HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-11-28T09:01:05.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Michael Wood on the rise and fall of Asian empires
items: Who should decide the stories museums tell?
items: Just how many Bayeux Tapestries were there?
items: Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry
items: What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
items: The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
items: Michael Wood on lessons on good government from medieval Siena
items: Designs for life: the lasting impact of Art Deco
items: Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan
items: John Singer Sargent and the scandalous Madame X portrait that set the Gilded Age alight

Michael Wood on the rise and fall of Asian empires
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T09:00:39.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: General Early Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Column
subject: Historical people
description: "Emperor Jahangir and Shah Abbas literally bestride the world like colossi", writes Michael Wood
encoded: Watching the recent spectacle of those latter-day emperors President Xi of China and India’s Narendra Modi hugging each other at the summit in Tianjin, my mind cast back to an earlier image of a pan-Asian summit. There’s a wonderful painting from 1618 of the Mughal emperor Jahangir embracing Shah Abbas of Iran – one of several such pictures painted for the Indian ruler. These heads of two superpowers were in fact not bosom buddies but intense geopolitical rivals, especially in the Kandahar region of south-west Afghanistan, then under Mughal control. Framed by a huge golden halo, in an image of peace, one stands on a lamb, the other on a lion, both on a globe whose surface extends from the strait of Gibraltar to the South China Sea: they literally bestride the world like colossi. In the foreground of the map, a product of the new science of cartography, are shown north Africa, India and south-east Asia, with the Nile, the Ganges and the Yangtze accurately depicted. The painting is allegorical; the hoped-for meeting never actually took place. But the timing, and the details, have much to tell us. In the painting, western Europe lies, unseen, over the horizon. Yet at that moment the small, aggressive maritime powers on the edge of the Eurasian landmass were already extending their influence and carving up the New World – and were now threatening the old powers in the Asiatic heartland of civilisation. The Spanish had begun colonisation of the Philippines in 1565, the Portuguese leased Macao in 1557, the English East India Company was founded in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company was established two years later. Elizabeth I had earlier sent an ambassador to Jahangir’s father, Akbar, to negotiate trade links. In another painting, Jahangir greets a Sufi mystic in the presence of the Ottoman Sultan and King James VI & I – not an imaginary likeness but one taken from a portrait brought to India by the ambassador Thomas Roe in 1616. In an uncanny touch by the painter, Ja…

FFA3XK-CMYKWeb-Ready-64d2902.jpg
width: 2211
height: 1474

Who should decide the stories museums tell?
type: item
date: 2025-11-14T09:00:43.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
description: Increasingly, museums are being challenged on how they select, display and interpret their collections. Six historians explain how these institutions can adapt to suit 21st-century audiences
encoded: “If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full life history of every object in their collection” – Justin M Jacobs It has become fashionable today for critics of major western museums to call for a ‘reckoning’ or ‘coming to terms’ with the imperialist and racist histories of some institutions. This approach is rooted in the idea that, every time a museum chooses to tell a particular story, this story inevitably reflects the unconscious biases of the curators who tell it. There’s much to recommend this approach – but there’s also a problem. Too often, institutions simply replace the bygone voices of long-dead white men with the present-day voices of people descended from the communities or nations that originally produced the artefact on display. But is this really a more inclusive approach? Scholars who study the history of artefacts in museums are acutely aware that nearly every object on display has served different functions and had a different symbolic value down the years. In addition, many diverse peoples have owned or interacted with these objects. It follows that choosing to tell only a single story closely associated with present-day ideological agendas does a great disservice to the museum-going public. Take the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles, for instance. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, they have played an integral role in embodying the political power and cultural beliefs of the ancient Athenians, Romans, Christians, Muslims, British and modern Greeks. Yet according to current intellectual fashions and political sympathies, only one of these stories is deemed legitimate: that promoted by the modern Greeks. This, of course, is merely a reflection of the unconscious bias of our own day and age, which consistently promotes the alleged authenticity of nation states that didn’t even exist prior to the modern era. This is the very antithesis of an inclusive approach. If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full li…

Final-11-Sep-copy-CMYK-9d75a39.jpg
width: 2185
height: 1456

Just how many Bayeux Tapestries were there?
type: item
date: 2025-10-30T09:00:37.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
subject: Medieval battles
description: As a new theory, put forward by Professor John Blair, questions whether the embroidery was unique, David Musgrove asks historians whether there could have been more than one ‘Bayeux Tapestry’
encoded: The Bayeux Tapestry is an amazing artefact – and it’s exceptional not least because of its very existence today. Precious few pieces of embroidery from the medieval period survive, let alone ones that are almost 70 metres long. And, of course, the story it tells – of the conquest of England by the Normans – is one of immense historical significance. So we rightly celebrate it, and excitement about its forthcoming loan from Bayeux to the British Museum is high. But what if this artefact wasn’t really so very exceptional at the time it was made? What if it was just one of several embroideries produced to commemorate the Norman victory over the English at the battle of Hastings in October 1066? Professor John Blair, an expert in the Anglo-Saxon period at the University of Oxford, believes that might be the case. “This is a reaction against the idea that the Tapestry had to be something extraordinary or unique, beyond the fact that it is an extraordinary and unique survival,” he says. “There are abundant references to decorative domestic hangings, but of course they had virtually zero chance of survival. The Tapestry is a wonderful piece of design, but the actual stitching isn’t particularly fine, and a big team of embroiderers in a workshop could have done it quite expeditiously.” Purported patron Why did the Tapestry survive when so few other embroideries did? Well, most scholars agree that it was probably made some time after the battle that it records, so in the mid-late 11th century, and likely on the orders of – or to curry favour with – Bishop Odo of Bayeux. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Odo-blessing-the-feast4548webready-e50a4fb.jpg" width="1921" height="1281" alt="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. It’s thought that Odo commissioned the Tapestry to be displayed in his new cathedral in Bayeux (Image by Bayeux Museum)" title="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. I…

LEADBayeuxwebready-d2c2494.jpg
width: 2551
height: 2161

Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry
type: item
date: 2025-09-17T08:00:01.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: "We should remember the unknown women who made the Tapestry", writes Michael Wood
encoded: Like all readers, I am sure, I was thrilled to hear the news that the Bayeux Tapestry is coming to England next year. 1066 is the most important date in British history, and the Tapestry is the greatest single source, taking the tale from the last days of Edward the Confessor through the drama of Harold and William, the Norman invasion, and the defeat and death of Harold at Hastings. The Tapestry has been in Bayeux since the Middle Ages and has never left, save briefly during the Franco-German War and under Napoleon and the Nazis, who both sought to weaponise it prior to their own invasion attempts. But it was made in England in the aftermath of the Conquest, probably at Canterbury by English needlewomen. Scholars think that it was commissioned by the Conqueror’s brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who features prominently on the Tapestry along with his followers. One of those, Vitalis, is singled out and named, shown mounted and in full armour, reporting to William the whereabouts of the English army. Perhaps he was the leader of a scouting detachment who had gone ahead of the Norman army. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year The artistic inspiration was the English school of manuscript painting in Canterbury, but there may have been Roman models, too. Trajan’s Column, in particular, depicts the emperor’s Dacian campaigns in a similar manner – like a strip cartoon. Odo himself had been to Rome; so, too, had Scolland, abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey, who may have designed the Tapestry – perhaps using a sketch book from his travels? It’s a huge artwork, some 68.3 metres long, but damaged at the end: perhaps as much as 3 metres is missing. It is generally agreed that the Tapestry originally finished with William’s crowning at Westminster at Christmas 1066 – a mirror image to the opening panel of the enthroned Edward the Confessor. Based on that assumption, a brilliant full-scale reconstruction has been completed by …

FEMKE-DE-JONG-Bayeuxwebbready-2645820.jpg
width: 1500
height: 1269

What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
type: item
date: 2025-09-10T08:00:55.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: The wealthy civilisation that dominated the Italian peninsula before the Romans left a legacy that’s full of surprises. Lucy Shipley explains why we have the Etruscans to thank for the way we write, the shape of our towns, Renaissance art – and even horror movies
encoded: They taught us to read and write (well, kind of) Long before the Romans came to dominate the ancient world – before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Claudius invaded Britain and Vesuvius buried Pompeii – another civilisation dominated the Italian peninsula: the Etruscans. You may have heard of them, or that name may mean nothing to you. Either way, there’s little doubting their influence, continuing through the long hegemony of the Romans (who occupied Etruscan settlements) and the medieval period all the way to the modern age. The Etruscans, whose name is echoed in the modern region of Tuscany, emerged in central Italy around 900 BC. Their heartland, Etruria, lay between the rivers Tiber and Arno, and their cities were often perched on imposing plateaus with views across the fertile fields and metal-bearing soils that made their fortune. Their ports sent vessels out into the Tyrrhenian Sea (which bears their Greek name), trading as far afield as Spain and the near east. If you know the Etruscans at all, you might identify them as the villains of many a Roman tale or Greek myth. But who were these people? How did they live? And what impact do they have on our lives today? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-webready150617775-378ec5d.jpg" width="3602" height="2401" alt="A pale green and cream tablet with white letters inscribed across the top" title="An ivory writing tablet discovered in Marsiliana d'Albegna. The characters of the Etruscan alphabet inscribed along the top clearly influenced modern Latin letters (Image by Getty Images)" /> Well, a good place to start is with the words you’re reading on this page. Without the Etruscan alphabet, the Latin characters we use in modern English writing could have developed totally differently. Etruscan letters are clearly influenced by Greek and Phoenician scripts, but you’ll find you can read them with relative ease because the letter forms are so familiar. Read more | The hi…

GettyImages-webready170979966-LEAD-b7d0c34.jpg
width: 4248
height: 2832

The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
type: item
date: 2025-09-03T13:00:50.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: What's going on with the facial hair in King and Conqueror, have we been suckered in by an overly literal understanding of the Bayeux Tapestry, and what did a Viking beard really look like?
encoded: How and why did they get the facial hair so wrong in the new BBC 1066 drama King and Conqueror, and what did an actual Viking look like on the hair and beard front? Find out in my in-depth analysis of moustache-gate, framed, as is my wont, in the context of the Bayeux Tapestry. The new 1066 drama King and Conqueror has been accused by numerous commentators of playing fast and loose with the historical narrative of the Norman Conquest. That’s a reasonable criticism, but on my assessment of the critiques of the series, the deepest opprobrium has been reserved for the facial hair fantasy. Dad tache or bad tache? The problem is that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as Duke William of Normandy, sports a bristling tache (memorably described by Lucy Mangan in the Guardian as a ‘1970s dad tache’ and in the Daily Mail as an Asterix look), while the upper lip of James Norton’s Harold Godwinson is unequivocally hairless. That, as many experts have pointed out, is directly at odds with the Bayeux Tapestry. The famous 11th-century embroidery, which provides the earliest visual representation of the 1066 story, quite clearly shows a moustachioed Harold and a clean-shaven William. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/528361-7b9d210.jpg" width="6224" height="4672" alt="A man with shaggy hair and a moustache stands on a beach, dressed in a dark cloak and holding a sword. Behind him, a small group of people gather around a wooden boat on the shoreline" title="William bosses the beach with his 1970s dad tache in King and Conqueror (Image by BBC/CBS Studios)" /> Harold’s facial hair in the Tapestry is in line with that of his Anglo-Saxon compatriots: they tend to (but don’t always) boast moustaches, some of which are thin and straggly, while others are impressive handlebar efforts. The Normans, on the other hand, lack upper lip action. The embroiderers were clearly following a style guide to try to offer a visual prompt to the viewer about which side the r…

528468-2-d49b61b.jpg
width: 1252
height: 1754

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…

BBCHSiena-c-Femke-de-Jong-9a844c8.jpg
width: 1772
height: 1181

Designs for life: the lasting impact of Art Deco
type: item
date: 2025-08-13T08:00:27.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: In the interwar era, artists and designers embraced a sleek modern style that embodied the optimism and elegance of the age. On the centenary of the Paris expo that launched Art Deco on the international stage, Emma Bastin explores its origins and lasting impacts
encoded: On a cold, wintry December day in 1935, the Duke and Duchess of York arrived in Bexhill-on-Sea to open a new public venue. Lining the route were well-wishers of all ages, from Brownies and Cubs to war veterans wearing campaign medals. By the time the royal couple reached their destination, the crowd numbered in their thousands; no doubt the duke and duchess found it difficult to fully appreciate the building. With its unadorned cream walls, acres of glass and sleek lines, the De La Warr Pavilion did not so much proclaim its modernity but shout it out loud. The stylish façade hid a welded steel frame, the first of its kind in Britain. Inside were an auditorium seating 1,300, a restaurant and a library, all for “the common enjoyment of the people”. Quickly dubbed ‘The People’s Palace’, it was – and still is – an iconic embodiment of Art Deco style. Art Deco – a shortened, anglicised version of arts décoratifs – was never referred to as such in its heyday in the 1920s and 30s. Like most art movements, it gained its name long after its popularity had waned. The first use of the term as we use it now was by art historian Bevis Hillier in 1968. Facade of the Folies Bergère, Paris Maurice Pico, 1926 The dancer Lila Nikolska was the model for the gold bas-relief facade of the most famous cabaret in Paris – the Folies Bergère. Dancers were important to Art Deco sculptors, their bodies epitomising fluidity and strength. Here, movement is emphasised by the sequences of lines that surround the model, which also suggest that strident, modern music is playing. As with many other forms of art and design before and since, Art Deco was a response to the social, cultural and economic climate in which it emerged. It drew inspiration from a diverse range of sources, from ancient Egypt to the avant-garde, incorporating motifs from nature as well as concepts of mass-production using artificial materials. As a result, defining Art Deco is notoriously difficult. Some art historians have pr…

GB49B5-LEAD-249d994.jpg
width: 1948
height: 1298

Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan
type: item
date: 2025-07-27T09:00:19.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical people
description: Silence your inner critic and forget about perfectionism. That's the life lesson we should learn from the Etruscans and their artistic habits, Dr Lucy Shipley tells Dr David Musgrove
encoded: There’s a place I used to go to with my children where you could unleash your creative zing by painting a pot. You picked your pot, you painted your pot, and then they fired it for you and you came back and retrieved your handiwork a few days later. I’m no artist, so my pot designs were always distinctly average. But I enjoyed it, and so did my kids, and in that, we were unwittingly drawing on the mindset of the ancient Etruscans. Dr Lucy Shipley is an expert on this overlooked people, and her life lesson that we should draw from them is simple: paint your own pot. The overlooked Etruscans Before we go into that, let’s have a quick recap of who the Etruscans were. They are the people who lived in parts of what is now Italy, particularly in Tuscany and Umbria, in the period before the rise of ancient Rome, in the first millennium BC. They were neighbours and rivals of the Romans and the Greeks. They lived in cities spread across the region, and from their ports they traded widely across the Mediterranean. The Etruscans pop up in ancient sources quite often, but we only ever have accounts of them from an outside perspective, because their own texts do not survive beyond short inscriptions and one religious text. We have to rely on those accounts, along with archaeology, to get to grips with who they were and how they lived. Most of their cities are hard to excavate as they sit under modern settlements, but new excavations are revealing more of their world. Read more | The history of Florence: Italy's Renaissance powerhouse Etruscan tombs also provide a fascinating insight into Etruscan culture, and some feature remarkable wall paintings. These paintings show scenes from everyday life, religion and myth, but also some graphic sexual acts, which has surprised modern eyes (I’ll come back to that). Though Etruria was eventually subsumed into the Roman empire in the fourth and third centuries BC, echoes of their culture persisted. According to Shipley, there is something a…

Etruscans-History-Extra-Kate-Hazell-rough-AW-b6a99a3.jpg
width: 2126
height: 1417

John Singer Sargent and the scandalous Madame X portrait that set the Gilded Age alight
type: item
date: 2025-06-25T19:42:51.000Z
subject: Edwardian
subject: Period
description: Anna Maria Barry takes a look at what the bold portraits of celebrated society artist John Singer Sargent can tell us about the gilded world of the Edwardian elite
encoded: John Singer Sargent was the most in-demand portrait artist of his generation, though his career was not without controversy. Building his career with daring portraits of Edwardian socialites, he would later make waves for his art depicting the harrowing realities of the First World War, while his avant garde personal life remains a source of fascination. Born to American parents in Florence in 1856, the young Sargent spent his early years travelling around Europe with his family. He showed a precocious aptitude for art, sketching and painting the many cities and landscapes they visited – from Paris to the Pyrenees. In 1870 Sargent started to attend drawing classes in Florence. He moved to Paris in 1874 where he entered the studio of French painter Carolus-Duran. Over the next ten years, Sargent travelled and worked, gradually building his reputation as an artist. Read more | A beginner's guide to art history The scandal of Sargent's Madame X In 1884, scandal hit when Sargent exhibited his famous Portrait of Madame X at the Paris Salon. The sitter was Virginie Amélie Gautreau, a well-known Parisian socialite with a salacious private life. A good friend of Sargent’s, the statuesque Gautreau was a striking beauty – she accentuated her pale complexion with lavender powder, and dyed her hair red with henna. Sargent’s daring full-length portrait captures Gautreau turning coquettishly away from the artist, so that her face is shown in profile. Her pale skin contrasts with the shimmering black dress accentuating her narrow waist and ample cleavage. While her pose was interpreted as sexually suggestive, what caused most comment was a single strap of her dress which Sargent captured slipping down over her shoulder. Gautreau appeared a mere wiggle away from exposing herself to the viewer. Read more | Are Bertha and George Russell real? Inside the real Vanderbilt divorces that rocked the Gilded Age The painting caused an immediate stir when it was exhibited, with many claiming …

johnsingersargent480-79ce88f.jpg
width: 480
height: 320