HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-02-09T15:09:43.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The prince and the brothel: 6 scandals that rocked the British monarchy
items: “Literally whipped”: the boys who took the beatings meant for royal bottoms
items: The other prince in the Tower: the tragedy of Edward of Warwick
items: Mary & George: the real history behind the new drama
items: Queen Victoria's unhappy childhood: life under the 'Kensington System'
items: Off to school: how do the royal family educate their children?
items: What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
items: The real history behind Becoming Elizabeth
items: Royal sibling rivalry: Henry VIII, Richard III and other monarchs whose fate was determined by their brothers and sisters
items: Princess Margaret’s final years

The prince and the brothel: 6 scandals that rocked the British monarchy
type: item
date: 2026-02-02T15:30:45.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British queens
subject: Georgian
subject: Historical people
subject: Royal children
subject: Royal weddings
subject: The royal family
description: At a time when the royal family is under significant strain, historians shine a spotlight on some of the biggest crises to have enveloped the British monarchy over the past three centuries
encoded: The prince, the brothel and a culture war Katie Hindmarch-Watson describes a sex scandal that consumed Queen Victoria’s grandson On 7 July 1889, a policeman arrested a sometime telegraph boy, Henry Newlove, at his mother’s house in Camden Town. Newlove had been recruiting younger telegraph boys at London’s Central Telegraph Office to provide sexual services for affluent male clients at a brothel on Cleveland Street. Defiant, Newlove said that he thought it “very hard that I should get into trouble while men in high position are allowed to walk around free… Why, Lord Arthur Somerset goes regularly to the house at Cleveland Street; so does the Earl of Euston and Colonel Jervois.” Within months, Newlove was in prison and Somerset was in exile. Yet Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, triumphed in a libel suit that exonerated him from any “gross indecency”, and Colonel Jervois received no further mention in police records or the press. However, another man in high position became the focus of speculation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL11686324webready-dfc0737-e1770036564257.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A newspaper depicting several scenes of men in top hats and young boys standing in the street" title="The Cleveland Street Scandal, as reported in The Illustrated Police News on 25 January 1890. The affair – which embroiled Prince Albert Victor – “evolved into a morality tale about rich men’s predatory vices” (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> We still don’t really know why Prince Albert Victor – or ‘Eddy’, grandson of Queen Victoria and oldest son of the Prince of Wales – became linked to the story. Arthur Somerset had been his father’s equerry, but there is no evidence that the two men associated with one another, and no proof has emerged one way or another about Eddy’s propensity for sex with teenage telegraph boys. The Cleveland Street Scandal evolved from Newlove’s revelations into a morality tale about rich men’s pred…

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“Literally whipped”: the boys who took the beatings meant for royal bottoms
type: item
date: 2025-02-19T10:28:29.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: Royal children
description: Naughty young royals would escape punishment from their teachers by having someone else nearby to take the whipping… or did they? Were ‘whipping boys’ even real?
encoded: In medieval and early modern Europe, the education of a young royal was an important business. If they weren’t already sitting on the throne and having to quickly learn the ropes, they had to be prepared to one day wear the crown. The tutors of royal students faced a difficult issue: how to chastise their charges. How would they use the tried-and-tested corporal punishments, like whipping, without laying a hand on a prince or even a divinely ordained monarch? The answer was a proxy. What was a whipping boy? A whipping boy was a young boy who accompanied a prince throughout his education and received any necessary punishment. The name ‘whipping boy’ was literal. Today, the term refers to someone who is scapegoated or constantly blamed for the wrongdoing of others. Read more | Schools of hard knocks: Georgian and Victorian public schools There may have been a hope that the young royal, upon seeing their friend unfairly beaten, would feel enough remorse to correct their behaviour (and, as we all know well, European monarchs during these periods were well regarded for their empathy, so it must have worked a treat). However, being a whipping boy did come with incentives. They could form a close bond with their royal schoolmate, which might see them rewarded with titles and honours. It may have even been a coveted position, similar to the equally un-glamourous Groom of the Stool – the man who helped the king with his daily ablutions. How common were whipping boys? Henry VIII’s son Edward VI was said to have a whipping boy. So too, it is believed, did his illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, as well as the future Charles I a century later. The 13th-century king of Jerusalem, Conrad II, reportedly had 12, while France’s Louis XV (r1715-74) was apparently partnered with the son of a cobbler at Versailles to take his punishments. The practice could be seen as far away as China, too. The young Guangxu Emperor began his education in the late-19th century with the assistance of a 'ha…

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The other prince in the Tower: the tragedy of Edward of Warwick
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T15:01:48.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: The 1499 execution of Edward of Warwick snuffed out the final embers of the Wars of the Roses. Sarah Norton introduces the last male heir to the House of York – and explains why he “had to perish” to secure the crown for Henry VII
encoded: On 28 November 1499, Edward of Warwick – the 24-year-old heir to the House of York – finally left the Tower of London. It was only the third time in 14 years that he’d been outside the infamous Norman fortress – but he wasn’t able to appreciate the moment. He was not striding out towards freedom but instead, flanked by two men, being marched the short distance to Tower Hill, where an executioner waited on a temporary wooden scaffold. Between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, Warwick was beheaded for treason. His execution marked the culmination of years of political instability. For much of the 15th century, England had been embroiled in civil war as the houses of York and Lancaster vied for the throne. After Henry Tudor took the crown from Richard III in 1485, Warwick was taken to the Tower, aged just 10. He was not the first Yorkist prince to meet this fate, of course. His cousins, the better-known princes in the Tower, had been similarly imprisoned here in 1483 – and their subsequent disappearance remains the most infamous cold case in medieval and early modern English history. Listen | All eight episodes of our podcast series, The Princes in the Tower: a Medieval Murder Mystery In comparison, the story of Edward of Warwick has been largely overlooked – perhaps because of the absence of mystery and conspiracy in his tale, which is no less tragic. The “unhappy boy”, as he was called by contemporary Italian scholar and diplomat Polydore Vergil, was one of the longest-standing residents in the Tower’s near-thousand-year history. So how did this third prince come to be in the Tower? To understand, we must go back to the beginning of his tale – because his execution brought to an end a lifetime of tumult. His story reflects the turbulent times through which he lived, when brother fought brother and cousin met cousin in battle. Edward of Warwick: early life in the Wars of the Roses On his birth in February 1475, Warwick was fourth in line to the throne. He was or…

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Mary & George: the real history behind the new drama
type: item
date: 2024-03-06T07:38:51.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Royal children
description: Benjamin Woolley introduces the mother-and-son duo who changed the face of the royal court in the early 17th century
encoded: New drama Mary and George has just arrived on Sky Atlantic, transporting us back to the intrigues and scandals of the court of King James VI and I. Author and historical advisor Benjamin Woolley introduces Mary and George Villiers, the mother-and-son duo who changed the face of this early 17th-century royal court. Speaking to Elinor Evans, he explores what we really know about George's relationship with King James, and the lingering question over the Villiers' hand in the monarch's death.

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Queen Victoria's unhappy childhood: life under the 'Kensington System'
type: item
date: 2023-12-27T10:35:51.000Z
creator: Lucy Worsley
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Evergreen
subject: Royal children
description: What was Queen Victoria like as a child? And did she have a normal childhood? Here, historian Lucy Worsley explores the monarch’s youth at Kensington Palace – where she lived under the rules of the 'Kensington System' – and finds that it might not have been as unhappy as Victoria herself would have had us believe
encoded: On 24 May 1819, a baby girl was born at Kensington Palace. It was then the least fashionable of the royal palaces, hidden away behind the lime trees of its wide green gardens to the west of London. The arrival of Alexandrina Victoria, as she was christened, did cause some excitement. A long line of carriages calling for news about the health of the mother, the Duchess of Kent, reached all the way to Hyde Park Corner. But at that point the new baby, King George III’s latest granddaughter, was fairly low down the royal pecking order. As the years of her childhood passed, however, and as her elder cousins failed to thrive and died, Alexandrina Victoria grew in importance. It gradually emerged that the little girl growing up quietly behind closed doors at Kensington Palace would one day reign over the whole of the British Isles, including Ireland. And, in due course, a quarter of the globe’s landmass. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/05/GettyImages-513688265-347013e-e1703672371102.jpg" width="621" height="406" alt="The young Victoria with her mother, Victoire, Duchess of Kent, in an 1821 portrait by William Beechey. "My greatest of fears was that I loved her too much," said Victoire. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)" title="The young Victoria with her mother, Victoire, Duchess of Kent, in an 1821 portrait by William Beechey. "My greatest of fears was that I loved her too much," said Victoire. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)" /> The death of Queen Victoria's father Just as Queen Victoria’s path to the throne was not obvious at the time of her birth, her education and training for the position seem at first sight to have been quite shockingly inadequate. One of the problems was the early loss of her father, the Duke of Kent. He had terrible debts, caused partly by an expensive refurbishment of his apartment at Kensington. In the winter of 1819–20, he tried to save money by taking his beloved wife and baby daughter to…

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Off to school: how do the royal family educate their children?
type: item
date: 2023-12-12T16:59:15.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: The royal family
description: How should a young prince or princess be best prepared for their unique role? From private palace tutors to the school of hard knocks, each generation of royals has chosen new and different ways to educate their children
encoded: Beyond the ABCs and time tables, educating a young royal comes with unique challenges as they are prepared for a life of constant media scrutiny. They need to be prepared for their responsibilities as national ambassadors and, in the case of the heirs themselves, the burden of wearing the crown. Yet each generation of post-war Windsors has made bold moves away from centuries of traditional royal schooling. In fact, far from the private tutoring of the future Queen Elizabeth, there have been calls by newspaper columnists for the newest arrival to date, Louis, to be sent to a public school. Much like many royal children before them, Elizabeth and her sister Margaret received their education at home. Tutors were brought in to cover specialist subjects, but the core of their teaching was entrusted to their governess Marion Crawford, nicknamed “Crawfie”, under the supervision of their mother. Mornings covered history, language, literature and music before afternoons were spent on games, dancing and singing. While the dutiful Elizabeth showed a propensity for learning, home-schooling did not stretch her academically, although she now speaks fluent French and some German thanks to native speakers working at the palace. The young princess had not been expected to ascend to the throne, so it was only after the abdication of her uncle in 1936 that Elizabeth’s education gained pace, with private tuition in constitutional history from Henry Marten, vice-provost of Eton, and religious instruction by the archbishop of Canterbury. Margaret, however, was not privy to such lessons, and later in life she resented her lack of serious education. Still, Elizabeth never sat an exam or earned a formal qualification. Read more | The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret Breaking with tradition Perhaps frustrated by her own limited education, the Queen wished for her children to go to school, marking a significant change for the royal family. Read more | What was Queen Eli…

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What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
type: item
date: 2023-11-16T09:51:58.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: The Crown
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Throughout her long reign, Elizabeth II juggled being a mother and grandmother with royal duty. But with careful judgment, hard work and a mischievous sense of humour, she forged a dynasty and inspired a nation
encoded: They might not be the first monikers to spring to mind when thinking of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch who was renowned for her sense of duty and her dignified demeanour, but “Gary” and “Cabbage” are two of the nicknames bestowed upon her by her family. “Gary” was how Prince William knew his grandmother as a youngster, apparently confusing the word with “Granny”, while the Queen’s great-grandchildren Prince George and Princess Charlotte know the Queen affectionately as “Gan-Gan”. As for “Cabbage’, this was the fond nickname used by her husband Prince Philip – which might come from the French term of endearment, “mon petit chou”, translated to “my little cabbage”. Was Elizabeth II a mother when she came to the throne? As matriarch of “The Firm” (the insider name for the royal family) and the oldest monarch in British history, it’s perhaps easy to forget that Elizabeth assumed the throne in 1952 at the age of just 25, the mother of two young children. Thrust into royal duties, she faced the immediate challenge of balancing the work of monarchy with the demands of motherhood, a battle which was present throughout her reign. Read more | A brief guide to the British royal family, by The Crown historian Robert Lacey Just 18 months after her accession in 1952, Elizabeth II was called upon to tour 13 countries, including Australia, over six months, without Charles, age five, and Anne, age three. The young children were famously greeted with handshakes upon the return of their parents, and though she dispensed with some of the more formal royal traditions – the children were not required to bow or curtsey to their mother – their childhoods were marked by absence. The prince and princess were largely raised in their younger years by governesses and other household staff, in the same way that Elizabeth and Margaret had been by “Crawfie”, in keeping with the manner of many upper-class families of the time. The children were required to understand that travel and time were part o…

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The real history behind Becoming Elizabeth
type: item
date: 2023-08-20T12:10:08.000Z
creator: Kev Lochun
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Royal children
subject: Tudor kings and queens
subject: TV interest
description: Becoming Elizabeth tells the story of the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn before she became Elizabeth I, as she navigated the tumultuous reigns of her half-siblings. But how historically accurate is the drama? Discover the real history behind the show and the life of the teenage Princess Elizabeth
encoded: What is Becoming Elizabeth about? Becoming Elizabeth dramatises the life of the young Elizabeth I, daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The princess was born on September 1533 as heir-presumptive. Three years later, she was declared illegitimate and ousted from the succession, after her mother was executed on fabricated charges of adultery. From there on, she was largely ignored by her father, permitted to see him on only a handful of special occasions. But, against all expectations – and Henry’s best-laid plans – Elizabeth did eventually become Queen of England. And she would be arguably the greatest monarch of the entire Tudor dynasty. That is another story. Becoming Elizabeth is a tale of Elizabeth’s days before the throne, before she became the Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess. It is the story of her precarious life during the reigns of her step-siblings, Edward VI and Mary I, during a period of polarising religious tensions. The drama begins in the immediate aftermath of Henry VIII’s death when Elizabeth is sent to live with dowager queen and Henry’s sixth wife Katherine Parr, and her new husband – the rakish Thomas Seymour (brother of Edward’s mother Jane Seymour). Below we explore the real history behind the drama. What was the true nature of Elizabeth’s relationship with Thomas Seymour? What did Elizabeth really think of her mother, Anne Boleyn? And could she really trust her stepmother, Katherine Parr? Read on for the real history behind Becoming Elizabeth – warning, there will be spoilers. View oEmbed on the source website How to watch Becoming Elizabeth Becoming Elizabeth was first broadcast on Starz in the US and STARZPLAY in the UK in June 2022. The series is currently airing weekly on Channel 4 in the UK, with new episodes available stream on Channel4.com shortly after. Becoming Elizabeth is still available to stream in full on Lionsgate+, the new name for STARZPLAY, which is available as an add-on channel for Amazon P…

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Royal sibling rivalry: Henry VIII, Richard III and other monarchs whose fate was determined by their brothers and sisters
type: item
date: 2023-01-05T14:00:54.000Z
creator: Sarah Gristwood
subject: General History
subject: Georgian
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Victorian
subject: Henry VIII's wives
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Royal children
subject: The royal family
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: Through history, the role of the second or third royal sibling has not always been easy. Here, historian Sarah Gristwood explores 10 of the most famous – and dysfunctional – royal sibling relationships...
encoded: In the bad old days of high infant mortality, any royal family needed an heir and several ‘spares’ – north of the border, James V and his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, are just two of the many British monarchs with elder brothers who died in infancy. William the Conqueror left England to his second son, another William, while the eldest son, Robert, inherited Normandy. Since then, the history of these islands has been littered with famous second – or third, or fourth – royal siblings (or, more specifically, royal sons, since gender continued to trump age right into the 21st century), who for better or for worse have done much to shape the monarchy that we know today. Here are 10 of the most famous... Read more | 'Royal Family’: the fly-on-the-wall documentary the Palace doesn’t want you to see Richard I (1157–99) It wasn’t Richard the Lionheart, but his elder brother, Henry, who was crowned ‘the Young King’ of England, unusually during their father’s lifetime. In the event Henry predeceased his father, but perhaps the fact Richard hadn’t been raised for the job explains why the crusader showed so little real enthusiasm for hands-on rule of England, spending only a few months in the country during his 10-year reign. Richard was himself succeeded by his younger brother, John. Fairly or unfairly, King John has gone down in popular history as a disastrous monarch whose reign was epitomised by his losing the crown jewels in the Wash – but he did inadvertently help to give us Magna Carta. Read more | When and how did Richard the Lionheart die? John of Gaunt (1340–99) By contrast to John I, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster – fourth son of the prolific Edward III – has traditionally been accorded a good measure of respect for the steering hand he kept on the country during the minority of his nephew, Richard II. His harsh fiscal policies, however, made him a particular target of the Peasants’ Revolt – while almost as soon as John himself died, Richard II was deposed by Jo…

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Princess Margaret’s final years
type: item
date: 2022-11-07T12:18:14.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: Royal weddings
subject: The Crown
subject: The royal family
description: Seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, beginning in the early 1990s, depict the gradual decline of one of its most vibrant and controversial characters, charting the failing health of Princess Margaret, once a dazzling beauty and staple of the gossip columns. Anne de Courcy maps Princess Margaret’s life and final years, and considers what might have led to her early death…
encoded: In February 1999, the 68-year-old Princess Margaret was holidaying on Mustique, in her private villa Les Jolies Eaux. One morning, she went into the bathroom to wash her hair. Stepping into the bath, she inadvertently turned on the bath taps instead of those of the overhead shower. The water that gushed out of them was, thanks to a faulty thermostat, near-boiling. Janie Stevens, lady-in-waiting and friend to the princess, became alarmed by Margaret’s non-appearance and went into the bathroom, where she found the Princess sitting dazed on the edge of the bath, her feet appallingly scalded and in great pain. The incident, which left Margaret hospitalised, was a well-publicised episode in a broader period of declining health and spirit, a sorry trajectory for the Queen’s sister, once the sparkling face of the royal family. Princess Margaret’s early life <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-1036124564-1b5671e-e1667818467197.jpg" width="619" height="412" alt="Princess Margaret, future Countess of Snowden, 1930 - 2002. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and sister of Queen Elizabeth II. From The Coronation Book of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, published 1937.(Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="Princess Margaret, future Countess of Snowden, 1930 - 2002. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and sister of Queen Elizabeth II. From The Coronation Book of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, published 1937.(Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Princess Margaret was born at her mother’s home, Glamis Castle, on 21 August 1930. She was four years younger than her sister, the then Princess Elizabeth. At the time, their parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, had no idea of the future that awaited them. On the podcast | British royal family podcast episod…

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