HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-21T15:06:49.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Medieval family planning: meet the strong-willed women who redefined motherhood in the Middle Ages
items: What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
items: Medieval vampire slayers: why did our ancestors dig up and dismember the dead?
items: We often refer to countries as 'female' – so why has history excluded women from nation-building?
items: The Book of Kells: "a masterpiece of medieval calligraphy and painting"
items: Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think
items: Michael Wood on lessons on good government from medieval Siena
items: Medieval warhorses: 5 moments horsepower changed the course of history
items: Live locally, live sustainably, live medieval
items: What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z

Medieval family planning: meet the strong-willed women who redefined motherhood in the Middle Ages
type: item
date: 2026-04-19T11:30:54.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval life
description: In the Middle Ages, the bearing and raising of children defined women’s lives. But as Elinor Cleghorn explains, there were women who had other ideas and boldly challenged attitudes towards motherhood
encoded: In the winter of 841, a Frankish noblewoman named Dhuoda decided to compose a book of life advice for William, her eldest child. Since 824, when she married, Dhuoda had been living in Uzès, a town in southern France. Her husband, Bernard of Septimania, was a duke and military guard with family ties to the ruling dynasty of the first Carolingian emperor, Charlemagne. Almost two and a half years after their marriage, they welcomed their “most dearly desired first-born son”. As Dhuoda began writing to William, she pictured how he would hold her book when it was finished, how he would touch and turn its pages. Fifteen years earlier, William had issued “forth out of [her body] into the world”. Now, as he was leaving childhood behind, the lessons issued from her hand to his, from her body to his, would guide him towards adulthood. Dhuoda named her book Liber Manualis, Latin for handbook – literally translated as ‘hand-held book’ – and she hoped William would keep it with him always. As well as a collection of advice about how he should serve God, live virtuously, overcome hardships and be an honourable man, the Liber Manualis was a channel through which she hoped they would remain connected. For Dhuoda would not be there in person to care for William as he grew up. The Carolingian empire, as Dhuoda noted, was “in the midst of much agitation and discord”. Charles the Bald, son of Emperor Louis the Pious, and his half-brothers had been embroiled in civil wars over lands and succession for years. In June 841, after Charles won a bloody battle, Bernard, who fought against him, appeased Charles by offering his son William as vassal. Back in the spring of 841, Dhuoda had given birth to their second child, a boy. Bernard was a contentious figure with many enemies so, for his newborn son’s protection, he had him removed from his family home and taken to Aquitaine. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/0752743-354aa37-e1776414834828.jpg" widt…

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What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
type: item
date: 2026-04-08T15:30:41.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British prime ministers
subject: Civil rights
subject: Death
subject: Medieval life
subject: The royal family
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors take aim at the most egregious fallacies about the past
encoded: Ancient Athenian democracy was democratic There’s plenty to criticise about that ancient approach We wouldn’t recognise the system practised in ancient Athens as democracy in the sense we understand it today. Women did not have the vote, and the entire society depended on a massive slave population to be able to function. Yet in other ways it was also more democratic than our democracies today. Every (male) citizen took an active role in governing the city, and every major decision was taken by a vote involving every citizen who attended. An even more egregious misconception is the idea there is an unbroken link between ancient and modern democracy. Athenian democracy lasted for only around 200 years; since then, through most of the rest of antiquity, the Middle Ages and more modern historical periods, democracy has not been practised. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1155876683wbebready-ecda02a-e1775040845111.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of an ancient Greek orator standing on a raised platform, wearing a robe and laurel wreath, gesturing toward a crowd of citizens and soldiers gathered below. Classical buildings and hills appear in the background" title="Demosthenes, a defender of Athenian democracy in the fourth century BC, pictured in a c1880s illustration (Image by Getty Images)" /> In more recent times, Athenian democracy has been held up as a system to avoid rather than imitate. During debates between the founding fathers about the Constitution of the United States in the 1780s, many argued that “even if every Athenian had been a Socrates [ie very intelligent], Athenian democracy would have been little more than mob rule”. It is only very recently that we have come (again) to admire Athenian democracy, and want to link our own system of government to that ancient ideal. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Most people in the past had…

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Medieval vampire slayers: why did our ancestors dig up and dismember the dead?
type: item
date: 2026-01-30T15:30:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Burial
subject: Death
subject: Medieval life
description: At the turn of the 12th century, two men from a Staffordshire village died suddenly. A few days after they were solemnly laid to rest, they were spotted walking around the village, with their coffins on their backs. John Blair investigates the medieval terror of the living dead
encoded: In the last decades of the 12th century, the townsfolk of Annan in the Scottish borders were terrified by a sinister nocturnal revenant that stalked the dark byways. “Each night his corpse, driven by Satan, left his grave and wandered through the streets” accompanied by howling dogs and spreading sickness and death, according to the contemporary chronicler William of Newburgh. Desperate to put an end to the unholy scourge, two brothers whose father had been carried off by the plague opened the grave and “exposed the corpse, which was distended to a huge corpulence, with a swollen, livid face. It was observed that the shroud, which had been wound around it, was completely shredded up. Too angry to be frightened, the young men struck a blow at the lifeless corpse, whereupon such a flow of blood gushed out that they understood it to be a sucker of many people’s blood. Dragging it out of the town, they quickly built a pyre.” Recalling the accepted wisdom that such a being would burn only after they’d cut out its heart, the brothers took their shovels and hacked out the organ – after which the cadaver was immolated. The curse was finally over. Walking corpses To modern ears, this story stretches credulity far beyond breaking point. Not so to William of Newburgh: he recorded another three such tales, and hinted at many more. There are “numerous modern cases and abundant reports”, he wrote, but “it would be just too laborious and burdensome to write down all episodes of this kind that I have heard to have happened in our own times”. Yet though walking corpses were boringly commonplace in the 1190s, they had almost vanished from the English scene only a few decades later. Apparently they retreated northwards, leaving only occasional traces south of the border with Scotland. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/W45702webready-05b1689-e1769699879666.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration shows two people standing over a cu…

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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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The Book of Kells: "a masterpiece of medieval calligraphy and painting"
type: item
date: 2025-12-12T08:55:00.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Celts
subject: Column
subject: Medieval life
description: "The Book of Kells is a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting", writes Michael Wood
encoded: The Book of Kells, one of the greatest pieces of medieval art, is today displayed in the library of Trinity College Dublin. This illuminated gospel book is named after the monastery in County Meath where it was kept in the Middle Ages. It’s a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting, with its Celtic knot patterns, scintillating colour, and the staggering intricacies of the display pages and canon tables – all smoky golden magnificence. An Irish annalist called the book “the great Gospel of Columcille [Columba], the chief relic of the western world”. It may be the work described by the historian Gerald of Wales in the 1180s, in his book on Ireland. “Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art,” he wrote. “You will make out intricacies so delicate and so subtle… that you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.” The book survived war, plunder and the English – Cromwell’s troops were once billeted in Kells. In the 19th century, it was a huge influence on the Celtic revival movement in the arts, and today is seen as the pinnacle of the western tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life The book was produced around the end of the eighth century, just at the moment Britain and Ireland were about to be changed forever by the arrival of the Vikings. It was long believed to have been created on Iona. But in The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma, published in October, Victoria Whitworth suggests that it was actually written at the Pictish monastery of Portmahomack on the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland. This is one of the least known areas of the medieval British Isles. The Pictish monasteries were destroyed in the Viking age, and with them virtually all written records. The kingdom of the Picts became part of the Scottish kingdom of Alba in the ninth century, and gradually the memory of the Picts faded, leaving many unsolved mysteries. One key …

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Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think
type: item
date: 2025-11-05T09:00:32.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Medieval life
description: What did medieval physicians prescribe for stomach ache? And could weasels’ testicles really help you conceive? James Freeman delves into the sources to find eight curious cures from the Middle Ages
encoded: My urine has turned black! What does your wee say about your health? Well, plenty – but perhaps not in quite the way medieval physicians understood it. Before the in-depth study of anatomy and physiology, establishing the causes of symptoms relied on theories that today seem primitive or foolish. However, they were often based on long-established ideas about the body and its function. Medieval treatises on uroscopy – the study of urine – identified up to 20 colours, each indicating certain diseases. Many texts on this subject were accompanied by drawings of glass flasks filled with liquid coloured with an appropriate pigment. These might be arranged in a circular shape with descriptive labels, helping readers to memorise the key diagnostic details. Perhaps unsurprisingly, black was the worst possible colour, and was generally agreed to indicate imminent death. Why was urine so significant? Because of prohibitions against opening the body (which extended to postmortem dissections), medieval doctors were reliant on external indicators. This included variations in a patient’s pulse but also the colour, texture, layers, smell and even taste of their urine. The doctor’s role was to understand a patient’s nature: specifically, the four fluids or ‘humours’ inside the human body. In the treatise De Natura Hominis (‘On the Nature of Man’), by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (c460–c375 BC) or his pupil Polybus, it was determined that there were four such humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Disease was caused by imbalances in these humours, or when they became ‘corrupted’ or concentrated in a part of the body. Read more | It felt like the end of the world, but this medieval ‘apocalypse’ left a legacy no one saw coming This theory was developed further by Galen of Pergamon (c129–c216), who likened digestion to the cooking process: food was converted into life-giving liquid, the humours were generated by the vital organs, and waste products – including ur…

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Michael Wood on lessons on good government from medieval Siena
type: item
date: 2025-08-21T08:00:14.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval life
description: "When justice is sovereign, the wicked are stripped of all power", writes Michael Wood
encoded: Siena is one of the great historic cities – a living vision of the medieval world found now in very few places. Here is the architecture and street plan of a medieval city-state, the oldest bank in the world, and one of the oldest universities. Siena was even the first place to ban the car, in 1966! In its centre, the great square called the Campo hosts the famous Palio horse race twice a year. It’s a place to relish the continuance of the past into the present. In the Middle Ages, Siena was run by the Nine, who rotated every two months as a bulwark against tyranny. They met in the council hall in the Palazzo Pubblico (Public Palace) on the Campo. On the first floor is a room adorned with some of the most extraordinary paintings in western art. Three fresco panels, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338, offer a vibrant vision of life in town and country on the eve of the Black Death. This huge work, known as The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, covers three walls. In the dim light, the eyes need a moment to take in the scale and the colour – the deep, luminous ultramarine skies created with a paint made from ground lapis lazuli. It’s the last great creation of the school of painting in Siena that came to an abrupt end when the plague struck Italy in 1348, killing half the city’s population – including Lorenzetti and his elder brother, Pietro. These extraordinary frescoes came to mind while visiting the National Gallery’s fabulous Siena exhibition this summer. The focus there was on four painters: Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzettis. It encapsulated an exquisite, idiosyncratic moment, with none of the advances of Renaissance art: perspective, anatomy, realism. Instead, as the cultural historian Erin Maglaque eloquently remarks, we saw “silk, gold, and suspended emotion – an embrace of mystery that feels archaic and alien”. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life Florence lies close by, but the Sienese were seduced by the sole…

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Medieval warhorses: 5 moments horsepower changed the course of history
type: item
date: 2025-08-20T08:00:44.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval life
description: From William the Conqueror’s battle-winning cavalry to Richard III’s fatal final charge, Oliver H Creighton and Robert Liddiard explore five moments when horsepower changed the course of medieval history
encoded: 1. 1066 and all that Horses were involved in King Harold’s defeat at Hastings – but also in the demise of his Norman conqueror It’s one of the most famous of all medieval images. Harold II stands upon the battlefield at Hastings, desperately grasping at an arrow lodged in his eye. This incident – depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry – is credited with ending the English king’s life and extinguishing centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule. Yet look to the right of Harold and you’ll find an image that arguably goes even further in explaining his defeat: it depicts a sword-wielding warrior mounted upon a horse. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was an era-defining event – and its centrepiece was the battle of Hastings. That clash is graphically represented on the Bayeux Tapestry, most memorably in the image of mounted Norman knights charging the line of Anglo-Saxon warriors on foot. It’s a powerful rendition of horses making history – and for William, Duke of Normandy, those animals proved critical in securing his victory. William began the day of the pivotal action, 14 October, by ordering reconnaissance missions, receiving intelligence from returning mounted scouts on the whereabouts of Harold’s forces. When the two armies later closed in to do battle, the Bayeux Tapestry shows us, the duke mounted his warhorse and exhorted his knights to “prepare themselves manfully and wisely” as they cantered towards the forthcoming engagement. During the nine-hour struggle, William was in the thick of the fighting – and two, or possibly three, of his horses were killed beneath him. The crucial part of the battle came when a rumour spread among the Normans that their commander had been killed. The duke hurriedly rode among his now-fleeing troops, his helmet raised to prove that he was alive, so preventing a rout. At this key moment it was the mobility provided by his mount that allowed William to be in the right place at the right time, averting disaster (for him). Despite the oft-repeated…

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Live locally, live sustainably, live medieval
type: item
date: 2025-07-23T09:30:46.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval life
description: If you want to live a sustainable life today, you need to think local. For that, you can channel the experience of the Middle Ages, as Dr Ian Mortimer suggests
encoded: When I have a spare moment, I dabble in making hazel hurdle fence panels. It’s gloriously therapeutic. You get yourself a fat bundle of six-foot-long straight hazel rods, ram a few of them vertically into the ground at regular intervals and then cajole the rest of your rods through them on the horizontal, weaving them in and out of the uprights. The trick is to bend the rods robustly so that you can feel the fibres creaking and twisting through your palms, but you can’t be so hard on the wood that it cracks and snaps. It’s bad if that happens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/Hurdles-panels-f647815.jpeg" width="1006" height="774" alt="A fence made of light brown hazel rods, weaved together. In the background, there is a wall covered in ivy and a wooden structure with fairy lights on it" title="“My shabby efforts at making hazel hurdle panels,” explains Dr David Musgrove. “Note the amateur broken ends of the rods.”" /> I am a rank amateur at this, and the results of my labours are woefully rustic, but I like the process of getting there. If you’re doing it properly, you’re supposed to split the hazel rods in half, but I’ve yet to conquer that art. To see it done masterfully, there are loads of informative videos of competent, serious chaps in forests teasing the wood into beautiful hurdle panels. People have been making hazel hurdle panels for millennia. In the Somerset Levels, archaeologists have excavated them in situ where they were laid down in the Neolithic period as trackways to help people get across the boggy ground. They survive, amazingly, because peat grew up over them and protected them. The trickiest bit of making a hazel hurdle is procuring the rods. You have to coppice trees (ie cut them down to the base) in order to encourage the hazel to shoot up in straight stems. If you’re managing a woodland, you would crop the coppiced hazel on a regular rotation every five to seven years. It’s a very sustainable buildi…

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What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z
type: item
date: 2025-05-16T10:09:01.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval life
description: What was life like in a medieval town? Were the streets really filled with filth? How did people make a living, and where could they grab a bite to eat? Speaking on the HistoryExtra Podcast, Professor Carole Rawcliffe takes us through an A to Z of urban life in Britain in the Middle Ages. Words by James Osborne
encoded: A… is for Architecture According to Professor Carole Rawcliffe, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, would-be travellers in medieval England, Scotland and Wales approaching a large town would likely first notice the distinctive walls and gates. These were more than just practical defences, going as far as symbolising civic identity. “Walls and gates often appear on the town seals,” Professor Rawcliffe explains. Dunfermline and Norwich, for example, proudly displayed their gates alongside royal lions. B… is for Bathhouses Bathhouses were not as common in England as they were in Europe. While in Germany, bathhouses were considered charitable institutions, in England, the best-known examples were the Southwark ‘stews’. These were not just public baths but also doubled as brothels, a connection that led to their temporary closure in 1506 during a major outbreak of syphilis. “Henry VII closes them down […] but they open up again by popular demand soon after,” explains Rawcliffe. C… is for Cleanliness The idea that medieval towns were drowning in filth is an inaccurate one. The reality – according to Professor Rawcliffe ­– was that “most towns put a great emphasis on the cleanliness of their streets and their clean water supply”. Read more | A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past? Laws were strict. Bristol, for example, imposed a fine of three shillings and fourpence (a week’s wages for a journeyman) for anyone caught emptying chamber pots onto the street. In Cambridge, market spaces were required to be cleaned twice a day from 1379 onwards. Towns also hired ‘rakers’ to clear dung, introduced refuse collection, and regulated butchery to prevent animal waste from contaminating public areas. D… is for Disease Towns were vulnerable to epidemic disease, particularly the Black Death, which killed vast swathes of the urban population in the 14th century. The belief at the time was that plague spread through ‘bad air’ (miasma), leading to s…

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