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: We often refer to countries as 'female' – so why has history excluded women from nation-building?
items: England’s forgotten medieval hero: how John, Duke of Bedford carried on Henry V's fight
items: The trials of Joan of Arc
items: Voltaire, Vanessa Bell and Joan of Arc: 3 things that happened On This Day 30 May
items: Where history happened: Joan of Arc

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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We often refer to countries as 'female' – so why has history excluded women from nation-building?
type: item
date: 2025-12-15T09:00:09.000Z
creator: Dr Janina Ramirez
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Joan of Arc
subject: Medieval life
description: Janina Ramirez speaks to Danny Bird about how women and their stories have been co-opted and curated by men attempting to forge nations across Europe
encoded: Danny Bird: What was the genesis of Legenda? Was there a moment when you knew you had to write this book? Janina Ramirez: From the start of my academic career, I learned from [Palestinian-American literary critic and activist] Edward Said and others the value of acknowledging one’s perspective: being transparent about who you are, rather than claiming some sense of neutral empirical truth. For me, identity rests on three pillars. First, I am a woman. Second, class: I come from an immigrant, working-class background. Third, heritage: Polish-Irish, born in Dubai, raised in the UK, married to a Spanish-Scot, with a distinctly European sense of self. With all that, I wasn’t going to get away without a Catholic upbringing: convent school, just very Roman Catholic foundations. I’m not practising now, but it gave me empathy for faith and an understanding of belief. These roots inevitably shape my work. When I published The Private Lives of the Saints [in 2015], my aunt, a Franciscan missionary, told me how proud she was. I had to laugh because the book dismantled saintly myths rather than celebrating them. Yet she was right: I was still that Catholic schoolgirl, writing about religious figures, even as I reframed them. Questions of nationality also ran through my research. My first book required careful choices of terms: ‘Irish’, ‘Welsh’, ‘Scottish’, ‘British Isles’ – each politically charged. By Femina [2022], the pattern was striking: nations everywhere reclaiming heritage, from Scandinavia’s Vikings to France’s Cathars. The focus of my latest book crystallised while writing about [queen and saint] Jadwiga of Poland. My grandmother, who owned a bronze of Pope John Paul II, reminded me how faith and identity intertwine. In my lifetime, that pope canonised women I now study, using them to shape national narratives. So the direction of this new book was clear even as I finished the last one. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/ali053…

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England’s forgotten medieval hero: how John, Duke of Bedford carried on Henry V's fight
type: item
date: 2025-02-20T16:52:50.000Z
creator: Joanna Arman
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Hundred Years War
subject: Joan of Arc
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: When the Hundred Years’ War was reaching a climax, one man was fighting tenaciously to secure the English claim to the French crown. So why, asks Joanna Arman, is Henry V’s formidable brother, John, Duke of Bedford, not better known?
encoded: As black skies faded to grey, and dawn broke on that fateful day in the early 15th century, an English army gazed across a field in northern France. What their eyes encountered was a vastly superior force: some 15,000 French-led troops glared back – their numbers nearly double those of England’s men-at-arms and archers. The English had faced seemingly insuperable odds before, and emerged victorious. But could they really triumph over this well-armed force bolstered by fearsome international allies? The Hundred Years’ War had been raging for close to a century already, with negotiations between England and France coming and going – but all ultimately failing to decisively end the conflict. The balance of military success had swung one way and then the other in clashes on land and, occasionally, at sea. Read more | Jonathan Sumpton on the Hundred Years’ War: “It was Joan of Arc who persuaded the French that they could win” Many confrontations had ended with English longbowmen proving decisive. But as morning ebbed and the afternoon rolled on, the outcome remained uncertain. Finally, battle commenced – and the English won a great and memorable victory against the odds. Sounds familiar? No, this is not a description of the battle of Agincourt, Henry V’s famous victory of 1415. Instead, it’s the story of the clash fought on 17 August 1424 – nearly nine years after Agincourt, and two after Henry’s death – outside the town of Verneuil-sur-Avre in Normandy. Here, the English army led by Henry’s younger brother John, Duke of Bedford, hammered a combined force of French and Scottish solders plus 2,000 Milanese heavy cavalry, killing perhaps 6,000 enemy troops while suffering minimal losses. Historians refer to the battle of Verneuil as ‘the second Agincourt’ – yet that clash, like John himself, is largely forgotten today. Why has such a heroic victory faded from memory? And what part did John play in that tumultuous period of English and French history? Born to battle We’ll r…

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The trials of Joan of Arc
type: item
date: 2014-10-02T15:30:11.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Joan of Arc
description: Dan Jones speaks to Helen Castor about her new book on the tragic French heroine Joan of Arc.
encoded: Historian Helen Castor discusses her new biography of the tragic French heroine Joan of Arc, describing her famous victories and the dramatic trial that condemned her to death. Putting the questions is fellow historian Dan Jones.

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Voltaire, Vanessa Bell and Joan of Arc: 3 things that happened On This Day 30 May
type: item
date: 2014-05-30T08:46:50.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Joan of Arc
description: What happened on this day in history? We round up three famous events, births, battles and deaths...
encoded: 30 May 1778: Francois-Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) died in Paris aged 83. 1879: Vanessa Bell, painter and member of the Bloomsbury Group, was born at Hyde Park Gate in London. She was the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. 1431: Aged 19, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic in the old market place in Rouen. She had inspired the French victory at Orleans in 1429 but had been captured by the Burgundians in the following year and subsequently sold to the English. Joan had been instrumental in securing the coronation of Charles VII as king of France and, by securing her condemnation, the English were hoping to undermine Charles’s legitimacy as monarch. Compiled by Julian Humphrys – You can follow Julian on Twitter @GeneralJules

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Where history happened: Joan of Arc
type: item
date: 2012-01-06T12:52:01.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Joan of Arc
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Where history happened
description: On what is believed to be the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, Charlotte Hodgman talks to historian Kelly DeVries about this saint and national heroine of France, and visits eight related places
encoded: This article was first published in the January 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine Born to a relatively wealthy peasant family on 6 January c1412, Joan of Arc appears to have enjoyed a normal upbringing. It was far removed from the fighting that raged elsewhere in France, a series of conflicts now referred to as the Hundred Years’ War. Fought between England and France between 1337 and 1453, the war’s primary cause was the possession of the French throne. Following the deaths of Henry V and Charles VI in 1422, nine-month-old Henry VI was recognised as king of England and France by the English, a claim disputed by those who upheld the succession of the dauphin, Charles. “A great deal of what we know about Joan’s early years comes from notes made during her trial, but it is estimated that she was about 17 years old when she began her year of military activity,” says Kelly DeVries, professor of history at Loyola University, Maryland. “We know she was from a relatively wealthy peasant family, lived in a two-storey stone house next to the village church with her family, and that she probably received her first vision at some point during her mid-teens.” Joan’s visions took the form of voices that she claimed belonged to St Margaret and St Michael, and it was these voices that presented Joan with her first two missions: to relieve the siege of Orléans and to crown the dauphin, Charles, king of France. “In order to succeed in her mission of ridding France of the English, Joan first needed the approval of the dauphin, who was residing at Chinon Castle with his court, but she required an escort to do so,” says DeVries. “That escort took the shape of Sir Robert de Baudricourt, the garrison commander of nearby Vaucouleurs, a town that had resisted attempts to bring it under the control of the Burgundians, who had at this time allied with the English and were seeking to bring the ‘dauphinist’ lands south of the Loire under Anglo-Burgundian control.” Joan’s request was rejected …

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