HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-11-07T16:43:29.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: “I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
items: Was there a real Sheriff of Nottingham?
items: The Srebrenica massacre: the worst atrocity committed on European soil since the Second World War
items: Spring-Heeled Jack: the fire-breathing phantom that terrorised Victorian England
items: Don’t fear the fairies – but do allow a little enchantment into your life
items: Scotland's season of the witch
items: Why it was more dangerous to steal a loaf of bread than commit murder in medieval England
items: The "outwardly respectable" man who had a body in his basement: how the Dr Crippen case shocked Britain
items: Tudor angels of death: the 16th-century obsession with female killers
items: Was Gilles de Rais really history’s first recorded serial killer?

“I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
type: item
date: 2025-11-07T16:34:36.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical events
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: That’s what renowned barrister, and bestselling historian, Philippe Sands told us, but could you? With the 80th anniversary of the famous war trials upon us – and a new movie to boot – Dave Musgrove reflects on the perils of staging a trial the likes of which the world had never seen before
encoded: To have defended someone like Hans Frank, the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland during WW2, charged with the murder of four million human beings, is a tough thing to imagine. Nevertheless, when I asked Philippe Sands – lawyer and writer – whether he would have defended the Nazis in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, he told me “I hope so! I'm a believer that everyone is entitled to have their lawyer to defend their rights and their interests, irrespective of who they are or what they've done.” That was my final question to Sands after we’d recorded four episodes of an upcoming HistoryExtra podcast series on the Nuremberg Trials at the conclusion of the Second World War. I wanted to know where he’d stand on that question, because our conversation had reminded me how complicated some of the moral, as well as legal, questions were around the decision by the Allies to put a selection of leading Nazis on trial in November 1945. As a UK barrister, Sands is subject to the ‘cab-rank rule’, which obliges members of his profession to “take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated”, but the idea of having to defend a Nazi war criminal, quite understandably, gave him pause for thought. Read more | Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich The trial of the century We shall all be given pause to reflect on the Nuremberg Trials as they hove back into public consciousness on their 80th anniversary. The trials ran from November 1945 through to October 1946. Twenty-four leading Nazis were indicted, though only 21 of them eventually stood trial in the courtroom proceedings. Neither Adolf Hitler nor the SS leader Heinrich Himmler were among them, as both had already taken their own lives. That left the biggest name in the dock as Hitler’s successor Hermann Göring, along with Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. As with many big anniversaries, there will be media depictions, …

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Was there a real Sheriff of Nottingham?
type: item
date: 2025-11-03T09:35:14.000Z
creator: Sean McGlynn
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
description: He is the foil to the outlaw Robin Hood, the embodiment of rapacious greed and government corruption in medieval England – but was the Sheriff of Nottingham a real man?
encoded: Yorkshire, July 1225. A sheriff is authorised by the king to “seek and take and behead Robert of Wetherby, outlaw and evil-doer of our land”. He tracks down Wetherby and, a few months later, grabs him. The sheriff’s accounts record a sum of 28 shillings for the cost of the pursuit – and two shillings “for a chain” to hang him. For some historians and folklorists, the headless corpse dangling in the air was that of the original Robin Hood. But what of the man who caught him? The 2025 Robin Hood series from MGM+ features Sean Bean as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Hood’s primary antagonist in the most popular tellings of the legend. Here, he is portrayed as a measured and principled officer, loyally performing his royal duties – an antithesis of Alan Rickman’s sheriff in the 1991 Hollywood film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. From the very start of the Robin Hood legend, it has been built on fictional entertainment; however, there may well be elements of it that are rooted in fact. The Sheriff of Nottingham was one of the facts – sort of. Was the Sheriff of Nottingham a real position? Yes, there were real sheriffs of Nottingham, but not one specific sheriff to match the character of the Robin Hood myth. The first Sheriffs of Nottingham were William Sadler and Thomas Lyng, appointed together in 1449. Most Robin Hood films and TV series are set well before this, during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart. MGM+’s 2025 series tells us that it is set in 1189 – the year Richard comes to the throne. At the start of the series, Henry II (Richard’s father) is still very much alive, much to ire of his queen, the long-suffering Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Gladiator II alumna Connie Nielsen). Before the mid-15th century, there was the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, a position established in 1068 by William the Conqueror. The Royal Forests did, of course, cover Sherwood Forest. It is easy to see how this official title would become readily ab…

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The Srebrenica massacre: the worst atrocity committed on European soil since the Second World War
type: item
date: 2025-07-31T08:00:59.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
description: Over the course of four days in July 1995, Bosnian-Serb forces murdered more than 8,000 men and boys – in a United Nations-protected ‘safe area’. Legally recognised as an act of genocide, the Srebrenica massacre is the worst act of mass killing committed on European soil since the Second World War. What drove the perpetrators to carry out such a terrible crime? And how did the international community allow it to happen?
encoded: Before the Bosnian War broke out, Srebrenica was just a small secluded town in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Very few people outside of the Balkans had even heard of it. But all that changed over the course of a few short days in July 1995 – and for the most terrible of reasons. Srebrenica had been changing fast in the months before it became the focus of the world’s attention. By 1995, it had morphed into a large refugee camp surrounded by hostile forces. Some 40,000 people had been forced to flee there as a consequence of the violent break-up of the country of which Bosnia was part: Yugoslavia. Displaced by a vicious Serb-led ethnic cleansing campaign, those refugees largely consisted of the rural, Bosnian Muslim (or Bosniak) population of eastern Bosnia. War had come to Bosnia in late March 1992, a year or so after two other republics – Croatia, very violently, and Slovenia, much less so – had seceded from the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Shaken by the violence in Croatia between the Croat majority and Serb minority, the international community was soon even more appalled by events in Bosnia. “Almost overnight the republic broke apart,” one UN official on the ground noted. Large swathes of territory in the east, north and north-west were ethnically cleansed by Serb paramilitary forces, supported by the Serb-dominated regular Yugoslav Army. After six weeks, by late May 1992, Serb forces controlled 60 per cent of the territory of Bosnia, even though their ethnic kin made up only just over 30 per cent of the population, as against 43 per cent Bosniaks and 17 per cent Croats. Those Bosniaks unable to flee abroad found themselves crammed into a landlocked central rump. The capital, Sarajevo, was besieged. In the west, an enclave around Bihać still held out. So did several pockets in the east, centred on Goražde, Žepa and Srebrenica. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/2NE5810-667225d.jpg" width="1772" he…

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Spring-Heeled Jack: the fire-breathing phantom that terrorised Victorian England
type: item
date: 2025-06-25T16:53:30.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Evergreen
description: A supernaturally athletic ghost is alleged to have menaced the towns and cities of 19th-century England. Able to spew fire from its mouth and jump extraordinary distances, this phantom confounded the police and press alike for decades
encoded: Tall and thin, with glowing red eyes, a monstrous face, sharp metallic claws and the power to breathe fire – this was, for several decades, the most common description of a supernatural entity that terrorised Victorian England. Who was Spring-Heeled Jack? Spring-Heeled Jack was the name given to a ‘phantom’ of urban legend that plagued fretful Victorians and delighted readers of penny dreadfuls. He was so named by the press for his seemingly supernatural ability to leap nine feet – or more – into the air to evade capture. Newspapers struggled to keep up with an influx of alleged sightings, which saw this phantom appear miles apart in quick succession. Police forces across the country were likewise bombarded with reports of the ghost, which could not be captured on account of its ability to leap away at extraordinary speeds and distances. And this earned it a moniker which was to become synonymous with the paranormal for nearly a century: Spring-Heeled Jack. When was Spring-Heeled Jack first seen? The earliest rumours of this ghostly entity emerged from rural villages south of London. In late 1837, villagers in Barnes reported that a white bull had attacked several people (mostly women) at night. Reaching East Sheen, it assumed the form of a white bear and was referred to by locals as the ‘Evil One’. Spring-Heeled Jack first took human form in January 1838, when he appeared wearing brass armour, claw gloves, and the spring-loaded shoes that were to become his hallmark. He was occasionally accompanied by other apparitions, and evaded capture by scaling walls and jumping away – to heights of up to nine feet. Gossip, rumour and occasional newspaper reporting quickly spread these alleged sightings of a fearsome, dangerous devil-man. Victorian Londoners were fascinated and horrified by this supernatural attacker that appeared to be closing in on the capital. In January 1838, the Lord Mayor of the City of London announced that he had received a letter from a ‘Peckham resid…

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Don’t fear the fairies – but do allow a little enchantment into your life
type: item
date: 2025-05-23T15:39:28.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Witches
description: In an age in which we are no longer mortally afraid of the supernatural, there's space to enjoy freely magic and ritual, Professor Ronald Hutton tells David Musgrove
encoded: Most of us, these days, do not believe in fairies. But maybe we should allow a little more enchantment into our lives – that is the Life Lesson from History that Professor Ronald Hutton would have us consider. In late December every year, on the winter solstice, I like to make a mini-pilgrimage to Avebury at dawn. Avebury is, of course, one of Britain’s most impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments – a huge Neolithic stone circle, surrounded by a massive bank and ditch, with two smaller stone circles inside. It’s so big, in fact, that inside the stone circle is an entire village and a pub (which are obviously substantially later in date than the megaliths). I’m not alone in heading to this huge henge for the solstice – many are drawn to it, and there is something of a carnival vibe. I get up at about 4am and generally make some of my friends get up as well (they thank me not for this). We drive for an hour in the dark and then go for a jog for a few miles from the stone circle, past the enormous and abundantly enigmatic Silbury Hill, up to the West Kennet Long Barrow, and then back along the avenue of standing stones that leads into the henge and circle. I try to plan it to arrive back in Avebury as dawn breaks, but I never get the timing right, and it’s invariably overcast anyway, so I’ve never witnessed an impressive spiritual sunrise moment. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/HEPKG2avebury-846ee37.jpg" width="5100" height="3400" alt="A large rock takes up half the image. In the background a long line of people gather together under the purple sky" title="Avebury in Wiltshire is home to Britain’s largest stone circle, which is so big that inside are an entire village and a pub (built much later) (Image by Alamy)" /> I thought about Avebury after I’d chatted to Professor Hutton, one of the leading experts on the history of belief, ritual and the supernatural. I invited him to talk about his life lessons from history and …

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Scotland's season of the witch
type: item
date: 2025-05-02T08:00:54.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Witches
description: In 16th and 17th-century Scotland, many hundreds of ‘witches’ were put to death – 10 times the proportion executed in England. Martha McGill asks what drove the killings
encoded: In November 1590, a servant named Geillis Duncan from East Lothian was interrogated by her employer, David Seton. According to Newes from Scotland, a 1591 pamphlet that included a report of the case, Geillis used to sneak out of her master’s house at night. She also “took in hand to help all such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity” and performed “many matters most miraculous”. Suspicions aroused, Seton questioned Duncan about how she worked her cures. When she gave no answer, he tortured her with thumbscrews and by “binding or wrenching her head with a cord or rope”. Still she remained silent. Finally, Seton and others searched her for a ‘devil’s mark’ – a blemish or insensitive spot created by Satan – and found one on her throat. She broke down and confessed “that all her doings were done by the wicked allurements and enticements of the devil, and that she did them by witchcraft”. Witchcraft had been criminalised in 1563, and there had been a handful of prosecutions since. But Duncan’s confession kicked off something new – Scotland’s first large-scale witch-hunt. What’s striking about this panic over supposed black magic is just how much more intense and lethal it was than witch-hunting in other European countries – perhaps most notably England. Read more | Why was King James VI and I obsessed with witch hunts? Following her interrogation (involving torture), Geillis Duncan claimed to have participated in a night-time witches’ gathering, also known as a sabbat, at North Berwick kirk. She alleged that other locals were present, and as many as 70 people were ultimately accused. Their confessions detailed bizarre and alarming practices. Supposedly they had sailed across the sea in sieves, meeting at the kirk to dance and sing. The devil had preached from the pulpit, and they had kissed his buttocks. Some of the accused also claimed to have attacked King James VI, casting spells to harm him or raising storms to sink his ships. Newes from…

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Why it was more dangerous to steal a loaf of bread than commit murder in medieval England
type: item
date: 2025-05-01T15:43:16.000Z
creator: Kev Lochun
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In medieval England, violence was a reality of everyday life — but theft? That was deliberate, unforgivable, and more likely to get you hanged. Criminology professor Manuel Eisner explains why
encoded: If you killed a man in 14th-century England, there was a good chance you’d get away with it. Not because the law was soft, or justice disorganised — in fact, homicide was a capital offence. But because the system, and the society around it, often preferred to look the other way. “The jury often reached a not guilty verdict simply because they thought, ‘This person doesn’t deserve to be hanged’”, explains Professor Manuel Eisner, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. Read more | Are your neighbours spying on you? In the 17th century they had the power to destroy your life “They thought, ‘He’s a respectable member of the community. He gives to the Church. He has apprentices who he trains. He does all kinds of things right. And here was this stupid conflict that ended up badly, and somebody died.’” Theft, however, was a different story. In the eyes of the court, and in the minds of the people, this was a much more calculated and unforgivable betrayal – a sign, according to Eisner, of moral rot. And for that, you could be hanged without hesitation. Violence was common – and often forgiven By today’s standards, murder was shockingly frequent in medieval England. Homicide rates, says Eisner, were “20 to 50 times more frequent than they are currently in England and Wales”. Yet despite the brutal frequency of killings, very few of them ended in punishment. “In principle, medieval law was harsh,” says Eisner. “The only penalty for homicide that you could possibly get was death by hanging.” Yet in practice, the system was far more lenient. “We know that 90 to 95 per cent of all cases that ended up being tried ended with a non-guilty verdict.” That verdict wasn’t always reached through genuine conviction in the defendant’s innocence. Sometimes, says Eisner, a not-guilty verdict would be used to subvert a punishment, even if someone was believed to be guilty. Many cases never reached trial at all. Numerous suspected killers simply disappeared: as soon as they were named, they w…

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The "outwardly respectable" man who had a body in his basement: how the Dr Crippen case shocked Britain
type: item
date: 2025-04-24T08:00:31.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Hallie Rubenhold speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about the notorious Crippen murder case – and why we need to expose the enduring misogyny that blackened the victim’s name.
encoded: Ellie Cawthorne: In 1910, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen murdered his wife, Belle Elmore, before going on the run with his mistress, triggering an international manhunt. It was one of the biggest news stories of the day and became known as the ‘crime of the century’. What drew you to this case as a historian? Hallie Rubenhold: I believe that historical true crime can offer a lens through which we can look at a particular moment in time – and this case is no different. You have a huge amount of documentation – witness statements, police files, trial transcripts – revealing what people saw, what they experienced, what their daily lives were like. It’s like a core sample of what was happening in the world at a certain time, and it goes very deep. As a social historian, that’s priceless. Read more | Hallie Rubenhold: “To most people, the women killed by the Ripper are just corpses. I want to tell a different story” What can you tell us about the man at the centre of this case? Hawley Harvey Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan in 1862. In 19th-century America, it was easy to leave your past behind and become somebody else – and Crippen did that a lot. He trained as a doctor and specialised in homeopathic medicine, which was seen as a legitimate, progressive field at the time. At some point, though, Crippen gave up on being a respectable doctor and decided to work in patent medicine, which was a huge industry at the turn of the 20th century. You could open any newspaper and find adverts for nostrums or cure-alls that claimed to be able to resolve anything from rheumatism to acne. Crippen decided that this was how he would make his fortune – as a snake-oil salesman, essentially. From that point on, he fell deeper and deeper into medical fraud, which proved a slippery slope into fraud in general. Eventually he ended up in London, the white-collar fraud capital of the world at the time. During your research, you also explored the story of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte Bell. …

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Tudor angels of death: the 16th-century obsession with female killers
type: item
date: 2025-04-18T08:00:09.000Z
creator: Blessin Adams
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
description: Men committed most violent crimes in Tudor and Stuart England. But when women murdered, the press had a field day. Blessin Adams asks what drove society’s gleeful fascination with its “angels of death”
encoded: "Cruel and barbarous news from Cheapside," thundered the headline on 1676 pamphlet. Read on, it invited, to be horrified by the tale of an "unhuman mistress" who attempted to cook her appearance alive on a spit. Another news piece from 1637, which was entitled “Natures Cruell StepDames: or, Matchlesse Monsters of the Female Sex”, grimly recounted the “unnaturall murthering” of two innocent children by their mothers. Such gruesome titles might not look so very out of place on today’s newsstands and magazine racks. Like us, people in early modern Britain were fascinated by tales of true crime, murder and violent death. Pamphlets and broadside ballads describing the foul deeds of cold-blooded killers were hugely popular, and were sold on street corners, posted in public houses and even sung aloud to audiences – accompanied by surprisingly jolly tunes. True crime was big business – and, in the literary marketplace of the 16th and 17th centuries, stories of the most extraordinary and bloody acts sold the greatest number of copies. Such murder pamphlets do not provide a realistic representation of crime in the early modern period. Instead, they reflected their readership’s penchant for the crimes considered the most exciting or the most frightening – and, therefore, the most profitable. The bestselling and most prolific genre of murder news featured female killers: wives who murdered their unwanted husbands; ‘bastard-bearing’ mothers who killed their babies to escape social disgrace; wicked witches who cast fatal spells on their neighbours. Such cases were vastly overrepresented in the literature, perhaps giving readers a distorted view of the threat posed by women. Read more | Lady killers: what 5 murder cases can reveal about the lives of women in the 19th and 20th centuries At that time, men committed the majority of violent crimes and homicides. From tavern brawls to duels, male violence was ingrained in early modern society – so much so that it was deemed to be norma…

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Was Gilles de Rais really history’s first recorded serial killer?
type: item
date: 2025-03-07T08:34:29.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
description: The Baron of Retz and veteran of the Hundred Years’ War confessed to monstrous crimes of torturing and murdering children. Arrested in 1440, he was found guilty, and executed. So is there reason to believe he was innocent?
encoded: Sometimes referred to as one of history’s first recorded serial killers, Gilles de Rais, the Baron of Retz, was executed in October 1440 for the murders of at least 140 children. Whether he was actually guilty, however, remains a matter of debate. Who was Gilles de Rais? Born in c1404, Rais came into his title while still a child, making him one of the most powerful nobles in Brittany and among the wealthiest in all of France. And if a fortune built from the combined wealth of the House of Laval on his father’s side and House of Croan on his mother’s was not enough, he would also marry an extremely wealthy distant cousin. In his youth, he embarked on a military career and was thrust into fighting the English in the Hundred Years’ War. Building a reputation for himself, he served side-by-side with none other than Joan of Arc, including at her famous lifting of the siege of Orleans in 1429. Later that year, whilst still in his twenties, Rais was appointed Marshal of France by the newly crowned King Charles VII. In the aftermath of Joan of Arc’s execution, Rais stepped away from the army and returned to his estate in Brittany. He reportedly spent huge sums of money on maintaining his household, and as a patron to musicians and writers. His family feared that he was emptying the coffers so much that they sought help from the king, who passed a decree preventing Rais from selling his lands. What were Gilles de Rais’ crimes? It was also around this time that he supposedly committed his horrific crimes. He became fascinated with the occult and befriended a cleric named Prelati, who helped in Rais’ attempts in alchemy and the summoning of demons. More disturbingly, rumours began to swirl about missing children in his lands. Some had even been seen approaching the gates of his castle in order to beg for food or coins, never to be seen again. Upon investigation, Rais was arrested in September 1440, accused of – among other crimes, such as heresy and sodomy – the abduction, to…

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