HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-16T13:06:06.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: "We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
items: Fascism? No thanks! Why Britain rejected extremism in the 1930s
items: The SAS played a vital role in defeating Hitler – so why did Britain disband them?
items: Keep calm and carry on singing: why Britons fell in love with opera during World War Two
items: "Imagine starting a life with so little": the stories of South Asians in Britain
items: "We sang, we danced and we all held hands": celebrating VE Day
items: The history of VE Day street parties
items: "I felt very alone in a world gone horribly mad": the experiences of evacuees in WW2
items: War and military history podcast episodes
items: Eat for victory: the British Restaurants of WW2

"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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Fascism? No thanks! Why Britain rejected extremism in the 1930s
type: item
date: 2026-02-16T15:30:41.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical people
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Extremism was on the march across continental Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet Britons chose a different, more moderate, path. Alwyn Turner explores why the posturing and rants of would-be dictators largely fell on deaf ears between the wars
encoded: “Is this the age of dictators?” asked veteran journalist Sir Sidney Low. He was writing in September 1923, the month in which a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in Spain. At the same time, Benito Mussolini was reinforcing his new dictatorship in Italy, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was shaping the nascent republic of Turkey, and disruptions – including those fomented by Hitler’s Nazis – were building to a climax in Germany. Taken together, these developments led Low to wonder whether the world might be witnessing “the general decline of parliamentary institutions”. Over the years that followed, his comments were to become commonplace. By 1938, there was autocratic rule in more than a dozen European countries across the continent, from Portugal to Poland and beyond to the Soviet Union. Even in some countries that remained democracies, substantial anti-democratic elements were growing in power and influence: in the 1936 Belgian elections, the far right won nearly 20 per cent of the vote, while the Communist Party took 15 per cent in French elections that year. In Britain, however, there was no equivalent body of support for extremism in the interwar years. There was, of course, the British Union of Fascists (BUF) under the leadership of Oswald Mosley – a Conservative MP who then sat as an independent before switching to Labour and eventually finding his way to fascism. But Mosley was never more than a peripheral figure. At its peak in mid-1934, the BUF briefly numbered around 45,000 members. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) never got above 20,000 members in the 1930s. By comparison, the Labour Party claimed up to half a million members, and there were 6 million trade unionists. The CPGB’s best electoral showing came in the 1931 general election when it fielded 26 candidates, averaging fewer than 3,000 votes each – 0.3 per cent of the total – while Mosley’s New Party got 0.2 per cent. In 1935, the BUF didn’t even put up candidates. It…

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The SAS played a vital role in defeating Hitler – so why did Britain disband them?
type: item
date: 2026-01-23T15:30:41.000Z
creator: Gavin Mortimer
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical people
subject: Second World War battles
subject: Soldiers
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Britain’s War Office thanked the SAS for its remarkable efforts in WW2 by abolishing it – yet soon realised the error of its ways. Gavin Mortimer tells the story of how the elite unit reinvented itself to confront the challenges of the postwar world
encoded: “Light-hearted banditry”, “ruthless pirating”, a “phantom army” – it’s fair to say that the Special Air Service (SAS) didn’t always attract the most complimentary headlines. In the white heat of the Second World War, when this and other British special forces achieved unlikely successes through a series of daring raids, disparaging press reports could be discarded as merely tomorrow’s chip paper. Nonetheless, they fuelled the impression that the SAS operated outside the rules of the regular British army, and were used as ammunition by some who aimed to whip special forces into line – or even shut them down altogether. That threat became a reality after the conflict ended. David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, coined a description – “freemasons of mediocrity” – for a certain kind of staff officer who looked upon his men with suspicion and, in some cases, hostility. These ‘freemasons’ regarded the SAS and other irregular outfits – the Long Range Desert Group and the Chindits – at best as private armies, at worst “café gangsters”. This view extended to the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), which spent the spring of 1944 waging a bloody guerrilla campaign in the Aegean to tie down German troops ahead of the invasion of France. Its actions prompted a sharp exchange between Winston Churchill and Simon Wingfield Digby, the Conservative MP for West Dorset. “Is it true, Mr prime minister,” enquired Wingfield Digby, “that there is a body of men out in the Aegean Islands, fighting under the Union Flag, that are nothing short of being a band of murderous, renegade cut-throats?” “If you do not take your seat and keep quiet, I will send you out to join them,” retorted Churchill. One could argue that Churchill was the founding father of Britain’s special forces. It was he, shortly after coming to office in May 1940, who instructed the formation of a commando force to launch a “vigorous, enterprising and ceaseless offensive” against the Axis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/p…

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Keep calm and carry on singing: why Britons fell in love with opera during World War Two
type: item
date: 2026-01-07T15:00:58.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Historical events
subject: Second World War battles
subject: Soldiers
subject: Wartime Britain
description: As the conflict with Nazi Germany raged on, British tram drivers tuned in to Tchaikovsky and waitresses revelled in Wagner. But why? Alexandra Wilson explores the surprising Second World War obsession with opera
encoded: Glasgow, 1942. The Carl Rosa Opera Company was in town to perform Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Tickets had been snapped up by local people – including many who didn’t really know what an opera was. The soprano Joan Hammond, who sang the title role that night, later recalled that there were always newcomers in the audience wherever the Carl Rosa performed, searching for something different to do – but also for some kind of transcendental escapism. Invariably, they cheered the singers to the rafters. Surprising though it may seem to us today, opera was hugely popular during the Second World War. This was part of a broader surge of interest among the British in the so-called high arts – a sudden and rather urgent desire to ‘become cultured’ and to enjoy the best that life had to offer – when every day might be your last. Guy Ramsey reported in the Daily Mail in 1943 that “every day in every way Britain’s musical and dramatic taste is becoming more and more ‘highbrow’”. Tram drivers were listening to Tchaikovsky, waitresses were revelling in Wagner, and operas were drawing large audiences at provincial theatres. This war, Ramsey wrote, was more personal than any before it, and felt closer to home. Serious times called for serious art, and popular variety shows no longer seemed in step with the national mood. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/2X2FXR2webready-9f2accf-e1767623285427.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph shows a man in a cap with round glasses and a cigarette in his mouth sitting on one of many stools outside a theatre. In front of him to the right, a billboard advertises the Sadler's Wells Opera" title="Stools for hire by people queueing for Sadler’s Wells Opera Company performances at the New Theatre, 1943. Tickets started at just 1/6 (about £4 today) (Image by Alamy)" /> Workers’ playtime Opera had already enjoyed reasonably wide popularity in Britain during the interwar years. In Lond…

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"Imagine starting a life with so little": the stories of South Asians in Britain
type: item
date: 2025-11-08T09:00:06.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Column
subject: Historical people
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Kavita Puri on the importance of the stories of South Asians in Britain
encoded: I remember looking in the BBC archives for stories of the first arrivals of South Asians in the postwar years, and being surprised at how little programming had been made documenting the experiences of my parents’ generation. That was well over 10 years ago now. From then on, I began to record testimonies of people who came to the UK from South Asia after the Second World War for my Radio 4 series Three Pounds in My Pocket. The title of that programme was inspired by the fact that, for years after the war, strict currency controls dictated that those arriving from India could not bring more than £3 into the UK. Imagine starting a new life in a new country with so little. Over time, I went on to record accounts from the descendants of that three-pound generation, hearing about their struggles and achievements. Many of the people I first interviewed – including my father – are no longer with us. I feel so grateful that I was able to capture their stories: memories of what these former subjects of the Raj had imagined Britain to be, what it was actually like when they arrived, how they were received and, so many decades on, where they now felt ‘home’ was. Read more | “The nation is a very novel idea, and imposing it on millions of people is hard work” | Joya Chatterji on south Asia in the 20th century Asians comprise the largest minority ethnic group in Britain today, yet it’s always struck me how little the history of South Asians in Britain is known – among South Asians themselves as well as across the country as a whole. It’s noticeable that in 2025 there is still no central British South Asian cultural archive, and that South Asian Heritage Month is only in its sixth year. South Asians have had a presence in Britain for centuries, as Rozina Visram’s seminal 2002 book Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History discusses. The first such settlers came as sailors and servants, brought by the East India Company. In time, students, ayahs (nursemaids), princes and profession…

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"We sang, we danced and we all held hands": celebrating VE Day
type: item
date: 2025-05-08T08:00:34.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: A big day in history
subject: Wartime Britain
description: It’s 80 years since Britain erupted in joy at the news that the war in Europe was over. But how did those who lived through VE Day remember it? With the help of the BBC WW2 People’s War archive, John Willis reveals a day of partying, remembrance and continuing sacrifice
encoded: The long and brutal war in Europe was finally over. At 2.41am on 7 May 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender agreement at General Eisenhower’s HQ in Reims, 80 miles north-east of Paris. Later that day, the BBC announced the news and the first celebrations began. Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared the following day a national holiday, VE Day (Victory in Europe), and checked the supply of beer was large enough to satisfy the thirst of a happy nation. In Southampton, VE Day opened with a symphony of blaring ships’ horns shortly after midnight. Later, beacons blazed, bunting fluttered in the afternoon sun and joyful parties echoed around every corner of Britain. Children tied effigies of Hitler to lampposts or burned the führer on bonfires. At 3pm, Churchill broadcast from Downing Street: “My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not a victory for any party or class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole.” But Churchill also reminded the partying millions that the conflict was not yet over. A fanatical, undefeated Japan still controlled swathes of territory in the far east. In 2005, the BBC marked the 60th anniversary of VE Day by setting up a huge project called the WW2 People’s War. With help from thousands of volunteers, charities, libraries and museums, the corporation collected an astonishing 47,000 testimonies, both from those who had been serving in the armed forces and from the home front. This was not history as seen from the lofty perspective of politicians or generals, diplomats or historians. Rather, the project gathered the memories of ordinary British men and women – a ground-floor history. The WW2 People’s War (and my book of the same name) stand as comprehensive accounts by those who fought, grieved, loved and survived through years of conflict – and how they reacted when the fighting in Europe was over. Most of the testimonies on the following pages are taken from this archive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk…

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The history of VE Day street parties
type: item
date: 2025-05-07T07:30:38.000Z
creator: Emma Mason
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: VE Day
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Millions of people took to the streets of Britain on 8 May 1945 to celebrate VE Day – the day when the German armed forces signed an unconditional surrender, and the Second World War in Europe finally came to an end. Hanging bunting, waving flags, drinking and dancing, the streets were crammed with joyous revellers...
encoded: At 2.41am on 7 May 1945, at a schoolhouse near Reims in northern France, General Alfred Jodl, the German chief of staff, signed the unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces wherever they might be fighting. General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, rang General Sir ‘Pug’ Ismay, Churchill’s chief of staff. “The war is over,” he said. “But no official announcement could be made” said Juliet Gardiner, writing for BBC History Magazine in 2005. “Stalin insisted that victory should not be proclaimed until German troops on the eastern front had surrendered to the Soviet general Zukhov in Berlin and the long-awaited news could be proclaimed simultaneously in London, Moscow and Washington.” Yet rumours that the war had finally ended soon began to filter through to the British public. “The newspapers are full of rumours of surrender… feeling almost excited… everyone is speculating,” wrote Lyn Murphy, who worked for the director of an electrical manufacturer engaged in war production, in her diary for 7 May 1945. “They shouldn’t keep people hanging about waiting like this. The government needn’t be afraid of people going mad, everybody’s very sober about it,” complained a middle-aged man to a member of Mass-Observation, the organisation that compiled reports on British wartime attitudes and morale, which was out in force now that victory was in the air. On the afternoon of 8 May 1945, the British prime minister Winston Churchill made the radio announcement that the world had long been waiting for. He announced that hostilities with Germany would cease at one minute past midnight, and that “our dear Channel Islands”, the only part of British territory to have been occupied, “are to be freed today”. After nearly six long years, the war in Europe was finally over. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/05/GettyImages-3432929-4d9bca8-scaled-e1746607596456.jpg" width="619" height="413" alt="Prime Minister Win…

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"I felt very alone in a world gone horribly mad": the experiences of evacuees in WW2
type: item
date: 2025-02-20T17:03:03.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Children
subject: Wartime Britain
description: It was a moment of possibilities, dislocation and dread. Dan Todman tells the story of the 1.5 million urban Britons evacuated to the countryside at the start of the Second World War
encoded: It’s October 1939, and an aristocratic couple are discussing how to manage the horde of ill-spoken, slovenly evacuees from the city who have been billeted in their house. Not to worry, the husband tells his wife: bringing the children into a more refined environment will soon civilise the youngsters. Instead, as the sketch plays out on the BBC Home Service, the couple’s lordly airs and graces disappear. It’s the evacuees – sent away from home at the behest of the authorities – who change their hosts, rather than the other way around. It’s a skit that fits with how the story of Second World War evacuation has often been constructed, both at the time and in the years since. Here is a narrative that emphasises a clash of cultures: the rural rich suddenly confronted by the urban poor – a moment replete with topsy-turvy possibilities. But the circumstances around the recording of the sketch itself reveal how evacuation was a much larger and more complex event than this straightforward narrative suggests. Read more | Persuading the people: British propaganda in the Second World War It was performed by a cast of variety performers who had also been evacuated, from London to Bristol. That move was part of the BBC’s own preparations to maintain a schedule of light entertainment to intersperse with the news bulletins and government announcements expected to dominate the airwaves over the first weeks of the war. Seen in this light, the first wave of evacuations was specifically a product of conditions in the autumn of 1939 – but it was also an event that came to have a deep significance in the British folk memory, emblematic of the longer and wider disruptions, separations and anxieties experienced by so many civilians. It was, too, part of a global phenomenon, as states and communities sought to move people out of harm’s way. Thinking about evacuation therefore helps us understand not only Britain’s war, but also a wider human experience – national and local differences notwi…

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War and military history podcast episodes
type: item
subject: General History
subject: Period
subject: Hundred Years War
subject: Second World War battles
subject: The Crimean War
subject: Viking warfare
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Browse our archive of HistoryExtra podcasts on war and military history, from Nelson’s demise at Trafalgar to the role of Indian soldiers in World War One...

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Eat for victory: the British Restaurants of WW2
type: item
date: 2023-01-20T08:05:23.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Wartime Britain
description: As the hardships of the Second World War began to bite, a new network of public dining rooms was established – the British Restaurant. Bryce Evans explores the story of these healthy, economical establishments, and the lessons they could teach us today
encoded: Canteen dining often conjures up negative images. This kind of large scale eating might seem grindingly institutional, evoking the worst memories of school dinners: the eternal smell of cabbage and the misery of wet trays. Yet during the darkest days of the Second World War and the rationing that continued long afterwards, a thriving national network of government-backed communal eating establishments offered not just good-value, healthy food. These British Restaurants were, on the instruction of the Ministry of Food, “centres of civilisation” – spaces for all classes, overcoming the Victorian notion of the public consumption of food as something solely for the deserving poor. Established in 1940, British Restaurants were state-subsidised dining rooms offering price-capped, nutritious meals to the public. But the story of wartime communal dining in Britain had actually begun more than two decades earlier, in the latter stages of the First World War. In 1917 the Ministry of Food had established the National Kitchen – a network of more than 1,000 large state-subsidised canteens that functioned until 1919. One of the scheme’s key proponents was the pioneering vegetarian, restaurateur, real tennis Olympic medallist and all-round Edwardian man of action Eustace Miles. Writing in the ministry’s 1918 Public Kitchens handbook, he had stated: “At some future time it will be difficult to believe that each household in the country did its own separate marketing, buying small amounts of food from retail dealers a hundred per cent above cost price, that every hundred houses in a street had each its own fire for cooking, and that at least a hundred human beings were engaged in serving meals that could have been prepared by half a dozen trained assistants.” That was the old way of feeding the nation. Following the dour, difficult years of the First World War, Miles believed that Britain would surely embrace a brave new world of social eating. And the benefits of state-subsidised c…

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