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10 children and 12,000 pieces of art: the remarkable life of Lady Charlotte Schreiber
She was a headstrong scholar who contributed hugely to the study of medieval literature and challenged the societal norms of the 19th century. So why isn’t she better known? Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth traces the adventures of an unsung heroine
While hunting for antiques in the Netherlands in the 1880s, the esteemed art dealer Joseph Joel Duveen received a tip-off that some “wonderful pieces of china” had come up for sale in a remote village. Getting there would involve a tediously long journey but, undeterred, Duveen set out. Several hours later, however, he spotted a carriage speeding past in the opposite direction, and was able to make out its passenger. Recognising the face of his great rival, Duveen promptly turned around, empty-handed, ruefully realising that she had beaten him to the village and “snatched the prize”. The victor on this occasion was Lady Charlotte Schreiber. Surprisingly, given her long life – she was 82 when she died, in 1895 – which included two marriages, 10 children, scandalous affairs and a celebrated translation of the medieval Welsh Mabinogion, Lady Charlotte remains relatively unknown today. Often erroneously dismissed as a mere magpie obsessed with trinkets, for decades her second husband and sons were credited for accumulating her great collection. Yet, shortly before her death, she donated a trove of some 5,000 pieces to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) and the British Museum. Defiance and scandal Charlotte endured a difficult childhood. Born Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie in 1812, she lost her father, the 9th Earl of Lindsey, when she was only six years old. Her mother remarried, and her new stepfather, the Reverend Peter Pegus, turned out to be a violent alcoholic; he once drank a whole mug of lamp oil, mistaking it for beer. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain At the age of 10, Charlotte started keeping a diary, in which she wrote almost every day until she lost her eyesight in her late seventies. A true polymath, she gave herself “a man’s education”, studying history and literature, and learning Arabic and Farsi (Persian) as well as Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian and even Hebrew. She dedicated hours to her “oriental studies”, devouring Barthélemy d’Herbelot de Molainville’s monumental 1697 compendium Bibliothèque Orientale, and later became a subscriber to the Oriental Translation Fund. To a young woman frustrated by her privileged yet undeniably restrained upbringing, the ‘Orient’ represented an imagined place of freedom where the stagnant and gendered traditions of elite British life did not exist. Throughout her years, Charlotte defied the strict protocols of Georgian and Victorian society, causing various scandals. As a teenager she fell in love with a local squire, Augustus O’Brien, but her mother “had sooner see me in my grave than married to Augustus”. She also had a dalliance with her brother’s tutor, a Mr Martin, and shortly after became “very good friends” with Benjamin Disraeli, whom she described as “wild, enthusiastic, and very poetical”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/HYB33K-fcd5698-e1771492464411.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A historical-style painting of a large industrial complex with many smokestacks releasing thick smoke into the sky. Several furnaces glow with open flames. In the foreground, workers shovel coal and operate machinery, surrounded by carts and industrial equipment. The scene conveys the intensity, pollution, and harsh labor conditions of early industrialisation." title="A painting of the Dowlais Ironworks, where Charlotte and her husband Josiah oversaw the management of over 5,000 employees (Image by Alamy)" /> In 1833, Charlotte married Welsh ironmaster and Whig politician Josiah John Guest. Although he was 27 years her senior, the two fell madly in love and had 10 children. Together they oversaw the day-to-day management of the Dowlais ironworks and its 5,000-plus employees. Charlotte managed the financial accounts, translated engineering manuals, established evening schools for the workers and their families, and even conducted business meetings. By 1839, she observed that she had successfully “schooled myself into habits of business that it is more congenial to me to calculate the advantage of half percent commission on a cargo of iron than to go to the finest ball in the world”. Welsh legend Charlotte’s marriage to John – whom she called Merthyr, Welsh for ‘martyr’ – gave her the freedom she so desperately craved. She used her autonomy to embrace her passion for history, carrying out archaeological excavations at ruins such as Morlais Castle in Glamorgan, where she discovered medieval seals and coins. Inspired by her “violent affection for Welsh castles”, Charlotte became a founding member of the Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion y Fenni (Abergavenny Welsh Society), encouraging the use of the Welsh language among all social classes. Resolving to outwardly demonstrate a sense of Welsh patriotism befitting her new social position, she wore traditional Welsh dress, taught herself medieval Welsh and received the Bardic name ‘Olwen’ – a famous protagonist from Welsh folklore. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/AY4G19cmykwebready-8a87b35-e1771492225305.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of two women dressed in long dresses with aprons over the top, tall black hats and shawls around their shoulders. One is standing in front of a spinning wheel, and the other is to the left behind it, standing in a doorway" title="This photograph shows women in traditional Welsh dress, which Charlotte adopted on marriage to Welshman John Guest (Image by Alamy)" /> While still in her twenties, Charlotte began the colossal task of writing an English translation of the Llyfr Coch Hugest (Red Book of Hergest), a compilation of medieval Welsh ballads and oral traditions including the tales known as the Mabinogion. It was not a straightforward undertaking. Contemporaries were concerned that the work would not be taken seriously if translated by a woman, never mind an English one, and she suspected that her Welsh teachers were passing her translations on to others. Read more | She held wealth, power and prestige: so why did this Georgian aristocrat fake her daughter’s death? Her fears were realised when the French writer Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué tried to publish her translation of the Mabinogion story Peredur, passing it off as his own work. Determined to thwart his plans, Charlotte poured all her energy into completing her version. At one point she worked on it for 12 hours straight, taking a break only to give birth to her fifth child. Thanks to these monumental efforts, she published her Mabinogion in seven parts between 1838 and 1845 to great acclaim. In the 1840s Charlotte began to assemble an art collection, seeking out works from the great European schools of the Renaissance. Her purchases included a piece by a follower of the great 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger, which she acquired in 1842 at the ‘Great Sale’ of the celebrated 18th-century gossip and socialite Horace Walpole’s estate of Strawberry Hill, near London. Her husband, John Guest, died in 1852, and the following year Charlotte hired Charles Schreiber (1826–1884), a young Cambridge academic, to tutor her eldest son. They initially attempted to hide their affair, but it wasn’t long before Charlotte appeared with her hair dyed brown – likely to diminish the couple’s 14-year age gap – and announced their engagement. Court cases ensued, and only three of her 10 children attended the wedding. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/Credit-Common-Crow-Bookss000104757cmykwebready-e198adb-e1771492058978.jpeg" width="1500" height="1001" alt="An open book showing a colour illustration of ornate Persian glassware on the left page and a title page on the right. The illustration depicts a tall decorative bottle with a stopper and two matching cups, all with intricate floral and bird designs. The title page lists bibliographic details for “Lady Charlotte Schreiber’s Journals,” including publication information and handwritten catalog markings." title="The opening page from a copy of Lady Charlotte Schreiber’s Journals, which was originally published in 1911, detailing all 12,000 objects that Charlotte had collected (Image by Common Crow Books)" /> Making a mark With newfound joie de vivre, Charlotte spent the next few decades travelling the world with Charles, dedicating herself to forming the greatest collection of ‘ceramic art’ ever seen. She acquired more than 12,000 objects, all of which she numbered and recorded in her journal. Armed with a red velvet bag, she often spent upwards of seven hours per day in search of objects, particularly European and Asian ceramics. Back at home in London she meticulously researched everything she’d bought, transcribed archives and documentary sources, and even got her hands dirty assisting with excavations at archaeological sites. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history Charlotte approached collecting just as she did everything else in her life – with an unyielding commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to succeed and make her mark on the world. As a committed cultural philanthropist, she believed in the educational power of museums and, after Charles’ death, declared her collection “the property of the nation”. From 1885 until her death 10 years later, she gave thousands of pieces to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) and the British Museum – unprecedented bequests for a woman collector. At a social gathering one evening in the 1840s, Charlotte was perusing the ‘finest London ladies’ featured in Heath’s Book of Beauty for 1839 – an annual of contemporary fashion and style. A fellow guest, seeing that Charlotte was not listed among the women, commented that “not all the fairies are present; the Welsh fairy Olwen is missing”. “She was not a fairy,” Charlotte replied, “she was a Goddess.” Here’s to that. This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Was Homer a real person? Michael Wood on the surprising origins of The Iliad
" Scholars have applied models used in genetic research to Homer’s Iliad", writes Michael Wood
Proust’s famous novel is called In Search of Lost Time, and isn’t that the key to why we love history? It’s the urge to recover the lost past. Can we get beyond the mysterious veil to real events and people? Can we even feel how they felt? And as historians, we always hope to find new sources and new ways of seeing. In our time, many new paths have been opened up by science. For example, scientists have adopted techniques used for decoding the genetic history of humans, not only through their genes, but by tracking transformations in language. This form of historical linguistics, known as time depth linguistics, has helped establish the family tree of languages. One branch, the Indo-European languages, has been known since the 18th century, connecting Greek, Latin, Persian and Sanskrit in the east, and English, Welsh and Old Irish in the west. Now we can see when and where the branches on the family tree diverged. It’s been proved, for example, that, as tradition had always said, Sanskrit-speaking migrants – so called ‘Aryans’ – migrated from Afghanistan into north-west India in the late Bronze Age, the period of the earliest Sanskrit texts in the Rig Veda. Scholars have applied the same models used in genetic research to one of the most celebrated texts in western culture, Homer’s Iliad. As a tool kit, they used word lists invented by the linguist Morris Swadesh (1909–67) and other scholars. In this case the focus was key words shared among the Indo-European languages. With the Iliad, science came up with a likely date of composition: 762 BC (plus or minus 50 years). The exactness is perhaps illusory: but it corroborates the older ideas of Homeric scholars that the poem dates from the eighth century BC. Read more | National English: the language that would save England It has long been known that the Iliad is the product of oral composition, a tissue of repeat phrases that allowed the poet to improvise his story. In fact, the Homeric epics came out of centuries of oral transmission. The heroes’ weapons are of bronze, though Homer lived in the Iron Age; Ajax’s tower shield comes from the middle Bronze Age, Odysseus’s “silver studded sword” is of the late Bronze Age. Conversely, you could argue that the story of the wooden horse comes not from the likely time of the Trojan War (just after 1300 BC?) but from the eighth century BC, when the new technology of siege warfare included wheeled engines shaped like a giant bull, inside which men worked a battering ram. Was this a brilliant invention by the poet, introducing a piece of modern technology as a plot device and a metaphor? It all emphasises how the poem came at the end of a long process of invention and performance. Another aspect of Homer that has come to the fore in the last few years is his debt to near eastern storytelling, borrowing stories and motifs from the Epic of Gilgamesh and other myths from Mesopotamia. These came from versions in Hurrian, Ugaritic and Hittite, transmitted by travelling bards and minstrels at local courts, religious fairs and festivals. Read more | He tried to conquer knowledge itself – instead this ancient Mesopotamian king resorted to rule with terror That’s where Homer comes in. It is now thought Homer was a single person, an itinerant bard composing and singing his stories towards 700 BC, perhaps as tradition said, in Smyrna, or on the nearby island of Chios. Whether blind or not in old age, he must have seen some of the local scenes he so minutely describes, like the flocks of geese and cranes, and long-necked swans “rising and circling noisily, rejoicing in their wings by the streams of the Cayster in the meadow of Asia”. The text we have was first written down a century or so after his death, perhaps towards 600 BC, and from then on it was performed annually at festivals in Athens. In the tones and accents, it retained the tell-tale signs of the generations of sung oral performance that lay behind it. Homer’s text reached the form in which we know it in around 200 BC, though marginal notes in later manuscripts preserve alternative readings, some of which, like shards of memory, pass down no-longer-understood words of Bronze Age origin, or reflect ancient variants in the long storytelling tradition. That, of course, continues, giving birth to countless new tellings, in books, poems, films and video games, as the tale continues to spread and multiply across the world. And now, like tree-ring dating, we have another window on the first work of European literature. This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Shakespeare didn't love his wife and he abandoned his family to move to London: are these 13 rumours about the playwright true?
With the help of Dr Paul Edmondson, we explore the historical evidence and plausibility behind 13 common statements about William Shakespeare – from his flight from Stratford to pursue his career, to the idea that his marriage to Anne Hathaway was loveless…
1. Shakespeare was forced to leave Stratford-upon-Avon in a hurry after he was caught poaching deer at nearby Charlecote According to legend, young William Shakespeare was hauled up before local magistrate and owner of Charlecote Park, Sir Thomas Lucy, after he was caught poaching deer on the estate. It’s a popular tale, but is there any truth to it? “The deer-poaching story is a nice anecdote, but we don’t know if it actually happened,” says Paul Edmondson. “There is no documentary evidence of any local prosecutions for poaching during Shakespeare’s younger years, and there wasn’t even a deer park at Charlecote at this time. That doesn’t prove that Shakespeare wasn’t found poaching somewhere on the estate, though. The story dates back to at least the 1680s – within the lifetime of Sir Thomas Lucy’s great-nephews and great-nieces – so there could be a ring of truth to it somewhere.” 2. Anne Hathaway was an ‘old maid’ when she married Shakespeare Anne Hathaway was 26 when she wed the 18-year-old William Shakespeare, but she was far from being left on the shelf, says Paul Edmondson. “Men were definitely marrying women of Anne’s age during this period – she was certainly still considered to be of marriageable age. What is unusual about their union, though, is Shakespeare’s youth. He was technically underage when they married (men came of age at 21) and had to ask his father’s permission to wed, so it was a pretty unusual set of circumstances. “Historian Jeanne Jones has identified that between 1570 and 1630, the average age for men to marry was 26, and only three married under the age of 20 – of those three, Shakespeare was the youngest, and the only man whose wife-to-be was already pregnant.” “Anne’s pregnancy before marriage and Shakespeare’s youth would have been something of a scandal,” continues Edmondson, “and certainly not something anyone would have planned. The marriage meant that Shakespeare was forced to give up whatever apprenticeship he had [married men were not allowed to be apprentices], so there must have been real concerns about how he would support his new family with no formal trade under his belt.” 3. William and Anne were married at his local parish church, Holy Trinity The location of Anne and William’s marriage has frustrated centuries of biographers, and there is still no definitive answer. Several options have been put forward: an entry for the marriage licence of ‘Willelmum Shaxpere’ and ‘Annam Whateley’ at St Andrew’s Church in Temple Grafton (a village about five miles from Stratford, and four miles from Anne Hathaway’s house in Shottery) has often been cited as ‘proof’ of the marriage. Other possible locations include St Martin’s, Worcester; Luddington; and Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon. “I’m increasingly of the view that William and Anne married at All Saints Church in Billesley,” comments Edmondson. “It was the church that Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, chose for her second marriage, even though she had no known connections to the place – it might well be that she chose the venue because her grandparents had been married there. Billesley is also close to Wilmcote, which is where Shakespeare’s mother’s family was from. Plus, it was out of the way for a hasty marriage because Anne was already pregnant. The associated scandal would have meant the pair would likely have avoided their local church of Holy Trinity.” 4. Shakespeare abandoned his family for a new life in London, but retired back to Stratford-upon-Avon “Nobody knows the precise reason why Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon for London,” says Edmondson. “In the absence of this information, a rags to riches, ‘Dick Whittington’ type of story has grown up around Shakespeare – that he went to find his fortune and then remained in London until his ‘retirement’, when he returned home to Stratford. The truth is, that there were always two centres of Shakespeare’s life from around the late 1580s, when we know he was in London, until around 1612, when we know he was more or less living full-time in Stratford. “Shakespeare bought New Place – a freehold with between 20 and 30 rooms, as the archaeology would have us believe – in 1597, and by 1598 had remodelled the front of it. The house was one of the largest in Stratford and would surely have been his pride and joy. His decision to buy and alter the house doesn’t smack of someone who wasn’t there often. New Place would have been his retreat when the London theatres closed due to plague, which they often did, and was where his wife and children were.” In 1602, Shakespeare bought land in Stratford for the sum of £320, followed by an investment of £440 in a share of Stratford’s tithes (a form of taxes on people who worked the land, which generated an income for their owners) – actions that would also place him frequently in his home town, comments Edmondson. “The investments Shakespeare makes in Stratford in 1602 and 1605 would have required managing and overseeing. What’s more, from 1604–12, references to Shakespeare in London are very few, which suggests he was spending more time in Stratford. When you look at the evidence, an image emerges of a man who was spending time in both places – this isn’t someone who, as it were, retired back to his hometown as Kenneth Branagh’s 2018 film, All Is True, would have us believe.” 5. Shakespeare is not the real author of the works attributed to him Myths and conspiracy theories have swirled around the authorship of Shakespeare’s works since the 19th century. Some doubters believe Shakespeare couldn’t have been a writer because no books are mentioned in his will, while others cite his humble background as a reason why he could not have been so successful. “Each piece of evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare did author the works rather than didn’t,” says Edmondson. “Books tended not to be mentioned in wills at this time; they were listed in inventories. And we don’t have an inventory for Shakespeare. Authorship deniers find it unlikely that someone from a humble background could have been so successful. But we see all the time that genius can arise from surprising places. Each piece of evidence that puts Shakespeare as the creator of his works needs to be contradicted before we can even consider anyone else as the possible author, and that’s something that authorship deniers simply cannot do.” But what about collaborations? “We’ve known that Shakespeare was a collaborator since his own lifetime,” comments Edmondson. “When The Two Noble Kinsmen (written in c1613–14), was published in 1634, it was jointly attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. The History of Cardenio, a lost play known to have been performed by the King’s Men in 1613, was also mentioned, posthumously, as a collaboration between them. Henry VIII, or All Is True was also written in collaboration with Fletcher, although this wasn’t realised until the 19th century. We know this because of stylistic evidence. For example, one of the stylistic ‘fingerprints’ of John Fletcher was that he used ‘ye’ rather than ‘you’. Shakespeare, on the other hand, rarely used ‘ye’, so the scenes written by Fletcher are pretty obvious. “We also know that he collaborated with Thomas Middleton. Shakespeare tended to collaborate at the beginning and the end of his career. Particularly before 1594 when he was a jobbing playwright finding his feet in the professional theatre world. After he becomes a co-founding shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men theatre company, Shakespeare seems to have become a single author focused on writing for the benefit of that company to make money.” 6. Shakespeare invented thousands of words Shakespeare has long been credited as the creator of thousands of words in the English language that are still in use today. But, says Edmondson, the number of words coined by the great playwright is actually significantly fewer. A team of experts led by Professor Jonathan Culpeper from Lancaster University, launched the three-year Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s Language research project in 2016, which used computer technology to analyse millions of words written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The research was discussed in a 2019 BBC Four documentary, Scuffles, Swagger and Shakespeare: The Hidden Story of English, in which Culpeper suggests that the amount of neologisms (newly coined words or expressions) created by Shakespeare may not be as numerous as has been suggested in the past – probably no more than 300–400 in total. 7. Shakespeare was unhappy in his marriage Although we will never know the true depth of feeling between the Shakespeares, William placed a great deal of trust and responsibility in Anne while he was away from home, according to Edmondson. She was mistress of New Place, managing a small staff and the household economy, as well as caring for, and arranging the education of, their three children. “It’s long been assumed by many that the fact Shakespeare spent time in London away from his family, combined with the hasty circumstances of their marriage and a large age gap, that William and Anne had an unhappy marriage,” comments Edmondson. “But if you study Shakespeare’s Sonnets, it’s very plausible that some them are addressed to, or are about, Anne. The final couplet of Sonnet 145, for example – which was identified as referring to Anne as recently as 1971 – reads: ‘‘I hate’, from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.’ “The sonnet is written in iambic tetrameter, and not iambic pentameter, so is therefore thought to be an early poem – ‘Hateaway’ was an alternative pronunciation of Hathaway, so it could well be a marriage poem. “Feminist scholar Germaine Greer has plausibly suggested that Sonnet 27 – which features the line ‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travail tired; But then begins a journey in my head’, followed by descriptions of a zealous pilgrimage made in his mind to his beloved – could well represent Shakespeare on tour thinking about his wife.” Much of the speculation about the Shakespeares’ marriage stems from the fact that, in his will, Shakespeare wrote: “I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture” – (‘furniture’ being the curtains and bedcover, which formed part of the complete bed). “The bed Shakespeare is referring to is likely to have been the bed that he and Anne would have shared,” comments Edmondson. “Beds were luxury items and valuable heirlooms – the best bed would likely have been reserved for guests and probably displayed downstairs where it could be seen and admired. “Wills have never been documents about sentiment. We apply sentiment to bequests, and in our modern sensibility, when we see the term ‘second best’, we assume it to be a slight. But it’s a bequest that has been inaccurately interpreted. There are other examples in wills of the period where second-best beds were left to a spouse. Such bequests came with an understanding about residential rights for the widow, to make sure that she had somewhere to sleep within the freehold or the house of the deceased. “The bulk of Shakespeare’s estate went to his daughter, Susanna, who, with her husband John Hall, moved into New Place while Anne was still there. Anne lived at New Place for another seven years until her death in 1623.” 8. Shakespeare was wealthy because he was a playwright “Not true,” says Edmondson. “Shakespeare was wealthy because he was a shareholder in two companies and two theatres – the Globe and the Blackfriars. People did not become wealthy from writing plays; you had to be a shareholder to earn real money.” 9. Some of Shakespeare’s wealth came from his father’s illegal wool dealings “This, for me, is not as mythical as it might seem,” comments Edmondson. “We know that John Shakespeare made a lot of money from wool from the fines he had to pay for dealing in wool without a licence. The level of the fine depended on the amount of wool a person was dealing, and the financial turnover from that business. From the fines John was paying, we can ascertain that he was making quite a lot of money from wool. It’s also interesting to note that in 1602, the year after his father died, Shakespeare suddenly invested a large sum of money in land in Stratford-upon-Avon. Well, that money came from somewhere...” 10. Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, drowned In 1596, William and Anne’s only son, Hamnet – twin to Judith – died at the age of 11. As was customary at the time, the cause of death was not recorded, and Hamnet was buried in the churchyard at Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon on 11 August. “Various causes of death have been suggested over the years, from drowning to plague,” says Edmondson. “But the truth is, we just don’t know.” Read more | Why did Maggie O'Farrell write about Shakespeare's son? 11. We don’t know what Shakespeare really looked like Of the many images of William Shakespeare, only two portraits purport to have been created from life: the so-called Cobbe portrait of c1610 and the famous Chandos portrait – painted between 1600–10 and the first portrait to be acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. But there are only two works of art that can be definitively identified as William Shakespeare, according to Edmondson, and both are posthumous. “The frontispiece for the title page of Shakespeare’s First Folio, published in 1623, features a portrait engraving of the playwright by Martin Droeshout,” he comments. “The second identifiable image of Shakespeare is the bust in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, which, thanks to research by Professor Lena Cowen Orlin, we now know was probably commissioned by Shakespeare himself.” 12. Shakespeare had an illegitimate son Poet and playwright Sir William Davenant (1606–68) was rumoured to be the illegitimate son of William Shakespeare in the playwright’s own lifetime – and he may well have been, according to Edmondson. “William was of the Davenant family in Oxford with whom Shakespeare probably stayed occasionally,” he comments. “Shakespeare would no doubt have been acquainted with William’s mother, Jane, and is even said by some to have stood as young William’s godfather.” Davenant never denied the rumours surrounding his parentage and went on to found the Duke’s Playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields after the Restoration in 1660, and was known as a theatre manager, poet and playwright, even adapting plays by Shakespeare. 13. Shakespeare died of a fever “The earliest reference to how Shakespeare died is in the 1660s, in a notebook belonging to the vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon in which he wrote that Shakespeare had had a ‘merry meeting’ with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton and had died of a fever that he had contracted,” explains Edmondson. “By the 18th century, this story had morphed into a tale that Shakespeare had been on a drinking bout around Stratford and woken up drunk beneath a tree somewhere in Warwickshire. We actually have a number of twigs at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – donated over the centuries – that are said to be from the very tree under which Shakespeare awoke. “It’s quite plausible that Shakespeare did die of a fever – something that could easily happen if he had drunk some infected water. Later biographers have him dying of syphilis or typhus, but we don’t actually know how he died. The vicar who noted fever as the cause of death did so after visiting Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, before she died. Who’s to say that the story didn’t come from her? It’s not impossible to accept oral history written down within 50 years of Shakespeare’s death, when his daughter was still alive.”
Why did Maggie O'Farrell write about Shakespeare's son?
The life of young Hamnet and the effect that his premature death had on his parents is reimagined by Maggie O’Farrell in her 2020 historical fiction Hamnet, which has since been made into a major film starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. What inspired the writer to focus on such a moment?
Very little is known about the only son of playwright William Shakespeare, except that he died at the age of 11. The life of young Hamnet and the effect that his premature death had on his father is reimagined by Maggie O’Farrell in an emotional departure from her previous works. Did the young boy’s death influence the bard’s later writing? And is the name of one of his most famous plays, Hamlet, a coincidence – was Shakespeare trying to tell us something? What inspired you to focus on Hamnet Shakespeare, and how much do we actually know about his life? We know he was born, and we know he died but apart from that, pretty much nothing. I have always been struck by how little space Hamnet was given in biographies. There's usually a paragraph about how common child mortality was in the late-16th century, but the implication was that it wasn’t that upsetting to lose a child because it happened a lot. It seemed preposterous to me because it must have been devastating to lose your only son, at age 11. Hamnet’s mother [Anne Hathaway] has also been unfairly maligned as an older woman who tricked a younger man into marriage. I think we need to look at her with fresh eyes which is why I gave her back her actual name. Her father named her Agnes, which raises a question: why all these years do we refer to her as Anne? I wanted to write a novel that gave voice to these people who've been silenced by history. Read more | What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? This is quite a departure from your previous novels. How different did you find writing this book? When writing historically there's a lot of library-based research you can do, but the author has to inhabit the lives of these people. For example, when writing the first chapter, I had this young boy falling on the floor. I stopped because I had no idea what the floor of a Tudor kitchen would be made of. I went to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw the flagstone Tudor floors for myself. I cultivated my own Elizabethan garden and learnt how to make traditional medicines. In terms of the writing, it was like going back to the start of my writing career. All the metaphors and techniques you become used to don't work when you’re writing with the minds of 16th-century people. Did knowing so little about Hamnet allow you more creative licence? This is a fictional interpretation of what might have happened; the name Shakespeare never appears because I am taking the lives of real people who lived and breathed. No one really knows why the real Hamnet Shakespeare died. I've also always wondered why there's no mention in Shakespeare’s works of the plague. It seems extraordinary for it to have been such an ever-present terror, killing swathes of people, yet he never reached for it when constructing his plays. I sort of answer that for myself in the novel.
What happened to Shakespeare's daughters? A guide to the playwright's family life and descendants
The story of the Shakespeares was one of social advancement, says Stanley Wells, reflected in dwellings that rose from rural farmstead to manorial splendour. Along the way were some family upsets: pregnant brides, lawsuits and excommunication. As a film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet arrives on cinema screens, find out more about when William married Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, when their children were born, and what became of the Shakespeare family after the playwright's death…
He is one of the greatest writers of all time, and our longing to know as much as we can about him continues. We know that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to John and Mary Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and that he was their first child to survive past infancy. During the Elizabethan period, infant mortality was very high, and his parents had already lost two daughters before young William was born. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but his baptismal record survives, showing that Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare (William, son of John Shakespeare) was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church on 26 April 1564. His birthday is now celebrated on 23 April, since it was common for baptisms to be held three days after a birth. As a film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's historical novel, Hamnet, starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, is released, find out more about the playwright's home life and how his family influences shaped him – plus what happened to his daughters after the story of Hamnet concludes. William Shakespeare's birth family: who were his parents? The story of Shakespeare’s family – one of upward social mobility – is reflected in their homes. Start in the small village of Wilmcote, three miles north of Stratford-upon-Avon, where the playwright’s mother, Mary Arden, grew up in a small farmhouse built around 1514 by her father, Robert. Mary was the youngest of eight daughters by his first wife; his second, Agnes Hill, brought with her two sons and two daughters. When Robert made his will in 1556, he named young Mary as one of his two executors and left her a substantial amount of land and money, which suggests that she was a woman of exceptional ability. Mary Arden married the up-and-coming glover (and later wool dealer and money-lender) John Shakespeare, probably in 1557. Before long they moved into his substantial double-house in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, now known as Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Mary had eight children, but only six survived infancy. John gave the town loyal service, rising through the ranks from the relatively humble role of ale-taster to become alderman and, in 1568, bailiff (or mayor.) His application for a coat of arms was unsuccessful in 1576, but he was granted one 20 years later, when he was said to be worth £500 – a sum not to be sneezed at. He died in 1601. In 1594 John’s eldest son, William, had become a shareholder in the troupe of players called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, based in London. Three years later William demonstrated his commitment to his home town of Stratford by buying New Place, the largest house in the borough. Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway In 1582, at the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway (also known as Agnes), who was already around three months pregnant with their daughter Susanna. The Hathaways – tenant farmers with 90 acres of land in the nearby village of Shottery – were acquaintances of the Shakespeares, and William may have met Anne while helping with the local harvest. To ensure the pregnancy didn’t cause a scandal, Shakespeare had to apply to the Bishop’s Court in Worcester for permission to hold a wedding at short notice. Between 1570 and 1630 the records show that only three men in Stratford-upon-Avon were married below the age of 20 (the average age to marry was 26). Shakespeare was the only one of those whose wife was already pregnant. William and Anne also had three children, an elder daughter, Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet. Shakespeare's family at New Place New Place in Stratford was demolished in the 18th century but archaeological excavations carried out under the auspices of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust have added to our knowledge about the size and layout of the property. It had five gables, a courtyard, three floors, and between 20 and 30 rooms – more than enough to accommodate the entire extended family, if necessary. Indeed, Thomas Greene, Town Clerk from 1603 to 1617 and a member of the Middle Temple, who described himself as William’s cousin – the word could be flexibly used – lodged there with his family. There would also have been ample space for William’s unmarried brothers, Richard, Gilbert and Edmund, of whom little is known. We do know that Edmund, 16 years younger than William, became an actor in London like his brother, had a bastard child, and died when he was only 27. He was buried in what is now Southwark Cathedral on the last day of 1607 to the sound of the ‘great bell’ – the tolling of which cost someone, probably William, £1. Gilbert, who witnessed the deed of purchase for New Place in William’s absence, worked at one time as a haberdasher in London. Of Richard we know only that he was baptised in Stratford on 11 March 1574 and buried there on 4 February 1613. William’s sister Joan, born in 1569, married a hatter, William Hart, some time before 1600. They had four children: William, Mary, Thomas and Michael. Joan’s husband died in 1616 only a week before his famous brother-in-law, who left Joan life tenancy of part of the Henley Street house, along with £20 and “all his wearing apparel”. She lived there until her death in 1646 when the house, along with the adjoining dwelling, passed to her son Thomas, and then to his son, another Thomas, by the will of Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Barnard. The property, identified as the Birthplace on the earliest surviving map of the town (dated 1759), remained in the family till 1806. The line continued; John Shakespeare Hart, a chair-maker, was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey in 1800 with a memorial that mistakenly described him as “the sixth descendant from the poet Shakespeare”. Subsequent family members emigrated to Australia. When Shakespeare died in 1616, the bulk of Shakespeare’s estate went to his daughter, Susanna, who, with her husband John Hall, moved into New Place while Anne was still there. Anne lived at New Place for another seven years until her death in 1623. What happened to William Shakespeare's children? Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet – the name a variant of Hamlet – died in 1596, aged only 11. Presumably, like his father, he had been a pupil at the free grammar school, though its records from this period don’t survive. Susanna, born six months after her parents married, seems to have been an accomplished woman with a mind of her own. She was reported to the Ecclesiastical Court for refusing to take communion at Easter 1606 when, in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the authorities were especially anxious to round up possible Roman Catholic sympathisers. The case was dismissed. The following year she married the strongly Protestant physician John Hall, and her father gave her the substantial gift of 107 acres of land in Old Stratford as a marriage settlement, while apparently retaining a life interest. In 1613 her marriage was afflicted by scandal when one John Lane claimed that Susanna had caught a sexually transmitted infection from a married hatter and haberdasher named Ralph Smith. She successfully sued Lane for defamation of character in Worcester Consistory Court. Lane, who did not turn up to defend himself, was excommunicated. These events are dramatised in Peter Whelan’s successful play The Herbal Bed (1996). The Halls are believed to have lived in the large and handsome house on the outskirts of the town now known as Hall’s Croft, which dates from 1613 and may have been built for them; when Shakespeare died in 1616 they moved into New Place. Shakespeare left most of his property to Susanna and appointed the Halls as his executors. Susanna lived until 1649. Her epitaph reads “Witty” – that is, intelligent – “beyond her sex, but that’s not all, / Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.” In this period, education for girls lagged far behind that for boys, but there were petty schools in the town where both boys and girls could learn to read, write and do their sums. Susanna’s signature survives in the records of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Shakespeare’s younger daughter, Judith, seems to have been a bit of a handful. At the age of 31, less than two months before her father died, she married Thomas Quiney, son of a prominent townsman, in Holy Trinity Church – but was excommunicated because they had not obtained the special licence required for marriage in Lent. There was reason to marry in a hurry: soon afterwards Quiney was accused of “incontinence” with Margaret Wheeler, who had been buried with their illegitimate child. He pleaded guilty. Shakespeare made changes to his will seemingly designed to protect Judith’s interests. She and Thomas went on to have three sons, all of whom died young; they called the eldest, born soon after his grandfather died, Shakespeare. Judith lived until 1662. Shakespeare’s last direct descendant was Elizabeth, born to Susanna and John Hall in 1608. He left her most of his silver plate (easily convertible into cash if she wished). She married Thomas Nash and they lived in New Place. After he died she married John Barnard, a prosperous widower with several children, in 1649. When her mother died soon afterwards the couple moved into New Place. A staunch Royalist, Barnard was made a baronet in 1661. Later they moved back into his ancestral home, Abington Manor in Northamptonshire, an even more splendid house than New Place, where Elizabeth died childless in 1670. So a family story that began in a modest farmhouse ended with Shakespeare’s granddaughter in a great manor house. What would Mary Arden have made of that? Does Shakespeare have any living descendants? Shakespeare has no direct living descendants, but there are still descendants of his sister Joan and her husband William Hart. His childhood home on Henley Street in Stratford remains in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Stanley Wells is a leading authority on Shakespeare. He is honorary president of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and professor emeritus at the University of Birmingham
Eleanor Parker’s Life Lesson from History is that we should seek out wonder in the world around us
The Anglo-Saxons had a deep sense of wonder – they saw magic in the mundane, and expressed it through riddles. Eleanor Parker’s Life Lesson from History is that we, too, should seek out wonder in the world around us, and that a little bit of riddle-writing might help us find it.
The Book of Kells: "a masterpiece of medieval calligraphy and painting"
"The Book of Kells is a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting", writes Michael Wood
The Book of Kells, one of the greatest pieces of medieval art, is today displayed in the library of Trinity College Dublin. This illuminated gospel book is named after the monastery in County Meath where it was kept in the Middle Ages. It’s a masterwork of medieval calligraphy and painting, with its Celtic knot patterns, scintillating colour, and the staggering intricacies of the display pages and canon tables – all smoky golden magnificence. An Irish annalist called the book “the great Gospel of Columcille [Columba], the chief relic of the western world”. It may be the work described by the historian Gerald of Wales in the 1180s, in his book on Ireland. “Look more keenly at it and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art,” he wrote. “You will make out intricacies so delicate and so subtle… that you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.” The book survived war, plunder and the English – Cromwell’s troops were once billeted in Kells. In the 19th century, it was a huge influence on the Celtic revival movement in the arts, and today is seen as the pinnacle of the western tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Read more | Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life The book was produced around the end of the eighth century, just at the moment Britain and Ireland were about to be changed forever by the arrival of the Vikings. It was long believed to have been created on Iona. But in The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma, published in October, Victoria Whitworth suggests that it was actually written at the Pictish monastery of Portmahomack on the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland. This is one of the least known areas of the medieval British Isles. The Pictish monasteries were destroyed in the Viking age, and with them virtually all written records. The kingdom of the Picts became part of the Scottish kingdom of Alba in the ninth century, and gradually the memory of the Picts faded, leaving many unsolved mysteries. One key survival is their stone carving, of which there are brilliant examples in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Some, such as the huge memorial slab from Hilton of Cadboll etched with horsemen and hunting dogs, are absolutely stunning. You can still see these wonderful works of art on the ground when you head up the coast of north-east Scotland. At Aberlemno is a magnificent carving perhaps commemorating the battle of Nechtansmere in 685 at which the Pictish king Bridei defeated and killed the Northumbrian invader King Ecgfrith. And by St Vigeans Church on the outskirts of Arbroath there’s a fascinating museum holding more than 30 pieces of Pictish sculpture. This Pictish trail leads to Portmahomack, a beautiful spot on the Tarbat peninsula looking across to the distant hills of Sutherland. The origins of Christianity here are still obscure. Bede mentions a saint whom we know as Ninnian, who evangelised in the fifth century. In the sixth century came St Columba, who reached as far north as Moray. Read more | Medieval miracle worker: how St Columba transformed Christianity in Britain But it was only in the 1990s that the first excavation of a Pictish monastery took place at Portmahomack. Its construction began around 550 – which might fit with a foundation by St Columba – and was probably destroyed in a Viking attack in the early ninth century, though some kind of community hung on after that. It was later dedicated to St Colman of Lindisfarne, who played a famous role in the Synod of Whitby in 664 – the great debate over Celtic and Roman traditions of Easter. Colman then returned to Iona and died in Ireland, but he was still celebrated in later times at Portmahomack. When excavating the levels burned during the Viking raid, the archaeologist found over 200 fragments of Pictish stone carving in a style very similar to the Book of Kells. This led Dr Whitworth to propose that the most famous of all Irish manuscripts was actually made here. Indeed, finds from the dig included workshops and a room where vellum was prepared, interpreted as a scriptorium – perhaps the very place where the Book of Kells was written? All of this only underlines how much we still don’t know about the early Middle Ages in the outer reaches of Britain. We don’t even know the site’s original name. As for the Picts themselves – still known today by the name that the late Romans gave them, meaning the ‘painted people’ – their identity eventually merged with the Scots, and their language (probably pre-Indo-European?) became extinct. But recent DNA studies suggest that their legacy endures in the genetic inheritance of people across Scotland. And of course in Trinity College Dublin you can still glimpse the unique, dazzling, colourful vision that infused the astonishing art of the Picti. This column was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Best history books 2025: BBC History Magazine’s Books of the Year
In the roster of laudable history books published in 2025, authors tackled topics as diverse as Gaza, Indian partition, extinction, medieval and Stuart monarchs – even historians themselves. Here, a panel of experts recommend the titles they most enjoyed
Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War (Basic Books) Lyndal Roper Hannah Skoda: Did you know that Thomas Müntzer, leader of the German Peasants’ War in 1525, used a rainbow flag to rally his followers? It’s an aptly exuberant image for the radical charisma of Müntzer, and for the hope and vision of the peasants. Religious change seemed to open up new ways of thinking about oppression and exploitation for those rebellious upstarts. In Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (Basic Books), Lyndal Roper works with sources mostly hostile to the peasants, but the result reads with nuance and acuity. We get a real sense of ordinary people longing for justice and a fairer set of relations to the land, alongside the sheer terrors of this war, which was put down with great ferocity. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org A Short History of the Gaza Strip (Simon & Schuster) Anne Irfan Hannah Skoda: Anne Irfan’s A Short History of the Gaza Strip (Simon & Schuster) is a wonderfully informative account of the complexities of the situation. Beginning in 1948, she guides us through these tangled events with great clarity, drawing on a vast array of sources. The text is nuanced, humane and critical at a time when too many assumptions and untruths are floating around. It might helpfully be read alongside the new podcast series Empire: The History of Gaza, presented by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, which explores Gaza’s deep history stretching back more than 4,000 years. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Anne Sebba Hannah Skoda: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), by Anne Sebba, is an intensely moving book. At one point, the women’s orchestra at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp was led by Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler and an extraordinary musician in her own right. This music-making saved the lives of around 40 of the orchestra’s members. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Impossible Bomb (Yale University Press) Gareth Williams Christopher Harding: A host of Second World War anniversaries this year highlighted the enormous part played in that conflict by new and ever more destructive technologies. Gareth Williams’ The Impossible Bomb (Yale University Press) opened my eyes to the role of British science in the development of nuclear weapons. He takes us from trepidation among scientists in the 1930s, through the breakthroughs and political machinations that shaped what came next. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan (Allen Lane) Richard Overy Christopher Harding: In Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan (Allen Lane), Richard Overy reminds us that incendiaries caused far greater destruction in Japan than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tested in the US on Japanese-style wooden architecture, they killed 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night’s bombing in March 1945. Overy’s book includes an excellent discussion of the reasons behind the timing of Japan’s eventual surrender, cautioning us not to overestimate the role played by atomic weapons – the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, a day before Nagasaki, was also hugely significant. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Grave of the Fireflies (Penguin Classics) Akiyuki Nosaka Finally, one of Japan’s greatest war novels arrived in translation, highlighting the often overlooked cost to children of the Second World War. Akiyuki Nosaka’s Grave of the Fireflies (Penguin Classics) may already be familiar from Studio Ghibli’s animated adaptation of 1988 – undoubtedly the most harrowing film I’ve ever seen. Thanks to Ginny Tapley Takemori’s translation, English-speaking readers can now follow the lives of siblings and war orphans Seita and Setsuko as they are forced to navigate, largely alone, the darkness and chaos of Kobe after large parts of it are laid waste by firebombing. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org A History of England in 25 Poems (Allen Lane) Catherine Clarke Alice Loxton: In A History of England in 25 Poems (Allen Lane), Catherine Clarke roams from raging battlefields to royal courts, and darts from the Great Fire of London to the Miners’ Strike, on a literary tour through English history. We unpick the words of The Peterborough Chronicle, Thomas Wyatt, John Dryden and Lord Tennyson, to name just a few. It is a charming mix of history, travel and literature, inspiring the reader to set forth to discover the English countryside – and to reread the poems aloud at the sites that inspired their creation. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins) Sam Dalrymple Alice Loxton: Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins), Sam Dalrymple skilfully examines how the Indian empire – a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of south-east Asia – was divided into 12 separate nation states between 1931 and 1971. By dissecting this complex past, he shows how the map of modern Asia was made. It is a vast subject, but Dalrymple has achieved the perfect balance of academic excellence and brilliant storytelling. Kavita Puri: Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins) looks at the vast Indian empire and its break-up. As recently as 1928, it encompassed countries known today as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Though the partition of 1947 is well known, the others are less familiar, yet Dalrymple explains how we continue to live with their ramifications and the empire’s legacy. This is an impressive, ambitious debut, deeply researched and with a storyteller’s eye for detail. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (William Collins) Blessin Adams Alice Loxton: In Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (William Collins), the historian and former police officer Blessin Adams unpicks the evidence relating to a succession of historical murders, trawling pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts littered with clickbait tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, child killers and malicious witches. And she offers a compelling verdict: society was both repulsed by and attracted to this murderous female rebellion, and – as is so often the case when we interrogate the sources – the truth is far more complex than it first seems. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Allen Lane) Sadiah Qureshi Olivette Otele: Extinction, often linked to climate change, continues to be a hotly debated issue. Yet, as Sadiah Qureshi argues, it has been the result of political decisions made long before the heavy industrialisation of the 20th century. Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Allen Lane) examines the long history of extinction, from the dinosaurs to endangered species today. She demonstrates that the classification and hierarchisation that were at the heart of colonial projects extended to living beings. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Legenda: The Real Women Behind the Myths That Shaped Europe (WH Allen) Janina Ramirez Olivette Otele: The illusion that the world can be remoulded by human will becomes reality in Janina Ramirez’s outstanding Legenda: The Real Women Behind the Myths That Shaped Europe (WH Allen). This is not a mere retelling of well-known stories of medieval figures; instead, the author reclaims the narratives previously imposed on those women, unveiling their personal lives. This book disrupts established views on legendary women by uncovering the extent of their agency on their own lives and their influence on various kingdoms. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors (Trapeze) Paula Akpan Olivette Otele: Expanding on key figures who shaped women’s history, When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors (Trapeze) shifts our attention from Europe. Paula Akpan’s beautiful prose helps us navigate emotions provoked by these women’s little-known yet incredible trajectories, providing enlightening insights into power, diplomacy and war in African kingdoms. These female rulers had to fight for their people while navigating the treacherous waters of ancient civilisations’ polities. From Nigeria to South Africa, we learn that if greed and fear hinder progress, a leader’s faith in her abilities and in her community can bring great rewards. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Tunisgrad: Victory in Africa (William Collins) Saul David James Holland: Saul David is one of my favourite historians writing today, and his latest book, Tunisgrad: Victory in Africa (William Collins), is brilliant. The Tunisian campaign was a pivotal moment in the Second World War – a period when the Allies sussed out how to work together and to harness air, land and sea power effectively to beat the Axis. Saul’s new book is compellingly told and fills a big hole in the popular narrative of the war. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org 1945: The Reckoning (Hodder & Stoughton) Phil Craig James Holland: Phil Craig co-authored Finest Hour, a book about 1940 and the Battle of Britain published 26 years ago, which had a profound influence on me and my own writing. His new book, 1945: The Reckoning (Hodder & Stoughton), casts fresh light on not only the end of the fighting in the Second World War but also the changing world that emerged and the mayhem that followed, which was often disturbingly violent. Focusing on a number of fascinating individuals, Craig follows a range of unexpected and diverse characters. I never knew, for example, that the British actually used Japanese troops to quell insurrections in south-east Asia in late 1945. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee: An Epically Short History of Our Kings and Queens (Mudlark) Charlie Higson James Holland: Charlie Higson’s Willie, Harry, Stee: An Epically Short History of Our Kings and Queens (Mudlark) is the most enjoyable and utterly joyous account of our monarchs I’ve ever read. There’s no lack of research here, but he writes with terrific energy and verve, adding fabulously quirky observations and small details. The illustrations by Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) are superb – look at George V with his tattoos, for example. I can’t think of a better Christmas history book – one that I would so loved to have read as an impressionable teenager! Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan (Hutchinson Heinemann) Lyse Doucet Kavita Puri: Lyse Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan (Hutchinson Heinemann) recounts that country’s turbulent history over the past 50 years. Readers view it through the prism of the ‘Inter-Con’ hotel and the people who’ve worked there, including the first female chef, as well as the guests who pass through. It is a poignant and, at times, tragic history of ordinary lives set against the background of royal rule, coups d’état, foreign invasions and two Taliban regimes, the current iteration of which the UN has called a “gender apartheid” state. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World Forever – and the Rebels Who Resisted (Puffin) Sathnam Sanghera <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/Books-328-Xmas25-Journeys-of-Empire-British-Voyages-that-Changed-the-World-Forever-e925524.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A blue book cover with a red and white title across the top. There is an illustration of a lion with a purple crown on its head and a map hanging from its mouth" title="Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World Forever" /> Kavita Puri: How we teach history to the next generation is something I think about a lot. Sathnam Sanghera’s children’s book Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World Forever – and the Rebels Who Resisted (Puffin) would make an excellent Christmas gift, guiding younger travellers to India in the company of royalty, and across the Atlantic with a young enslaved man. They will ascend mountains never before climbed, and visit places that the west never realised existed. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Heaven Does Not Block All Roads (Hurst) Anna Beth Keim Rana Mitter: The Forrest Gump of Asia? Not quite – but the life of Huang Chin-tao, as explored in Anna Beth Keim’s Heaven Does Not Block All Roads (Hurst), reflects many of the turning points in the modern history of one of the most controversial places on the continent: Taiwan. Huang was a soldier under Japanese occupation during the Second World War, a political prisoner for years under Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, then a fighter for democracy in what has now become perhaps Asia’s most liberal state. Using archives and interviews married with sparkling prose, Keim tells a compelling story of historical significance. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Party's Interests Come First (Stanford University Press) Joseph Torigian Rana Mitter: Another Asian life story to fascinate is that of Xi Zhongxun. A powerful figure in the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao, his son Xi Jinping now rules China. Joseph Torigian’s superb biography, The Party’s Interests Come First (Stanford University Press), reveals the deeply conflicted nature of the elder Xi: an ardent atheist revolutionary who developed a successful (at first) relationship with the Dalai Lama, and a reformist who was an unbending martinet at home. He was purged in 1962, sending his young son Jinping into exile – and helping shape the path of the 21st century. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org A Short History of Japan (Pelican) Christopher Harding Rana Mitter: Meanwhile, across the sea sits Japan. The perfect introduction to that intriguing society is Christopher Harding’s lively new A Short History of Japan (Pelican). Starting with prehistory, Harding explores the importance of Buddhism, the path to modernisation and, in particular, the role of cultural and material history, including the Japanese traditions of theatre and ceramics. The book is short, yes – but its scope is long, deep and rich. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org What Is Ancient History? (Princeton University Press) Walter Scheidel Josephine Quinn: As a harried academic whose only hobby is missing deadlines, I mostly end up reading books from last year, but sometimes a recent publication makes it to the top of my pile – or, even better, turns up as an advance proof. The best book that’s been published about my own field this year – indeed, for many years – is Walter Scheidel’s What Is Ancient History? (Princeton University Press). It’s a lot of fun, identifying the origins of the modern, idiosyncratic equation of antiquity with Greece and Rome in a dual 19th-century move towards scholarly specialisation or ‘dismemberment’ and away from notions of non-European ancestries. There’s a manifesto, too – not for a return to the past but for a new understanding of pre-modern history not simply as ‘ancient’ but as ‘foundational’ for the contemporary world, worth studying in its own right and on a global scale. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Augustine the African (Profile) Catherine Conybeare Josephine Quinn: Also among books within my field, I’d single out Catherine Conybeare’s Augustine the African (Profile). This short and readable biography explains the bishop of Hippo’s thinking in ways that even I could understand, and situates it, unusually, in his own local experiences growing up in north Africa and then, after a confusing period of travel in Italy as a young man, returning there for good. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea (Allen Lane) Fara Dabhoiwala Joesphine Quinn: Further out of my own comfort zone, I enjoyed Fara Dabhoiwala’s What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea (Allen Lane). I’d never known what to think about the political obsession with free speech on both left and right, so understanding the controversial origins of the concept was very helpful in forming a clearer – and more negative – view of my own. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers (Jonathan Cape) Helen Lewis Onyeka Nubia: The soul of a species is under scrutiny in The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers (Jonathan Cape), Helen Lewis’s dissection of human rebels. In it she offers a 21st-century decoding of an 18th-century notion of ‘eminent men’ – and it works. It works for ‘us’, because historical morality is revisionist. But enemies and heroes are socially constructed, and future generations will baulk, aghast at ‘our’ moral imperatives. Perhaps rebels seduce because they represent an alluring aspect of the human psyche. It could be argued human hegemony exists because of Homo sapiens’ capacity to bend the laws of nature. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Revolutionists (Bodley Head) Jason Burke Onyeka Nubia: Perhaps the idea of home-grown terrorists shocks the system because of manufactured prejudices about who such people are. European terrorism is sometimes offered as an aberration – a ‘rare’ phenomenon – an approach that has influenced portrayals of the Red Army Faction. In The Revolutionists (Bodley Head), Jason Burke defies this intellectual virtue-signalling of ‘western’ values, unpicking the Faction’s forcible entrance into European politics. He holds up a mirror to the Baader-Meinhof gang’s fears of a Fourth Reich – a fear that they felt could justify any action. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Between Two Rivers (Hodder Press) Moudhy Al-Rashid Onyeka Nubia: Moudhy Al-Rashid’s Between Two Rivers (Hodder Press) is a love letter to the Tigris and Euphrates. However, she carefully distances herself from environmental determinism, which may offer the ‘magic’ of civilisation as only a matter of geographical location, boldly and eloquently debunking an obsession with ‘eastern origins’ and orientalism. This is a fine read – historical non-fiction that flows like the best poetry. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain's First King (William Collins) Gareth Russell Tracy Borman: James VI & I was a contradictory, often misunderstood character. Only by shining a light on his private life do we glimpse the real man behind the regal mask. That is what Gareth Russell does in Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain’s First King (William Collins), told with the author’s characteristic verve and exquisite eye for detail – a stunning achievement and a must for history fans. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Queens at War: England's Medieval Queens (Jonathan Cape) Alison Weir Tracy Borman: Alison Weir’s Queens at War: England’s Medieval Queens (Jonathan Cape) is a gripping new account of England’s medieval queens that brings a dazzling cast of characters – from the formidable Margaret of Anjou to more shadowy figures such as Anne Neville, consort of Richard III – vividly to life. These are women who broke the mould, wielding power not just as the wives of kings but in their own right. In doing so, they shaped the course of English history. Britain’s bestselling female historian has a back catalogue most authors can only dream of, so the queens’ stories are in safe hands. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Women Who Ruled the World: 5,000 Years of Female Monarchy (Footnote Press) Elizabeth Norton Tracy Borman: Women Who Ruled the World: 5,000 Years of Female Monarchy (Footnote Press) by Elizabeth Norton is a gripping and beautifully crafted book that skilfully interweaves the stories of female rulers who, on the face of it, have little in common but their sex. As well as introducing the reader to lesser-known characters – Tamar of Georgia and Lili‘uokalani of Hawaii, for example – it provides a fresh perspective on famous figures such as Cleopatra and Elizabeth I. There is a striking contemporary resonance, making even the distant past seem within touching distance. This is a book that effortlessly encompasses a breathtaking span of time, geography and personalities. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso) Michael Braddick Richard J Evans: Biographies of historians aren’t always terribly interesting: we are a tribe that usually does little except sit in archives, libraries, seminar rooms and lecture halls. But sometimes you can find colleagues whose lives are more active and perhaps a bit more interesting than the run-of-the-mill. I certainly struck it lucky with Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012), whose personal archive included a vast mass of diaries, letters, manuscripts and much else besides, which I used for my 2019 biography. Two more lives have appeared this year that tell us a lot about the historical profession and its wider social and political context. Michael Braddick’s Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso) had to contend with its subject’s rather private nature. However, like Hobsbawm, Hill (1912–2003) was for years kept under surveillance by MI5, and maintained a voluminous correspondence. Braddick is himself a distinguished expert in Hill’s main field, 17th-century English history, and authoritatively assesses his subject’s contribution. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Indefatigable Asa Briggs (William Collins) Adam Sisman Richard J Evans: Asa Briggs (1921–2016) is the subject of another absorbing biography, The Indefatigable Asa Briggs (William Collins), written by Adam Sisman, author of previous lives of Alan Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. With classic works including Victorian People and The Age of Improvement, Briggs did more than anyone to rescue the Victorians from what another radical historian, Edward Thompson, called “the enormous condescension of posterity”. Both Hill and Briggs wrote gracefully and addressed themselves to a wide readership – an example to us all. Unlike Hobsbawm, however, both men took top managerial roles in higher education institutions – perhaps to the detriment of their actual historical work. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive (Hamish Hamilton) Mathelinda Nabugodi Leah Redmond Chang: There is something magical about handling objects in the archive: through them, the past just comes to life. But in Mathelinda Nabugodi’s expert hands, the relics of the 19th-century Romantic past take on startling new meanings. The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive (Hamish Hamilton) is a genre-defying book blending essay, memoir and keen historical analysis. Above all, it is a conversation between a historian and a sometimes hostile archive – a meditation on how history gets made, and by whom. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance Joe Dunthorne Leah Redmond Chang: Joe Dunthorne set out to write the story of his Jewish great-grandfather’s escape from Nazi Germany but, through persistent digging, discovered a story far more complex than the one he had imagined. Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance (Hamish Hamilton) begins as a personal memoir but unfurls into a much broader history, revealing how individual people and nations cling to certain stories for the sake of moving forward – often at a steep cost. It’s both a family tribute and a cautionary tale. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (Faber & Faber) Francesca Wade Leah Redmond Chang: Maybe, like me, you drifted in confusion through one of Gertrude Stein’s books at university, or vaguely recall her as the bossy salonnière in Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris. In her own time, though, she was a cutting-edge writer, a savvy patron of artists, a Jewish American who survived in the heart of Vichy France, and a woman devoted to her lover Alice B Toklas – who in turn fiercely protected Stein’s literary legacy after her death. Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (Faber & Faber) is a fresh, intimate and deeply compelling portrait. Who would have thought that a biography of Gertrude Stein would keep me up late reading? But this is page-turning stuff. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Baltic: The Future of Europe (John Murray) Oliver Moody Peter Frankopan: I hugely enjoyed Oliver Moody’s Baltic: The Future of Europe (John Murray), a brilliant blend of history and reportage – as well as a primer for why this area is central to the world of tomorrow. Much of this region has spent time, energy and thought working out how to address disinformation, hybrid threats, defence readiness and institutional adaptability – and the book urges that others learn from these lessons, too. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World (Pushkin Press) Giuliano da Empoli Peter Frankopan: I was riveted by Giuliano da Empoli’s The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World (Pushkin Press), which assesses change in today’s world with terrifying clarity. As translated by Sam Taylor, Da Empoli has a wonderful turn of phrase and is an astute picker of historical parallels. Most of today’s leaders are like the Aztecs, he writes, unable to confront reality. Some, though, are like Cesare Borgia – men who believe that they can bend the world to their will and shape it in their own image. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Luke Pepera Peter Frankopan: Luke Pepera’s Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is another ambitious and expansive book by a first-time author. Pepera starts his investigation deep in the past, looking at themes ranging from migration to oral traditions, matriarchal societies to ancient empires. Blending history, anthropology and memoir, he restores agency and depth to the continent’s story, from chapters about ancient empires to oral traditions and modern diasporas. Rejecting colonial frames, he shows Africa not as a passive backdrop to global history but as one of its enduring creators and moral centres. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org These selections first appeared in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The REAL history behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and more
If you thought Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power or The Hobbit was pure fairytale, you would be way off. HistoryExtra's James Osborne explains more
From the epic battles of Beowulf to the myths of Old Norse sagas and the real-world struggles of the Anglo-Saxons, Tolkien’s legendary world was deeply rooted in the past. But how exactly did these influences weave their way into The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit? In this video, we explore the sources that helped Tolkien forge his fantasy masterpiece, uncovering the warriors, monsters, and lost kingdoms that made Middle-Earth feel so real. View Green Video on the source website
9 things you might not know about Sherlock Holmes
The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, has for more than 130 years been a star of stage and screen, played by actors including Benedict Cumberbatch and Ian McKellen and serialised in countless books. But how much do you know about this famous crime-buster, who made his first appearance in 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual? Here, author Martin Davies shares 11 lesser-known facts about Sherlock Holmes...
1. The first actor to play Sherlock Holmes was American… The first actor to take on the role of Sherlock Holmes in any official capacity was the American William Gillette. His 1899 stage play was adapted from a script by Arthur Conan Doyle himself. Opening six years after the author had attempted to kill off his creation at the Reichenbach Falls, the play was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic: between 1899 and 1932, Gillette performed the role more than 1,000 times. Gillette is also credited with introducing the curved briar pipe that was to become synonymous with the great detective – possibly because a straight pipe obscured the actor’s face when he delivered his lines. On the podcast | Sherlock Holmes: the real history that inspired the detective stories On first meeting Sherlock Holmes’ creator, Gillette is said to have appeared in character, complete with deerstalker, and after examining Conan Doyle most minutely, to have opined: “Unquestionably an author!” 2. … who introduced a love interest Gillette was also one of the first to annoy the purists by introducing a love interest for Holmes. When he telegraphed Conan Doyle with the question “May I marry him?” the author is said to have replied: “You may marry him, or murder or do what you like with him!” It’s impossible to count the number of writers who, since then, have taken Doyle at his word. Read more | Real-life Sherlocks: the detectives of Scotland Yard and their curious cases 3. He defied death Holmes, having survived the Reichenbach Falls, refused to die with his creator. By the time of Conan Doyle’s death on 7 July 1930, Holmes was already a star of stage and screen. His film debut, Sherlock Holmes Baffled, came as early as 1900. Just a few seconds long, the film used stop-motion camerawork to show Holmes attempting to grapple with a burglar who repeatedly disappears, then reappears in a different part of the room. 4. A 1940s duo cemented Holmes and Watson's on screen personas One of the oldest surviving film adaptations of Conan Doyle’s work dates to 1916 (William Gillette again) but it was the English duo of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the 1940s who for many years became identified in the public imagination as the Holmes and Watson. Rathbone and Bruce made 14 Sherlock Holmes films between 1939 and 1946 (and starred in more than 200 dramatisations for American radio), yet only the first two films were set in the Victorian period. The others had a contemporary setting, allowing Sherlock Holmes to pursue Nazi spies and to urge the purchase of war bonds. Bruce’s dim, bumbling Watson tends to infuriate Holmes purists. 5. He inspired hundreds of parodies The Adventures of ChubbLock Homes, an early comic strip, appeared in Comic Cuts magazine as early as 1893, and the urge to parody the great detective has never gone away. In 1901, while William Gillette’s official Holmes play was running in London, audiences at Terry’s Theatre were enjoying performances of the rather more frivolous Sheerluck Jones. The comic strip Sherlocko & Watso was hugely popular in the USA in the early 20th century, and silent film parodies abounded. Later in the century, Peter Cook and John Cleese both played comedy Sherlocks on film (Cleese's character was Arthur Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock’s grandson). Less well remembered, perhaps, is the 1976 TV film The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective, in which a youthful Larry Hagman (before his JR Ewing days) played a deluded motorcycle cop, Sherman Holmes. Read more | Women detectives: meet the Victorian female super sleuths 6. Tobacco, cereal and… mouthwash? Holmes has sold it all Even in his early days, Sherlock Holmes was helping manufacturers to sell their products. In the 1890s, the makers of Beecham’s Pills ran advertisements suggesting that the great detective was a devoted user. And as a smoker, Holmes was popular with the tobacco companies. Early cigarette advertisements using Holmes’ image included brands such as Lambert and Butler’s ‘Varsity’ mixture, Chesterfield, Ogden’s, Gallaher’s and Players. Since then, products as diverse as furniture cream, mouthwash, breakfast cereal and photocopiers have all benefited from association with the great man. 6. He debuted on TV to mixed reviews With the growth of television after the Second World War, the Baker Street detective was quick to adapt to the new medium. Alan Wheatley was the first actor to portray Holmes on British television – his 1951 series was broadcast live. But it seems Wheatley was not a fan of Holmes. When asked about Holmes’ character, he is said to have replied: “In my opinion he just seemed to be an insufferable prig”. 7. One actor played Holmes twice… and his brother Peter Cushing appeared as Holmes on the BBC in the 1960s. He had already played the detective in the 1959 Hammer film The Hound of the Baskervilles, alongside Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville. Lee was to play Holmes himself in a 1962 film; then, nearly 30 years later, he took up the pipe again, playing an ageing Sherlock in two TV films known together as Sherlock Holmes the Golden Years. Throw in an appearance as Mycroft Holmes in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and Sir Christopher almost bagged the complete set. Alas, he never appeared on screen as Doctor Watson. 8. The most prolific Holmes For many people, the definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was by Jeremy Brett, for Granada Television, in the 1980s and 1990s. Brett appeared in 41 episodes, including five feature-length productions. However, even that impressive achievement doesn’t make Brett the most prolific Holmes. That title must go to the British actor Clive Merrison, who played the detective on BBC Radio between 1989 and 1998, and who completed the full canon – dramatisations of all 60 of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories and novels. 9. Holmes, The Avengers and Britain's most famous secret agent are forever linked on screen And so to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, in which Andrew Scott rose to prominence playing Moriarty. Scott has also appeared in the new James Bond film, Spectre, joining an illustrious club of actors who have performed alongside Britain’s most famous spy and Britain’s most famous detective. But only Sir Roger Moore has played both leading roles on film. Sadly his one appearance as Holmes – in the 1976 TV-film Sherlock Holmes in New York – is not, perhaps, his most memorable work. Sean Connery never played Holmes, but he did play the ultra-astute friar William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose, so you might say that he came close. The actor playing Dr Watson to Roger Moore’s Holmes was Patrick Macnee, most famous as John Steed in The Avengers. Macnee played Watson again, 15 years later, alongside Christopher Lee’s Holmes. Then, in 1993, he donned the deerstalker himself in The Hound of London, thus becoming that very rare thing – an actor who has starred in films as both Holmes and Watson. But all these efforts to breathe new life into Sherlock Holmes might well have been greeted with bemusement by Holmes’ creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote in a letter in 1892: “Holmes is as inhuman as Babbage’s Calculating Machine.” Martin Davies is the author of Mrs Hudson and the Spirits’ Curse (Canelo, 2015)