing women who shaped French history
items: He was one of England's greatest astronomers – so why has no one heard of him?
items: "Let the sky rain potatoes!": the hidden meanings behind Shakespeare's food obsession
items: Churchill vs Stalin: did this one speech cause the Cold War?
items: The relentless rise of the mafia: a grisly tale of extortion, execution and Don Corleone
items: "We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
items: 12 modern trends with surprisingly ancient roots
items: "It wasn't very open about its queer connections": the hidden history of the National Trust
items: Inside Britain's first refugee camp: a 300-year history of immigration
items: I’ve just been to Europe’s weirdest theme park – and came face to face with Josef Stalin

From Joan of Arc to Brigitte Bardot: meet the trailblazing women who shaped French history
type: item
date: 2026-04-06T14:30:08.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Joan of Arc
description: Katherine Pangonis speaks to Charlotte Vosper about the extraordinary women often excluded from France’s national story – and what their lives reveal about the country
encoded: Charlotte Vosper: In your book, you tell the history of France through the lives of 21 women. How did you choose who to include? Katherine Pangonis: I had this idea to revisit French history by looking at women who were not necessarily the most famous, but through whose lives you could explore pivotal moments of change in French history. I wanted to pick women whose experiences encapsulated or shed new light on the events that we think we know well, but usually through male-centric lenses. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that the women who played roles in great moments of change in French history weren’t just footnotes or exceptions, but that their lives actively shaped politics, culture, religion and the French identity over centuries. By following their lives, I hope I can help the reader to see the history of France a bit differently. That was my key mission when selecting the women for the book. You suggest women have been systematically excluded from the national narrative of French history. Can you expand on this? I think it’s a combination of both deliberate and inadvertent exclusion from the French national narrative. Really, this links to a bigger question about the representation of women in history. In the written historical record, the lack of female representation comes down to the basic fact that throughout most of history the majority of the population were illiterate, and secondly, that the small number of the population that were educated in reading and writing, tended to be male. Today, while women aren’t totally erased from the French historical narrative, there is a lack of information about them. This book started with my long walks in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, where there are 20 statues of the queens and illustrious women of France. We see these women’s faces and their historical costumes, but none of the statues have any information about women’s lives attached to them. This is often the case in museums, too. One of my favourit…

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He was one of England's greatest astronomers – so why has no one heard of him?
type: item
date: 2026-03-31T11:00:06.000Z
creator: York Membery
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Space
description: Children's author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce chooses Jeremiah Horrocks (1618–41) as his history hero
encoded: When did you first hear about Jeremiah Horrocks? As a child, I saw him and his telescope on the stained-glass windows at St Michael’s Church in Much Hoole, Lancashire. The windows, depicting his groundbreaking observation of the transit of Venus in 1639, were such an unexpected sight that I never forgot them. What kind of man was he? Born into an ordinary Lancastrian family, he lived in a small, tight-knit Puritan community. He was later a sizar at Cambridge University, where he had to chop wood and wait on the other students. He was fascinated by astronomy and the question of time from an early age – partly because his father was a watchmaker – and it became his life’s passion. Read more | Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time What made him a hero? Unlike most great astronomers in history – such as Kepler, who worked for the Holy Roman Emperor – Horrocks was of modest means. He bought a telescope for two shillings and sixpence, and just had a strong sense in his bones of the rhythm of the moon and the tides – perhaps because he’d lived alongside the Mersey, with its huge tidal range. He paid great attention to the natural world around him, partly due to a profound religious conviction: he thought there was purpose in looking at the stars. When Newton spoke about standing on the shoulders of giants, one of the people he was talking about was Horrocks. What was Horrocks’ finest hour? He didn’t have a finest hour – but he did have one of the finest 15 minutes in history. On the day of the transit of Venus, there was thick cloud. It was also a Sunday so, being a Puritan, he was busy. But he set up his telescope all the same. A little after three o’clock, the sky cleared for a short while and he watched Venus move across the face of the sun. He wrote an important treatise on the transit, Venus in sole visa. The airport in Liverpool, which is just around the corner from where he lived, is named after John Lennon – but…

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"Let the sky rain potatoes!": the hidden meanings behind Shakespeare's food obsession
type: item
date: 2026-03-25T15:30:41.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
subject: Historical people
subject: Poetry
subject: Tudor life
description: Shakespeare and his peers served up hearty helpings of diverse dishes and ingredients – many of them spiced with forgotten meanings. Sam Bilton reveals how food allusions illustrate key themes of everyday life
encoded: “There shall be no more cakes and ale” Puritan hypocrisy Shakespeare’s works are peppered with countless food references: pies, cakes, capons and a great deal of sherry, for starters. Some are set-dressing details, but many were allusions that would have been obvious to theatregoers of the day – references to dietary theory, political ideas and cultural mores. Food was important to all – something to which everyone could relate, irrespective of social standing or level of literacy. Take the moment in Act 2, Scene 3 of Twelfth Night when the fun-loving Sir Toby Belch asks Olivia’s Puritan steward, Malvolio: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-171071495webready-c1637ad-e1774448528234.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A figure dressed in theatrical, jester‑style attire poses against a sepia, textured backdrop. They wear a tall hat with a pom‑pom, a large ruffled collar, and a voluminous dark cloak. One hand holds a slender staff; the other holds a small object topped with a circular shape" title="Malvolio in Twelfth Night. This pompous Puritan is ridiculed for censuring ‘ales’ (festive social gatherings) (Image by Getty Images)" /> In Shakespeare’s day, the word ‘ale’ referred not only to a drink but also to social gatherings celebrating everything from religious holidays (for example, Whitsun-ales) to weddings – hence the word ‘bridal’, from ‘bride-ale’. In this period, cake was more akin to brioche, and contained expensive ingredients such as sugar, spices and exotic dried fruit – definitely a luxury. Cakes and ale parties were occasional treats for most – and strictly off-limits to Puritans. So, in this scene, Sir Toby is ridiculing Malvolio’s prim and proper attitude, calling him a party pooper. In his play Bartholomew Fair (1614), Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson also highlights the hypocrisy of religious zealots. The Purit…

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Churchill vs Stalin: did this one speech cause the Cold War?
type: item
date: 2026-03-20T15:30:35.000Z
subject: Cold War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British prime ministers
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: It’s 80 years since the war victor delivered his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, sounding the alarm for a perilous new age. The speech, given as tensions with Stalin soared, is among the most famous in modern history. Yet, asks Richard Toye, has it been misunderstood?
encoded: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” It was the soundbite of the century – or at least of the Cold War. Uttered by a former prime minister in a speech on 5 March 1946 at a small college in Missouri, its intended audience was far larger than the scholars and public figures assembled in the institution’s gymnasium. The fact that the ex-PM in question was war victor Winston Churchill – and that sitting on stage alongside him was US president Harry S Truman – helped turn this lecture into a world-shaking historical event. Churchill made a lot of speeches in his long political career. Few of them, however, had the same resounding impact as this warning about the Soviet threat. A set of unique circumstances lent his oration its unusual power – and endowed it with the capacity to shape the language of east-west conflict for decades to come. The Iron Curtain speech was delivered at a time of acute – and escalating – tensions between the Soviet Union and western powers. It’s often been described as the moment that the starting gun was fired on the Cold War. It’s indisputably among the most momentous pieces of oratory of the postwar period. And yet, for all that, it’s clouded in misunderstanding. Much of that misapprehension stems from the fact that the speech had surprisingly long roots – roots stretching all the way back to Anglo-Russian imperial conflicts in the late 19th century. When Churchill rose to his feet and addressed his audience at Fulton, he was 71 years old. He was, as he declared himself, a child of the Victorian age. The legacy of the so-called ‘Great Game’ – strategic competition between Britain and Russia in central Asia – was a factor throughout his political career. Even as a schoolboy, he wrote an essay in which he fantasised about a British invasion of Russia and gloated of “the superiority of John Bull over the Russian bear”. Strangling Bolshevism Yet Churchill’s attitude to Russia…

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The relentless rise of the mafia: a grisly tale of extortion, execution and Don Corleone
type: item
date: 2026-03-16T15:30:47.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Murder
description: The 20th century was a golden age for organised crime groups. Ryan Gingeras reveals how gangs from the Sicilian Mafia to Mexico’s cartels capitalised on political chaos, economic upheaval and mass migration to spread their tentacles around the world
encoded: In the early 1860s Sicily was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy. Soon after, visitors to the island discovered what they believed was a criminal fraternity at work in Palermo and its environs. That fraternity – the ‘Mafia’ – possessed secret rites and bylaws that governed its members. Chief among their rules was the vow of silence, omertà, when it came to their interactions with the police. Many assumed this ‘honoured society’ was born out of the prisons of Palermo, a place where hardened criminals mixed with members of secret revolutionary organisations. Before 1900, Mafiosi distinguished themselves by a clear pattern of criminal behaviour. Brigand gangs who robbed travellers on the roads were bound to the Mafia. Large landowners and government officials abetted the murders, thefts and acts of extortion mafiosi committed. Yet there were aspects of what Mafia was that remained difficult to pin down. Mafiosi, Palermo’s mayor told one public enquiry, could be “anyone who has self-respect and has a certain exaggerated pride, and the inclination to not be overwhelmed but to overwhelm others, the will to appear courageous, to be ready to fight, and so on”. For people in the 19th century, what made Sicily’s Mafia significant was the threat it posed to the government in Rome. Mafiosi appeared to rule the island from the shadows. The violence associated with them was used to intimidate citizens and to demonstrate its power to the Italian capital. In the global context, the Sicilian Mafia seemed to be a part of a pattern. Other secret organisations were challenging states and empires in the hopes of winning self-rule or overthrowing governments. By the start of the 20th century, commentators outside of Italy began characterising nationalist guerrillas, anarchists and other revolutionaries as ‘mafias’ in their own right. The first generations Colloquially speaking, the word ‘mafia’ is often used as shorthand for groups involved in organised crime. But not every gang enjo…

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"We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
type: item
date: 2026-03-13T15:54:08.000Z
creator: Dr Seán Lang
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical people
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Words have the power to alter the course of history. They can harden the resolve of an entire nation or people, encapsulate the ideals of a movement, and evoke joy – or provoke anger – long after they have been said. Here, Dr Seán Lang explores 14 of the most influential quotes of the past 100 years
encoded: <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/RooseveltGettyImages-464783507-622899f-e1773405930967.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Franklin D. Roosevelt sits at a desk in an official setting, with papers, a microphone, glasses, and an ashtray arranged in front of him, heavy curtains framing the background." title="President Franklin D Roosevelt prepares for his inaugural speech, 1933. The former New York governor had won the presidency based on his promised ‘New Deal’, which lasted until the Second World War (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933 The United States lay devastated by the Great Depression, an economic collapse without precedent that destroyed the country’s global image as a land of opportunity and reduced millions of Americans to poverty and destitution. The governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had run for and won the presidency on the promise of a massive recovery programme, dubbed the ‘New Deal’, but he knew he could do nothing unless the American people first regained their self-belief. In his inaugural address on 4 March 1933, Roosevelt reassured them that they had nothing to fear, except fear itself – “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The New Deal lasted throughout the 1930s until World War II set the country back towards full employment. Through the programme of reforms, regulations and projects, Roosevelt understood the power of words. He explained policies simply and clearly to radio listeners in his ‘fireside chats’, reassuring Americans that they had what it would take to improve their own lives and that the government would help. Roosevelt was elected an unprecedented four times, but it was that first inaugural message that set the tone for his time in office and helped give back the US its self-belief. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production…

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12 modern trends with surprisingly ancient roots
type: item
date: 2026-03-08T15:30:09.000Z
creator: Hilary Mitchell
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: From dance competitions to viral memes, there are some features of everyday life that feel firmly rooted in the 21st century. However, there are plenty of fads and crazes that are much older than you think, as Hilary Mitchell reveals
encoded: 1. Cooking competitions Long before MasterChef, cooks in medieval Iraq also competed for culinary glory. In the 10th century, a collection of recipes from eighth and ninth-century Baghdad were compiled into a recipe book called Kitāb al-ṭabīkh (‘The Book of Dishes’) by Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq. As well as recipes, the book also includes fascinating accounts of what could be described as very early cookery competitions. They weren’t long-running, weekly tournaments like those we see on TV, but they were still prestigious culinary events, usually staged in elite households, which allowed rival chefs to showcase their talents. In one section that sounds very much like a challenge from The Great British Bake Off, al-Warrāq describes banquets where different chefs’ versions of the same dish were compared and judged by their patrons. There’s also another anecdote (recounted in later culinary literature) about the caliph al-Ma’mūn challenging his cooks to produce dishes using unexpected ingredients – like an early version of Ready Steady Cook. 2. Online gossip These days, gossip pages like Deuxmoi – a popular, mostly anonymous Instagram account that shares insider info about well-known people – are a staple of social media sites. However, it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. People in ancient Mesopotamia were gossiping about the elite and writing down the most salacious rumours about them. Cuneiform tablets written around 1800–1760 BC record a Mesopotamian mayor’s shocking affair with a married woman. An official spills the tea, writing to the king to say that the mayor of the city has been “lying with another man’s wife”, and explaining that the citizens are all outraged; everyone in the city is talking about the scandal. The tablet is part of a group of Old Babylonian cuneiform tablets found at ancient Mari – modern Tell Hariri – in Syria, the majority of which take the form of messages sent to King Zimri-Lim about various goings-on in his country. It’s not quite an Instagra…

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"It wasn't very open about its queer connections": the hidden history of the National Trust
type: item
date: 2026-03-06T15:30:11.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Michael Hall speaks to Charlotte Vosper about the long-hidden stories of LGBTQ people whose lives were connected to the properties owned by the National Trust
encoded: Charlotte Vosper: In A Queer Inheritance, you explore histories of sexual difference connected to the National Trust. What drew you to those historical figures and their stories? Michael Hall: That goes back a long way. For quite a few years I worked for Country Life magazine, and in that role I wrote articles about country houses. I actually began with one of those I mention in my book: Packwood House in Warwickshire. It was acquired in 1904 by an industrialist for his son, Graham Baron Ash, who spent years renovating and transforming the property. It struck me that he never got married – and the idea that a bachelor might do up a house and then give it to the National Trust to look after seemed quite intriguing. I didn’t really spot that it was part of a pattern until I wrote a similar article on Anglesey Abbey. That’s when I realised that there was a story about the National Trust that hadn’t really been told before. It’s important to mention that I’ve never worked for the Trust, and A Queer Inheritance isn’t an official National Trust book in any way. I don’t speak on the Trust’s behalf – and indeed they may very well disagree with a lot of what I say. The National Trust was founded in 1895, when homosexual acts of ‘gross indecency’ were still illegal in Britain – yet in your book you suggest that the Trust had queer connections from its very beginnings. Can you expand on this? That’s actually quite a complicated question. The origins of the National Trust were rooted in an anxiety about London’s urban poor and how they could be morally improved. Its founders thought that if the urban poor could be given access to architectural and natural beauty, this would do away with what they saw as their worrying vices – of which homosexuality was a rather prominent example. Yet several people on the Trust’s original council and executive committee were in fact queer. They included the 5th Earl of Rosebery, who was worried that he might be named in the Oscar Wilde trials o…

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Inside Britain's first refugee camp: a 300-year history of immigration
type: item
date: 2026-03-02T15:30:01.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: "This was the site for what may have been Britain’s first refugee camp", writes Kavita Puri
encoded: Blackheath in south-east London has a rich history. It was a rallying point for both the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and the Kentish rebellion of 1450. Monarchs through the ages have passed through. But what is less known is that it was also the site for what may have been Britain’s first refugee camp. In 1709, army tents were temporarily erected in Blackheath to give shelter to some of the estimated 13,000 German refugees who had arrived in Britain from the Palatinate, which is the modern-day Rhineland. There were also camps in Camberwell, Clerkenwell and Greenwich. Initially, the refugees were supported with charitable donations. Many arriving were poor and they spoke a different language, but they were viewed as Protestants fleeing persecution from oppressive Catholic regimes. English parishes raised around £20,000 to support the Palatine refugees. The Rhineland had suffered significantly during years of warfare. Most recently, it had been invaded by King Louis XIV of France in 1707. However, when the Palatine arrivals came to England, there was not a particular ongoing dispute making them flee. As part of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, the state was tolerant of Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. The ruling ‘Elector’ was Catholic, yet both Catholics and Protestants used the most important church in the city of Heidelberg, the Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), as a place of worship. Read more | Your guide to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 When the British government took a census of the people arriving from Germany, the authorities realised that about a third were Catholic. The reasons they were coming, it turned out, were complex. Many of the refugees had indeed been affected by religious persecution. But others were travelling in search of economic opportunities. They were escaping bad harvests, high food prices, poor prospects. And there were those who wanted to journey on, to America. Britain in 1709 was also facing its own economic difficulties. …

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I’ve just been to Europe’s weirdest theme park – and came face to face with Josef Stalin
type: item
date: 2026-03-01T15:30:45.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Communism
subject: Historical people
subject: Second World War battles
description: There aren’t many theme parks that place statues of Soviet leaders next to Snow White and her seven dwarfs, but you’ll find one in southern Lithuania. Keith Lowe takes us on a tour of one of Europe’s most bizarre – and controversial – tourist attractions
encoded: I am standing in a clearing in a Lithuanian forest, surrounded by guard towers and electrified fences. To all intents and purposes, it looks like I’m in a Soviet prison camp. Up above me a loudspeaker barks out orders in Russian. I hurry along a corridor of barbed wire. Up ahead, peeping ominously through the trees, I can see the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. But all is not as it seems. It doesn’t take long to realise that the loudspeaker is playing some sort of recording on a loop. The guards in the towers are not real either, but poorly disguised mannequins in theatre costume. And who are they guarding? Beneath them, in the barbed wire enclosure, is a row of Communist statues and half a dozen grazing llamas. Further along there are emus, cockatoos, a depressed-looking brown bear, and some statues of mass murderers. As for the gun, when I reach it, I discover that the only thing it is guarding is a children’s playground. Rifles and roundabouts, cockatoos and cattle-trucks, Lenin and llamas: welcome to Grūtas Park, Europe’s weirdest open-air museum. Its combination of terror and kitsch is so controversial that it almost got shut down. I first came here in 2018 as part of my research for a study of Second World War monuments. But I felt compelled to return, because I still can’t quite believe that this place actually exists. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1DSC1437-Lenin-Llamas-05-18c368a-e1772191107175.jpg" width="1506" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a white llama grazing on the grass alongside a tall stone marble statue of a bust of man. In the background is a lake, several trees and a brown llama laying on the ground" title="A llama grazes next to a bust of Vladimir Lenin at Grūtas Park, Lithuania. The unconventional visitor attraction, opened in 2001, is filled with relics of the former Soviet Union (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> A brutal past Grūtas Park has its roots in Lithuania’s very troubled history. Like s…

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