HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-09-03T13:01:08.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
items: Designs for life: the lasting impact of Art Deco
items: Zoot suits, mashers & New Romantics: the evolution of the dandy
items: Flower power: how plants transformed the lives of 17th-century women
items: Why did Georgian dresses cost as much as a townhouse?!
items: Bear fat, false rumps and arsenic makeup: 7 of the most bizarre beauty trends from the past
items: Underwear history: everything you wanted to know
items: “Leisure was built into the whole shopping experience” | Annie Gray on the history of the high street
items: A bodice-ripping revolution: how Victorian women cast off deadly fashion trends
items: False rumps & rotten teeth: 400 years of bizarre beauty practices

The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
type: item
date: 2025-09-03T13:00:50.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
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…

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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…

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Zoot suits, mashers & New Romantics: the evolution of the dandy
type: item
date: 2025-08-13T06:30:12.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Peter Andersson delves into various dandy subcultures that saw men dressing immaculately, from the early 19th century to the 1980s
encoded: From zoot suiters and mods, to mashers and Congolese sapeurs, since the early 19th century, fashionable male subcultures have popped up across the globe. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Peter Andersson examines how the idea of the 'dandy' has evolved over time, and argues that the idea of dressing well was not limited to the elites. Peter Andersson is the author of The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2025) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?id=489797&clickref=historyextra-288194&awinmid=3787&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fthe-dandy%2Fpeter-k-andersson%2F9780198882435%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe%2520Dandy%253A%2520A%2520People%27s%2520History%2520constitutes%2520the%2520first%2520ever%2520history%2Cstyle%252Dconscious%2520men%2520about%2520town.#:~:text=The%20Dandy%3A%20A%20People's%20History%20constitutes%20the%20first%20ever%20history,style%2Dconscious%20men%20about%20town." rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Buy now on Waterstones

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Flower power: how plants transformed the lives of 17th-century women
type: item
date: 2025-06-19T08:00:34.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Few 17th-century women could travel the world. But the world could visit them in their gardens. Susannah Lyon-Whaley reveals how exotic plants – from Chinese rhubarb to South American passionfruit – opened new horizons in fashion, food and science
encoded: Anna Buckett had never seen a pineapple. Undeterred, on 12 July 1656, she took the bold move of stitching one. While the fine stitches on her sampler show dexterity, the result is more artistic than realistic. The red pineapple looks a little like a monstrous jelly with beetle legs. Amid Anna’s stitched pinks, pansies and honeysuckles, the pineapple – a native of countries like Brazil and Suriname that would not grow successfully in English gardens until the 1700s – was out of place. She had never seen a pineapple, but Anna may have seen pictures. The first printed depiction of a pineapple in Europe was in black and white in Gonzalo de Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias (1535). Another herbal text (1641) claimed that the fruit tasted “as if wine, rosewater and sugar were mixed together”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2HHR700cmyk-ce191d2.jpg" width="1545" height="1030" alt="A detailed and colourful piece of needlework shows a scene with two people, a lion and a horse at the top, with several plants, leaves and red pineapples across the bottom" title="A needlework sampler stitched by Anna Buckett in 1656, including her depiction of a red pineapple, resembling a “monstrous jelly with beetle legs” (Image by Alamy)" /> Anna may have been the Anne Buckett baptised in May 1643 in Middlesex, or the Ann Becket baptised in December 1644 in Surrey, though neither is certain. Like other daughters of merchants or gentlemen learning the gentler arts, she stitched both gardens she saw and those she imagined. Needlework creations of the time swarmed with peacocks, parrots, lions, leopards and sunflowers from foreign lands. In the 17th century, voyages to new colonies in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and India turned plants like tobacco and sugarcane into profits. They also sent waves of plants rippling back across the sea. For women at home, gardens made the wider world a material reality. Dainties for a queen In 1629, John…

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Why did Georgian dresses cost as much as a townhouse?!
type: item
date: 2025-06-03T09:50:40.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne met Professor Serena Dyer and her team of experts who are attempting to get up close and personal with the fine stitches of Georgian society by recreating a traditional mantua sacque dress – from scratch
encoded: Could you call a dress radical? The rise of the 18th-century mantua certainly marked a societal shift that went well beyond a fashion trend. As the popularity of this style grew, so too did the role of women in an industry previously dominated by men. Forget tailors – if you wanted to keep up with the Georgians, the mantua maker is where you’d go. To find out more about this generation of trend-setting women, HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne met Professor Serena Dyer and her team of experts who are attempting to get up close and personal with the fine stitches of Georgian society by recreating a traditional mantua sacque dress – from scratch. View Green Video on the source website

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Bear fat, false rumps and arsenic makeup: 7 of the most bizarre beauty trends from the past
type: item
date: 2025-01-17T10:53:04.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Ideas about beauty change all the time and, over the years, British women have done strange things to achieve a desired look. Here Margarette Lincoln explores some bizarre beauty rituals from the past 400 years, from larding hair with bear fat to eating arsenic
encoded: Personal appearance is linked to power, status, and self-identity so women have always tried to look their best. Before makeup and toiletries became mega industries, beauty products were limited, and women resorted to inventions that seem truly weird today… Hair looking lacklustre? Try bear fat For centuries, bear fat was touted to promote hair growth. Cleopatra is said to have been an early fan. Bears have strong, thick coats, so people reasoned that their fat would make tresses luxuriant – and even prevent hair loss. Britain imported tons of bear fat from France each year. Russian bears were thought to yield the best. The fat was refined, mixed with beef marrow, and then perfumed to make ‘Bear’s Grease’. But the genuine article was in short supply, so was routinely adulterated with pig fat or lard. To prevent doubt, canny retailers proudly invited customers to view the fat cut from recently slaughtered bears. In the 1790s, Reeves’s Perfumery Warehouse and Ornamental Hair Manufactory, based in Holborn, London advertised that it killed one bear each month for the purpose. Bear’s Grease was also used in pomade, the waxy substance used to keep hair in place. Persian Rose Pomatum, for instance, claimed to be made from “clarified Bear’s Grease, Buffalo’s Marrow, and Odour of Roses”. Such products attracted hungry pests, as did the powder used to bulk up a hairstyle. One 18th-century woman recalled seeing a mouse peep out of the curls of a lady in front of her at church, “no doubt well fed with so much powder and pomatum”. Women combated such unwelcome pests in their hair with head-scratchers and carefully placed flea traps (tiny boxes filled with blood and glue). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/01/GettyImages-90743543-e8f3323.jpg" width="734" height="1024" alt="UNITED KINGDOM - JANUARY 31: Vignette from a lithographic plate showing a shop exterior and a sign advertising 'Bear�s Grease' which was supposed to stimulate the growth …

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Underwear history: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2024-12-15T07:30:58.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Dr Serena Dyer briefs us on the history of underwear – from bras and knickers, to G-strings, bloomers and codpieces
encoded: When did people first start wearing underwear? What's the difference between drawers and bloomers? Did medieval women wear bras? Were Victorian corsets really as uncomfortable to wear as you might imagine? And why did men wear codpieces? In this 'everything you wanted to know' episode, Dr Serena Dyer answers listener questions on the history of underwear, in conversation with David Musgrove.

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“Leisure was built into the whole shopping experience” | Annie Gray on the history of the high street
type: item
date: 2024-12-12T09:00:54.000Z
creator: Dr Annie Gray
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Shopping
description: Ellie Cawthorne talks to Annie Gray about how the evolution of the high street has been a story of growth, specialisation and diversification – but also of entertainment and enduring appeal
encoded: What can looking at a high street in any given era tell us about that period? So much. If you walk down any high street, you’ll see the things that people want and need on an everyday basis. So if you were strolling down a high street in, say, 1903, you’d have saddlers and leather workers, and specialist shops selling pork and different meats. You’d see a lot of shops selling cloth, because ready-to-wear clothing wasn’t around then. And you’d encounter lots of items that we simply don’t have a role for in our lives today – tiny little bits of ironmongery and things like that. Read more | A history of the high street Alongside the quotidian stuff, high streets have always been relatively prestigious areas for leisure shopping, featuring the likes of jewellers, swordsmiths, clockmakers and lace merchants. Luxury goods such as these are often imports, so they can tell you a lot about Britain’s place in a global context. Take tea for example: it was first sold in china shops, then in high-end grocers, then – as it became cheaper – everywhere. Just following the journey of tea reveals so much about the way in which people interacted with the global landscape of commercialisation. When did a cluster of shops that we might recognise as a high street first appear in British towns? The evolution of the high street was a really gradual process. The market was still the most important place to shop – certainly for the working classes – well into the 20th century. Market day was always the busiest day in town. But between 1650 and 1750, most towns in Britain begin to have some fixed shops, usually around or leading from the market. One of the first types of shop to move into fixed premises was the butcher. That kept mess away from the main shopping area, and enabled butchers to lock up stock and install cold stores. Read more | A brief history of shopping Traditionally, the market square was also a gathering place – somewhere people went to enjoy entertainment, to jeer at crimi…

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A bodice-ripping revolution: how Victorian women cast off deadly fashion trends
type: item
date: 2024-11-04T09:00:18.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: From fire hazard petticoats to garments that caused fainting and even death by poison, some trends in 19th-century women’s fashion were risky business for those who wore them. How did things change? Matilda Nightingale explores stories of the women who fought back…
encoded: Global expansion and the Industrial Revolution brought about monumental change in the 19th century – not least when it came to making clothes. At the Great Exhibition in 1851, the latest machineries were showcased to huge crowds and manufacturers – from spinning jennies (invented in the previous century) to newly developed fully automatic power looms. The textile industry had leapt forward, allowing women's wardrobes to expand as a result. But among all the promise of progress, a poignant irony lingered. While production and increased choice took centre stage, the new garments being produced on these machines were becoming increasingly restrictive. Corsets and crinolines became a symbol of social status in Victorian England – but at the same time they caused health issues and even restricted how women lived their lives. Corsets had been in fashion for centuries, but they became more widespread in the Victorian era. By the late 19th-century, the hourglass corset style emerged and gained popularity. These certainly looked beautiful – with fabrics of cotton, satin, silk, and embroidery adding to the era’s aesthetic that drastically accentuated the wearer’s bust and hips – but their design also put pressure on both those areas, and the stomach. To create the desired silhouette, women were laced into a construction of whalebone (or reeds and steel alternatives), linen or silk. Eyelets and steel busks (rods that kept the garment upright) enabled the corsets to be drawn even tighter – down to 18 inches in circumference in some circumstances. How dangerous were corsets really? All of this put enormous strain on the body. There were cases when women were so restricted by their corsets that they fainted. In an article looking at the health effects of women’s clothes – published by the British Medical Journal in 1887 – the author notes: “A stout kitchen-maid, aged sixteen, recently under my care, complained of fainting in her household work. The fainting-fits did not recur whe…

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False rumps & rotten teeth: 400 years of bizarre beauty practices
type: item
date: 2024-08-29T08:26:42.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Margarette Lincoln reveals the extraordinary lengths women have resorted to in the pursuit of beauty over the past 400 years
encoded: From false rumps and fake teeth to toxic skincare and insect-laden wigs, over the past 400 years, British women have resorted to extraordinary lengths in the pursuit of beauty. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Margarette Lincoln delves into some of these past beauty practices, and considers their impact on the women who engaged in them. View Green Video on the source website

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