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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)
Shakespeare’s 'lost years': what do we know about this secretive chapter of the bard's life?
Shakespeare's 'lost years' refers to an undocumented period in his life, during which little is known about his activities or whereabouts. So what, exactly, could he have been up to? Daniel Swift explores this secretive chapter in the famous playwright's story
The idea that William Shakespeare’s life contains a stretch of “lost years” is a minor ghost that haunts popular biographies and discussion of his poems and plays. Those missing years are conventionally taken to begin in February 1585, when Shakespeare’s children – twins Judith and Hamnet – were baptised at Stratford upon Avon, and to end in September 1592, when he was described as being “an upstart Crow” in a gossipy pamphlet in London. Between these dates, we have no reliable record that ties Shakespeare to any particular location, or reveals what he was doing. Shakespeare was 20 when his lost years began, and 28 when they ended. Those seven-and-a-half lost years belong in a wider landscape in which we know remarkably little about the playwright. We know virtually nothing for sure about Shakespeare’s schooling, which he probably completed in 1578 or so; nor what he did until he married Anne Hathaway in November 1582. Listen on the podcast | What happened in Shakespeare's lost years? This is not only the case for Shakespeare: scholars may hate to admit it, but our ignorance of so much of this period is vast. Almost 60 per cent of the 3,000 different plays written between 1570 and 1642 are lost. While some titles survive, there could be some lost plays that we have never even heard of at all. It is a safe guess, but a guess nonetheless, that plays by Shakespeare are among these wholly lost plays. We are uncertain of even the most basic things. Until the remains of the Elizabethan Curtain playhouse in Shoreditch, London, were discovered in 2012, theatre historians assumed that it was round; it turned out to be rectangular. Why the lost years matter Shakespeare’s undocumented years have a special quality: enigmatic, evocative and instructive. As those years began, Shakespeare was a young man in a provincial town who had written nothing and had few prospects. When they ended, he was celebrated enough as a playwright to be worth attacking. The lost years are exactly the period of his genesis as a writer. What has filled those years is a series of guesses and rumours. Half a century after Shakespeare’s death, the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey began collecting anecdotes and stories about Shakespeare from people who had known him, notably the son of an actor who had been a member of Shakespeare’s company. Aubrey recounts, in his Brief Lives – a collection of short biographies – two slightly different stories about those lost years. “This William being inclined naturally to Poetry and acting,” Aubrey wrote, “came to London I guess about 18 and was an Actor at one of the Play-houses and did act exceedingly well.” Then a little later, he added: “he had been in his younger years a School-master in the Country.” The two stories don’t quite fit together: a diligent, rural Shakespeare versus a theatrical, London one. But they establish the two main traditions of thinking about this time. The writer and poet Nicholas Rowe prepared the first real biography of Shakespeare for his own edition of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1709. Rowe had apparently not read Aubrey, but he offers an expanded version of the first idea. He repeats a Stratford legend, that the young Shakespeare fell into “ill company” and poached a deer from a local gentleman. The ensuing trouble meant he had to flee to London, where he found work at a playhouse. There, suggests Rowe, “his admirable Wit, and the natural Turn of it to the Stage, soon distinguish’d him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent Writer”. Read more | Did someone else write the plays of William Shakespeare? The real history that debunks the conspiracy This is an echo, or revision, of Aubrey’s first story. Another version, which circulated in the 17th century, was that the young Shakespeare held the horses at the playhouse door. The alternative and less thespian description of Shakespeare also pops up in the early biographies. Edmond Malone, in his great edition of the plays (1790) and the biographical essay which accompanies it, extended Rowe’s biography into a much more reliable timeline of Shakespeare’s life and works. This edition is the foundation of much later textual study, and while it is a mountain of scholarship it is not without a little sentimental speculation. In it, Malone speculates that after leaving school, Shakespeare was “employed, while he yet remained at Stratford, in the office of some country attorney”. Perhaps so: it is worth noting that Malone himself had trained as a barrister. Along with the development of Shakespeare biography, and the beginnings of careful scholarly work on the texts of the plays, came the realisation that some things were unknown. We might say that the lost years are really a sign of how much has been found; it was only once much was known, with some degree of confidence, that the idea of “lost years” emerged. In a further apparent paradox, in the early 20th century the phrase itself became less an admission of ignorance than a boast about knowledge. Player, teacher, clerk? Those keenest to use the phrase have been those most sure they have the answer. Arthur Acheson’s 1920 book Shakespeare’s Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 confidently uses the phrase “lost years” – and sometimes “dark years” – to refer to this specific period, but only to find them to be not so lost at all. His book discovers Shakespeare, as in Rowe, arriving early in London. E A J Honigmann’s 1985 book Shakespeare: The “Lost Years” places him back in the countryside: in Lancashire, working in the household of a Catholic family in Lancashire, perhaps as a player (actor), or a tutor. In each case, that “lost” is rhetorical. Shakespeare the player, the teacher, the clerk: the timidity of the suggestions is revealing. There is no evidence that he was not, say, a pirate or a mercenary in those years. But what he wasn’t tells us much about him. Shakespeare was not at university, while so many of his contemporary playwrights were. He was not a spy, while his great rival Christopher Marlowe was, in the same period of his life. The lost years mark him as apart and this is why they matter both as an episode and a story. They say: here is a mystery. Your attempt to solve it may reveal something only about you. Shakespeare got there first, of course. In the middle of his play The Winter’s Tale, a character called Time enters, and addresses the audience: Impute it not a crime To me, or my swift passage, that I slide O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried Of that wide gap. Between the first and second halves of the play, 16 years have disappeared, and Time offers an apology that soon turns into a boast: Of that wide gap, since it is in my power To o’er throw law, and in one self-born hour To plant and o’erwhelm custom. The lost years are Shakespeare’s self-born hour. In them, he exits the world of conventional, discoverable biography, and enters the world of the theatre, of play and invention. Daniel Swift is an associate professor of English at Northeastern University London. He is the author of The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare (2025)
Troubadours: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Linda Paterson answers your questions on the innovative poets and composers of the Middle Ages
Composing songs of courtly love and war in the High Middle Ages, the troubadours were the poet-musicians of western and southern Europe – especially southern France. But were they really the lovesick wandering minstrels popular culture would have us believe? Or was there more to their artistry? Speaking to Emily Briffett, Linda Paterson answers your top questions on the troubadours and their enduring poetic and musical legacy. Linda Paterson is the author of The Troubadours (Reaktion Books, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
John Milton: the Paradise Lost author who challenged the status quo
From his hugely influential epic poem of God and Satan to his fiery political polemics, the 17th-century writer and statesman John Milton left a legacy that stirs literary debate even today. Matt Elton profiles the man who dared to question authority
John Milton was a poet, polemicist and statesman of the 17th century, a time of political upheaval and radical thought. His controversial ideas – on everything from theology and philosophy to marriage and freedom of the press – often saw him come up against the status quo. Milton’s undoubtedly most famous work Paradise Lost, first published in 1667, established him as one of the most significant writers in English history. He was revered by countless writers and thinkers that came after him, and his works continue to have enduring popularity and relevance to this day. What is John Milton’s Paradise Lost about? Paradise Lost is an epic poem of more than 10,000 non-rhyming lines that charts humanity’s fall from grace. It is Milton’s version of the biblical story of the temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The poem tapped into debates about free will and disobeying authority, which struck a chord in the period in which Milton was writing – following the Civil War and the Restoration of the monarchy with Charles II. Adding to the controversy was his sympathetic, complex portrayal of Satan. Embarking on a work this grand in scale and contentious in subject had not been undertaken lightly. “It's something that Milton conceived decades before it was published,” says Professor Islam Issa, who spoke about John Milton for our Life of the Week podcast series. On the podcast | Islam Issa charts the life and work of the 17th-century poet and polemicist John Milton “There's a draft that shows us that he wanted to write a tragedy called Adam Unparadised,” he says. “But Milton ended up writing an epic poem, a specific type of long-verse narrative of the kind that had been written by Homer and Virgil in the ancient world. It always features major heroes, concerns a series of issues, and has an expansive setting.” In this case, that setting was heaven, hell and Earth. What are John Milton’s most famous works? Of the dozens of poems, prose and pamphlets that Milton wrote during his life, here are some of the most famous: Paradise Lost, Milton’s masterpiece, which was first published in 1667 and appeared as a revised second edition in 1674. The epic poem’s themes of freedom and disobedience, and imagery of chaos, light and darkness proved hugely influential. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1643, the first of four pamphlets that argued for divorce on the grounds of mutual incompatibility. This was met by fierce opposition from those who considered the matter heretical. Areopagitica, a 1644 polemic in favour of freedom of speech and expression. Vehemently opposed to licensing, it was written in response to government legislation requiring every book to be read and approved by a censor before publication. Milton famously compared suppressing books to murder. What do we know about John Milton’s early life? John Milton was born on 9 December 1608 in Bread Street, London. He was the second of three surviving children of John Milton senior and Sarah Jeffrey. Milton’s father had been disinherited by his Catholic father for reading an English-language Bible (and so accepting Protestantism) but had set up a successful business in London as a scrivener, writing official documents. Skilled at reading and writing, Milton senior ran his business from the family home. He also worked as a moneylender or broker, which proved to be a lucrative trade – a line of work that Milton himself would take up as an adult. Read more | Long road to paradise: the life of John Milton and how he created his masterpiece, Paradise Lost How was Milton educated? Milton’s later work demonstrates an expansive education, drawing on classical texts and contemporary ideas alike. “Because his father was earning good money, Milton was able to have private tuition, get an education in the classical languages, and follow his passions and travel,” says Issa. “I don’t think he ever really had any pressure to earn money, because his father was so good at it.” However, Issa stresses that Milton’s talent as a writer was due to his individual intellect. “He was especially interested in languages, and he was unusual in the extent to which he was really well-versed in them,” he notes. “When he did end up going to university in Cambridge, he was obviously an odd one out. I don’t think he was a regular learner.” When did John Milton become a radical? It was during his studies at the University of Cambridge that Milton first started showing signs of refusing to conform to established ideas, suggests Issa. “He was tutored by William Chappell [an English scholar who later was made a bishop], but the two men fell out and Milton got suspended. “We don't know all that much about the nature of that fallout, but he returned to London as a result. And it seems that he was still in his 20s when he began opposing ideas of the church and the monarchy.” Milton later returned to Cambridge and graduated in 1629, then undertaking a master’s degree in 1632. At that point, he intended to enter the ministry. Instead, he returned to the family home and spent the next six years reading extensively. In 1638, he embarked on a journey around Europe for around 15 months, visiting France, Italy and Switzerland. One of Milton’s most important stops was Florence, a key capital of the European Renaissance. “Milton regularly met up with writers and thinkers, and was made to feel really welcome,” says Issa. It was in Florence that he met Vincenzo Galilei, the illegitimate son of the famous Renaissance astronomer Galileo. Now in his 70s, and blind, the astronomer was essentially under house arrest for expressing the heretical theory that the Earth moves around the Sun. The church had forced him to recant his beliefs. Milton, aged around 30, went to visit the elderly Galileo. “Milton and Galileo together: it is an amazing image,” Issa enthuses. “It’s been described as akin to one of those special issues of a comic in which Batman meets Superman. The meeting had a huge impact on Milton, and I think a willingness to challenge authority was born in him at that point.” What do we know about John Milton’s personal life? Once back in England in 1639, Milton worked as a moneylender in London. It was in this capacity that, in 1642, he travelled to Oxfordshire to collect a payment, only to return with the debtor’s daughter, Mary Powell, as his wife. “It was an interestingly quick marriage, to someone half Milton’s age,” Issa points out, as Milton was 33 and Mary was 17. The match was to end just as quickly as it began, however, as within just a few weeks Milton’s new wife had travelled back to her family home. “There’s an assumption that Milton was difficult to live with. It’s probably true that Mary couldn’t adapt to his more austere lifestyle,” says Issa. Perhaps another reason for their split was political difference. “The civil war was about to kick off, pitting royalists against republicans. Powell’s family was on the royalist side, while Milton was very much on the republican side.” At this point, Milton redirected his intellectual energies to the legality and morality of divorce. This included The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), which argued that the dissolution of a marriage should be possible on the grounds of incompatibility. Not long afterwards however, Milton would rekindle his marriage with Mary following an unsuccessful courtship with another woman. In the mid-1640s, the two moved back in together in a large house in London’s Barbican area. They had four children, of which three survived. Following Mary’s death in 1652, Milton married two further times: to Katherine Woodcock in 1656 and, five years after her death, to Elizabeth Minshull from 1663. He would stay with Elizabeth until his own death in 1674. Great reputations Member exclusive | In our podcast series, expert historians discuss the contested reputations of key historical figures, charting the lives and afterlives of Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmeline Pankhurst and more… Listen to all episodes now When did Milton go blind? From his early years, Milton had weak eyesight, but it began to deteriorate during the 1640s. At first, he lost vision in one eye; by 1652, he had become permanently blind. “In terms of what it did to him psychologically, he referred to it very often in his writing thereafter – particularly in his poetry, where he had the room to manoeuvre with his imagination and literary devices,” says Issa. “There’s a poem about his late wife, Katherine, in which he says he dreams about her dressed all in white and wearing a veil – so, essentially, almost faceless. He ends it with ‘But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd / I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night’. “In other words, he almost prefers night-time – when he can see vividly in his dreams – to daytime, when he can’t. Ideas of darkness and light recur frequently throughout Paradise Lost, too,” Issa adds. What role did John Milton have in the Civil War? His republican views, and writings in opposition to the monarchy, show that Milton aligned himself with Oliver Cromwell and the parliamentary side. “The parliamentarians were arguing that the monarch’s supremacy shouldn’t extend to areas such as religion, and that there should be a constitutional monarchy,” says Issa. Milton was deeply invested in such arguments from the start. “He began to synthesise different ideas about leadership, liberty and religion. “When Charles I began advancing towards London following the 1642 battle of Edgehill, for instance, Milton wrote a sonnet called When the Assault was Intended to the City, which seems to suggest he was scared about the existential threat the king’s advance posed to London and to his views.” Milton’s loyalty to the parliamentarian cause paid off as the Civil War came to an end and Charles I was executed in 1649. “Milton hadn’t just written poetry during the conflict, but also really important pieces of prose promoting republicanism and justifying regicide,” Islam notes. “He very much admired Cromwell, and was viewed favourably in turn.” What role did Milton have in Cromwell’s government? Milton held the position of Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Oliver Cromwell’s government from 1649 to 1660. “The best way I can describe the role is as a kind of language minister,” says Issa. “The international language of communication at the time was Latin, so his day-to-day tasks involved a lot of translating.” But the fact that Cromwell’s revolutionary government was widely regarded with wariness on the European continent meant that Milton had plenty of free time. “Despite having staff and a good salary, he didn’t really have his work cut out for him. This meant he could channel his energies into writing.” What happened to Milton when the monarchy was restored? Following Cromwell’s death in 1658, the Commonwealth that he had led struggled under the rule of his son, Richard, who was unpopular and lacked his father’s abilities. Royalist plans to reinstate the monarchy strengthened and eventually led to the return of King Charles I’s exiled son from the Netherlands in May 1660. The Restoration of the monarchy was bad news for parliamentarian supporters, Milton among them. “He had to go into hiding, but was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London,” says Issa. “Although he evaded execution, his books were burned, and many of his friends were killed. His dreams were shattered.” Yet despite his fall from power, and his blindness requiring him to dictate his words to scribes, Milton continued work on the epic poem that was to become his magnum opus: Paradise Lost. How does Paradise Lost reflect the upheavals of the 17th century? Paradise Lost has been interpreted as being critical of those in power, who are represented by God. “Milton starts the poem by saying that he's going to justify the ways of God to men, which would have been seen as a strange thing to say at the time because it suggests that God’s ways need justification,” says Issa. Some of this criticism, he argues, is more subtle. “Paradise Lost is unrhymed, which gave Milton freedom to write as he pleased. “He specifically talks about rhyme as being a bondage […] this might be a symbol for the monarchy: it's constraining, and Milton instead opts for the freedom of not having to rhyme,” Issa explains. What was the reaction to Paradise Lost? John Milton’s reputation following the Restoration made it difficult to get his work published, but things had begun to calm down by the mid-1660s. The first version of Paradise Lost was published in 1667. “One of the first recorded reactions upon its publication is from an MP called Sir John Denham, who is said to have gone to the House of Commons carrying Paradise Lost ‘wet from the press’,” according to Issa. “Denham is recorded as saying: ‘This is the noblest poem that ever was written in any language or in any age’. Even royalists saw the epic nature of the poem, how imaginative it was, and how well written it was.” While Paradise Lost received such acclaim, initial editions sold only small numbers. It would not be until after Milton’s death that the poem reached the peak of its popularity. Life in Victorian Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | This six-week course covers everything you need to know about Victorian Britain, guided by historian Ruth Goodman and filmed on location at Black Country Living Museum. Explore the course now How influential was Paradise Lost? Milton’s Paradise Lost went on to influence poets, painters, politicians and a host of other famous figures in the centuries since its publication. Issa highlights just a handful of the most notable examples: William Blake, the Romantic-era poet and painter, who illustrated scenes from Paradise Lost on numerous occasions, and whose early 19th-century epic poem Milton features the writer as its central character. Mary Shelley, whose 1818 Gothic novel Frankenstein was heavily influenced by Milton’s work. Malcolm X, the American civil-rights activist, who read Milton’s masterpiece during his imprisonment between 1946 and 1952. Philip Pullman, who took the title from his bestselling fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, published from 1995–2000, from a phrase in Paradise Lost. When did Milton die? Milton died at home in London on 8 November 1674, just as he turned 66. Given that he had suffered from gout throughout his life, it is thought that his death may have been caused by kidney failure. Where is John Milton buried? John Milton was buried alongside his father in the churchyard of St Giles, Fore Street, London. Today, a statue and a memorial can be seen inside the church.
My history hero: Joan Armatrading chooses Charles Dickens (1812–70)
Singer-songwriter and guitarist Joan Armatrading chooses Charles Dickens as a history hero
In profile Charles Dickens is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. He wrote a string of bestselling books and short stories including The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations, creating some of literature’s best-known characters in the process. His books are still in print, and many have been adapted for stage and screen. He is buried at London’s Westminster Abbey. When did you first hear about Dickens? In my childhood. I went to the local library all the time while I was growing up, reading books by Dickens, Shakespeare and Enid Blyton – the ‘classics’. I particularly loved Dickens’ use of words – it’s poetry, really – and the language that he used is the language we use today. What kind of man was he? These days we talk about people who are humanitarian, entrepreneurial or philanthropic, and Dickens was all of those. Being from a poor family, he had a sense of where he came from, which made him conscious of the plights and poverty of others, and he wrote about such people in his novels. Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Charles Dickens and his family home I think he was also a very thoughtful man, even if he behaved selfishly at times. But that’s human nature: each of us has two sides. What made him a hero? Above all, his artistry – the words and the phrasing – and the incredible stories he dreamed up that have engaged so many people over the years. I write songs and music and, while I don’t find it a struggle, it’s not an easy thing to do – unless you’re a born storyteller, as he clearly was. Moreover, his stories have lasted; they’re as powerful today as the day he wrote them. I subconsciously lean on Dickens because, though I’d never call myself a poet, I try to use words that have meaning and flow. I also admire him for all he did to help those less fortunate than himself. What was Dickens’ finest hour? I particularly like Hard Times, because [scenes with school board superintendent] Mr Gradgrind make me think of myself. He tells his class not to daydream – but my whole existence is about daydreaming, as was Dickens’. It’s how you create: you have to imagine something before you can make it tangible. So many characters in Dickens’ work, like Little Dorrit, have real substance and strength, too. Is there anything that you don’t admire about him? The way he treated his wife, Catherine – but people have emotions and can’t always control them, as I wrote in my song ‘The Weakness in Me’. Overall, though, I think he was a good person. On the podcast | The dark side of Dickens Can you see any parallels between his life and your own? Only in terms of the writing, having that creative streak and making our own way in life. If you could meet Dickens, what would you ask him? I’d like to know to what extent the story of Little Dorrit was autobiographical. Joan Armatrading CBE is an Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her new album is How Did This Happen and What Does It Now Mean This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
A history of the Bible: who wrote it and when?
The origins of the Bible are still cloaked in mystery. When was it written? Who wrote it? And how reliable is it as an historical record? Spencer Mizen charts the evolution of arguably the most influential book of all time
In 2007, Time magazine asserted that the Bible “has done more to shape literature, history, entertainment, and culture than any book ever written.” With phrases like “an eye for an eye” and “thou shalt not kill” embedded in our language and over five billion copies sold worldwide (swollen by a further 100 million every year given away for free), its impact is undeniable. Though, while its cultural influence is clear, the history of the Bible is much less so. Questions about who wrote the Bible, when, and why have fascinated and perplexed scholars for centuries. These are the thorniest of questions, made all the more tangled by the Bible’s great age, and the fact that some, or all of it, has become a sacred text for members of two of the world’s great religions – Judaism and Christianity – numbering more than two billion people. Where does the Bible originate? Archaeological discoveries and the study of written sources, such as Merneptah's Stele, have shed light on the history of both halves of the Bible: the Old Testament, the story of the Jews’ highs and lows in the millennium or so before the birth of Jesus; and the New Testament, which documents the life and teachings of Jesus. These findings may be incomplete and they may be highly contested, but they have helped historians paint a picture of how the Bible came to life. For centuries, the Old Testament has been widely interpreted as a story of disaster and rescue – of the Israelites falling from grace before picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and finding redemption. Nowhere is this theme more evident than in Exodus, the dramatic second book of the Old Testament, which chronicles the Israelites’ escape from captivity in Egypt to the promised land. Read more | On ancient battlefields, the world's oldest civilisations turned beloved pets into weapons of war The Bible tells us that Moses led the Israelites out of their captivity in Egypt (whose population had been laid low by ten plagues inflicted on them by God) before Joshua spearheaded a brilliant invasion of Canaan, the promised land. The historical sources, however, are far less forthcoming. As John Barton, former professor of the interpretation of holy scriptures at the University of Oxford, puts it: “There is no evidence of a great invasion by the Israelites under Joshua; the population doesn’t seem to have changed much in that period as far as we can tell by archaeological surveys.” In fact, the best corroborating evidence for the Bible’s claim that the Israelites surged into Canaan is Merneptah’s Stele, a carved granite monument created by the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah at the end of the 13th century BC. This stele, discovered in Thebes in 1896, mostly details the Egyptians’ victory over the Libyans and their allies. But it is the final three lines of the inscription that has arguably excited most interest among historians. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-1134266816-17c5bea-scaled-e1737028949459.jpg" width="619" height="413" alt="A replica of Merneptah’s Stele" title="A replica of Merneptah’s Stele, now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The last 3 of the 28 lines deal with a separate campaign in Canaan, then part of Egypt's imperial possessions. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> “Israel has been shorn,” it declares. “Its seed no longer exists.” It’s an inauspicious start, one that boasts of this people’s near destruction at the hands of one of the ancient world’s superpowers in their homeland of Canaan. But the Israelites would survive. And the story they would go on to tell about themselves and their relationship with their God would arguably eclipse any of Merneptah’s achievements. It would spawn what is surely the most influential book of all time: the Bible. Merneptah’s Stele may describe more Jewish pain at the hands of their perennial Egyptian persecutors, but it at least suggests that they may have been in Canaan during Merneptah’s reign (1213–1203 BC). If the early history of the Israelites is uncertain, so is the evolution of the book that would tell their story. Who wrote the Bible? Scholars now believe that the stories that would become the Bible were disseminated by word of mouth across the centuries, in the form of oral tales and poetry – perhaps as a means of forging a collective identity among the tribes of Israel. Eventually, these stories were collated and written down. The question is by whom, and when? Until the 17th century, received opinion had it that the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – were the work of one author: Moses. However, more recent evidence suggests otherwise. Read more | The murderous history of Bible translations A limestone boulder was discovered embedded in a stone wall in the town of Tel Zayit, 35 miles southwest of Jerusalem, in 2005. The boulder, now known as the Zayit Stone, contains what many historians believe to be the earliest full Hebrew alphabet ever discovered, dating to around 1000 BC. “What was found was not a random scratching of two or three letters, it was the full alphabet,” Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland has said of the stone. “Everything about it says this is the ancestor of the Hebrew script.” The Zayit Stone does not in itself tell us when the Bible was written and collated, but it gives us our first glimpse of the language that produced it. And, by tracking the stylistic development of that language down the centuries, and cross-referencing it with biblical text, historians have been able to rule out the single-author hypotheses, concluding instead that it was written by waves of scribes during the first millennium BC. Ask the expert: John Barton John Barton is a former professor of holy scriptures at the University of Oxford and the author of A History of the Bible: The Books and Its Faiths. Q: Just how reliable is the Old Testament as an historical document? A: Some parts, such as the early chapters of Genesis, are myth or legend, rather than history. But parts of Samuel, Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah describe events broadly known also from Assyrian or Persian sources. For example, Jehu, king of Israel in the ninth century BC, appears on an Assyrian monument, the Black Obelisk, doing obeisance to the Assyrian king. From about the eighth century BC onwards, the Old Testament contains some real historiography, even though it may not all be accurate. Q: Does it matter if it’s not historically accurate? Are we guilty of placing too much emphasis on this question? A: I think we are. Much of the Old Testament is about seeing God at work in human history rather than in accurately recording the detail, and sometimes we exaggerate the importance of historical accuracy. The Old Testament is not a work of fiction, but nor is it a modern piece of history-writing. Q: How much does archaeology support the historicity of the Old Testament? A To a limited extent. It gives us a context within which the Old Testament makes sense, but it doesn’t confirm a lot of the details. It mustn’t be forgotten that archaeology has also yielded vast numbers of documents from the ancient near-east, such as Assyrian and Babylonian annals, which illuminate the Old Testament world. Q: How much do we know about the scribes who wrote the Old Testament? A: The scribes are never described in detail in the Old Testament itself, but analogies with Egypt and Mesopotamia make it clear that there must have been a scribal class, probably attached as civil servants to the temple in Jerusalem or the royal court. After the exile of the Jewish people in Bablylon in the sixth century BC, scribes gradually turned into religious teachers, as we find them in the New Testament. Q: When was the Old Testament assembled into the book it is today? A: Probably during the first century BC, though parts of it were certainly regarded as holy scripture much earlier than that. But the collection is a work of early Judaism. It should be remembered that for a long time it was a collection of individual scrolls, not a single book between two covers. Q: Did the Old Testament anticipate the figure of Jesus Christ? A: There are prophecies of a coming Messiah – which means ‘anointed one’ – occasionally in the Old Testament, and Christians claimed them as foretelling Jesus. But messianic hopes were not widespread or massively important in first-century Judaism and are even less central to the Old Testament itself. Christians discovered texts they saw as messianic prophecies – for example, in Isaiah 7 – though other Jews did not read them that way. Q: Why did the New Testament gain so much traction in the first centuries AD? A: The New Testament was accepted because it was part of the package of the Christian message, which was massively successful in the early centuries. The message, which was that all humankind was accepted through Jesus by the God worshipped by the Jews, proved a winner. Who was Jesus? Did he really exist? Most scholars agree that Jesus, a first-century religious leader and preacher, existed historically. He was born in c4 BC and died – reportedly crucified on the orders of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate – in cAD 30–33. Then, for around 40 years, news of his teachings was spread by word of mouth until, from around AD 70, four written accounts of his life emerged that changed everything. The gospels, or ‘good news’, of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are critically important to the Christian faith. It is their descriptions of the life of Jesus Christ that have made him arguably the most influential figure in human history. Read more | How much is known about the birth of Jesus? “We can’t be sure when the gospels were written,” says Barton, “and we know little about the authors. But the guess is that Mark came first, in the 70s, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s and 90s, and John in the 90s or early in the second century. “In general, Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the same story with variations, and hence are called the ‘synoptic’ gospels, whereas John has a very different style, as well as telling a markedly different version of the story of Jesus. Matthew and Luke seem to be attempts to improve on Mark, by adding more stories and sayings from sources now lost. John is a different conceptualisation of the story of Jesus, portraying a more obviously divine figure.” Though the variations in the four gospels may have proved a source of frustration to those trying to paint a definitive picture of Jesus’s life and teachings, they offer a fascinating insight into the challenges facing the early Christian church as it spread around the Mediterranean world in the first and second centuries AD. Mark, it’s been argued, wrote for a community deeply affected by the failure of a Jewish revolt against the Roman empire in the AD 60s, while Luke wrote for a predominately Gentile (non-Jewish) audience eager to demonstrate that Christian beliefs could flourish within the Roman empire. Both John and Matthew hint at the growing tensions between Jewish Christians and the Jewish religious authorities. As a Jew, Jesus would have been well-versed in the Hebrew Bible and, according to the gospels, saw himself as the realisation of ancient Jewish prophecies. “Don’t think that I came to destroy the law, or the prophets,” Matthew reports him saying. “I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfil.” But for all that, by the time the gospels were written, schisms between Judaism and nascent Christianity were clearly emerging. Versions of the Bible Different editions of the Bible have appeared over the centuries, aiming to further popularise the stories and teachings within. Here are three of the most notable versions... King James Bible On 24 March 1603, King James VI of Scotland was also crowned King James I of England and Ireland. His reign would usher in a new royal dynasty (the Stuarts) and a new era of colonialism (most especially in North America). But arguably every bit as significant was his decision, in 1611, to introduce a new Bible. The ‘King James Version’ (KJV) wasn’t the first to be printed in English – Henry VIII had authorised the ‘Great Bible’ in 1539 and the Bishops’ Bible had been printed during the reign of Elizabeth I in 1568 – but, in terms of impact, the KJV would dwarf its successors. Shortly after his coronation, James was told that existing translations of the Bible were “corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original”. What his scholars produced was a book designed to be read out aloud in church – fast-paced, easy to understand, a masterclass in storytelling. No other version would challenge its dominance in the English-speaking world until the mid-20th century. According tob historian Adam Nicolson, the King James' Bible’s “particular combination of majesty and freedom, of clarity and richness, was for centuries held, particularly by the Victorians, to be the defining terms of our national identity”. The Gutenberg Bible In 1454, in the Rhineland town of Mainz, three friends – inventor Johannes Gutenberg, printer Peter Schöffer and financier Johann Furst – pooled resources and brainpower to come up with what the British Library describes as “probably the most famous Bible in the world”. The Gutenberg Bible, as the three friends’ creation would come to be known, signalled a step-change in printing techniques. Whereas earlier Bibles were produced by printing presses that employed woodblock technology, the press that churned out the Gutenberg Bible used moveable metal type, allowing more flexible, efficient and cheap printing. Gutenberg’s Bible also had massive cultural and theological ramifications. Faster, cheaper printing meant more books and more readers – and that brought with it greater criticism, interpretation, debate and, ultimately, revolution. In short, the Gutenberg Bible was a significant step on the road to the Protestant Reformation and ultimately the Enlightenment. In the words of Professor Justin Champion of Royal Holloway, University of London: “The printed Bible in the hands of the public posed a fundamental challenge to papal dominion. Once released from Latin into the vernacular, the word of God became a weapon.” Dead Sea Scrolls Sometime between November 1946 and February 1947, a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave at Wadi Qumran, near the Dead Sea. When he heard something crack he headed inside to investigate. What he found has been described by the Smithsonian Institute as “the most important religious texts in the Western world”. What the shepherd had chanced upon were the Dead Sea Scrolls, more than 800 documents of animal skin and papyrus, stored in clay jars for safe keeping. Among the texts are fragments of every book of the Old Testament, except the Book of Esher, along with a collection of previously unknown hymns and a copy of the Ten Commandments. But what really makes the scrolls special is their age. They were written between around 200 BC and the middle decades of the first century AD, which means they predate by at least eight centuries the oldest previously known Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Were the scrolls left in the caves by a Jewish community living near the Dead Sea or, perhaps, by Jews fleeing Roman troops in the first century AD? We may never know for sure.
Long road to paradise: the life of John Milton and how he created his masterpiece, Paradise Lost
John Milton was an English radical polemicist and poet, whose magnum opus, Paradise Lost, has influenced artistic endeavours since its publication. On the 350th anniversary of his death, Islam Issa explores the story of the man who lived in revolutionary times, and who lost two wives, his liberty and his sight – but never his hope
John Milton was an early riser. He woke each morning with poetry in his head, itching for it to be recorded. The verses came to him during the night, he said – a special delivery from his very own lyrical muse. By 1652, he had completely lost his sight, so the disgruntled Milton had to wait patiently for a scribe to arrive. In the popular imagination, one of them was his daughter, Deborah, who has been depicted putting pen to paper as her father dictates his intricate poetry. Milton’s biographer wrote that on some days, when it took longer than usual for someone to begin transcribing, the poet “would complain, saying he wanted to be milked”. That was in the mid-1660s, when Milton – in an effort to evade the Great Plague of London – had relocated to a cottage in Chalfont St Giles, rural Buckinghamshire. The move to the country had worked wonders for his writing, and he set to putting the final touches on a magnum opus that had occupied his thoughts for decades and taken years to complete. It hadn’t always been his intention to compose an epic poem. In the early 1640s he’d had in mind a drama, scribbling the outline for a tragedy titled Adam Unparadised. But the political and social turmoil of the couple of decades before his country sojourn had changed his mind about writing a play. Instead, he decided to compose a lengthy poem of more than 10,000 unrhymed lines. Its title was Paradise Lost. Tumultuous times John Milton was born in 1608 in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, the son of a scrivener and composer, also named John. In early adulthood he had developed a habit of opposing the status quo, especially when it came to religion and politics. The Church of England was too hierarchical, he said, proposing that regular people should be able to read the scriptures without being influenced by religious leaders. As for the Roman Catholic church, its obsession with popery and rituals was a form of heresy. In 1642, Milton went to Oxfordshire to collect an interest payment from a landowner to whom his father had lent money years earlier. By the time he returned to London, he had tied the knot with the debtor’s daughter. This marriage to Mary Powell – at 17, half his age – lasted just a few weeks. It’s long been assumed that Milton must have been difficult to live with. A more obvious cause of the rift was politics: the first rumblings of the Civil War were growing, and the Powell family’s strong royalist views were incompatible with Milton’s staunch republicanism. In any case, when Mary abandoned him and returned to her family, Milton redirected his intellectual energies to addressing the topic of divorce. The law of the time offered a separation agreement “from bed and board” that didn’t go as far as terminating the marriage. Dissolution “from the bond of marriage” was valid only on grounds of adultery. Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, published as an anonymous and unlicensed pamphlet, made the radical argument that a breakdown due to “indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind” should be sufficient grounds. Milton was well ahead of his time. It was another three centuries before parliament passed the Divorce Reform Act 1969, legalising no-fault divorce on the grounds of an “irretrievable breakdown”. To his contemporaries, however, Milton’s justifications for divorce were likely the most controversial of all his opinions. They led to open attacks that reached parliament (by now his name was associated publicly with the book), where he was condemned and where members pushed for state control over unregistered books, including Milton’s contentious tract. Under the Licensing Order of 1643, every book produced had to be read and approved by a censor before publication. Milton penned a strong and impassioned case opposing the policy. In Areopagitica, which became his most famous polemic, he defended freedom of expression and compared suppressing books to killing humans – in fact, he wrote, it might be even more deplorable, because it “slays an immortality rather than a life”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/BAL348130-5dfa773-e1731929244146.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The Milton memorial window in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, made by Clayton & Bell in 1888. Here, Satan spies on Adam and Eve (Photo by Neil Holmes/Bridgeman Images)" title="The Milton memorial window in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, made by Clayton & Bell in 1888. Here, Satan spies on Adam and Eve (Photo by Neil Holmes/Bridgeman Images)" /> Republican ideals Milton was most prolific when expounding his diehard republican beliefs. During the 1640s, he spent much of his time writing poetry and prose that supported the militant anti-monarchical movement. When the republican army’s commander-in-chief, Thomas Fairfax, besieged Colchester in 1648, Milton wrote a sonnet in praise of “Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings”. That poem also suggested that the job of opposing the tyranny of inherited power remained unfinished: “O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand; / For what can war, but endless war still breed, / Till truth, and right from violence be freed.” Early the next year, parliament indicted Charles I. Fairfax, meanwhile, was overshadowed by a subordinate commander, Oliver Cromwell, who became the island’s most influential statesman – and in whom Milton placed high hopes. Listen | Browse the HistoryExtra archive of podcasts on the Civil War, from female spies to Charles I's killers Charles I’s trial lasted eight days in January 1649. During that time, Milton quickly put together the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, its title page boasting “that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to account a tyrant, or wicked KING, and after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death”. On 30 January, the king was decapitated by a single axe blow and his head held up, blood dripping from the neck, to the cheering crowd. The monarchy and the House of Lords were swiftly abolished. Some years later, Cromwell became head of state, taking the (unmistakably regal) title of lord protector. Speaking in tongues Within six weeks of Charles I’s execution, Milton was called upon to serve the republican government in the role of secretary for foreign tongues. Tasked with translating official communications, largely from the period’s international language of Latin, Milton received a handsome annual salary of £288, 13 shillings and 6½d (around £45,000 today). Foreign governments were still wary of the new regime in Britain, so Milton’s talents were mainly channelled into writings in defence of the revolution. His Eikonoklastes (The Image Breaker), published in October 1649, attempted to justify the regicide. It was written in response to Eikon Basilike (The Royal Image), subtitled The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings, published shortly after the execution and purportedly written by the king himself before he died. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-1288501833-86a56ff-e1731928903323.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The frontispiece of Eikon Basilike, purportedly written by Charles I, depicting the deposed monarch as a saintly martyr; Milton wrote in justification of the king’s execution (Photo by Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="The frontispiece of Eikon Basilike, purportedly written by Charles I, depicting the deposed monarch as a saintly martyr; Milton wrote in justification of the king’s execution (Photo by Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Held in high regard by royalists, the title page of Eikon Basilike featured an allegorical image depicting Charles as a saintly martyr, engraved by William Marshall. That artist had earlier drawn Milton for his 1645 poetry collection – a depiction that the author hated. In retribution, Milton instructed Marshall to engrave a caption in Greek, describing the latter as “a rank beginner” and “a good-for-nothing artist” – barbs which, not speaking that language, he would have been unable to understand. Milton and Mary Powell had reconciled in 1645, but different problems soon arose. For one thing, the writer’s eyesight was weakening: by 1648, he’d lost all vision in one eye, and in 1652 he became permanently blind. In that same devastating year, Mary died from complications during the birth of their third daughter, Deborah. Milton’s second marriage, to Katherine Woodcock in 1656, appears to have been more amicable. Like his first wife, though, Katherine died in 1658 following childbirth. In one of his most emotive pieces, Milton writes about encountering his late beloved, whom he met only after losing his sight, during his vivid sleep: “But O as to embrace me she inclined, / I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.” Perhaps tellingly, it was around this time that Milton – a blind man left to raise his three daughters alone – began to work on Paradise Lost. Despite the overthrow of the monarchy, on Oliver’s death in September 1658 the Cromwellian government reverted to dynastic succession. Richard Cromwell succeeded his father as lord protector, but lacked the qualities that had prompted Milton to describe his father as “chief of men… Guided by faith and matchless fortitude”. Parliament soon retook control, much to Milton’s delight. Within a few months, however, the army had dissolved parliament – something that Milton condemned in no uncertain terms. As the royalists regained power, and with the restoration of the monarchy looking inevitable, Milton remained outspoken in opposition. The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth proposed the formation of a permanent republican federation, or at the very least an elected sovereign. Yet such a scheme was, by 1660, hopelessly utopian. Writer on the run The monarchy was restored that May, when Charles II returned from exile and succeeded his father. Like his fellow republicans, Milton had to either run or hide. With an arrest warrant issued, and in real danger of assassination, he went into hiding. A proclamation was issued ordering that all of his books should be collected for burning, and Milton’s writings were consigned to the flames at the Old Bailey. Read more | Art, culture and science in the Restoration period Execution loomed, and many of his friends were put to death. A general pardon issued later in the summer of 1660 exempted Milton from suffering the same fate, but it didn’t mean that he was safe. By autumn, Milton had been arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. It’s not known why he was pardoned, around three months later; it may have been because of his visual impairment, or thanks to support from his friend Andrew Marvell, a poet who was also an influential MP. Still, Milton emerged from prison having lost many of his acquaintances, and in financial difficulty; he’d paid £150 – a large sum – to be released, and £2,000 of his savings had been seized. More detrimentally still, his dream of a republic – one in which he had believed, that he’d promoted and that had, for a short while, lived – had all but vanished. The Restoration complete, plague arrived to ravage England, driving Milton to take refuge in Buckinghamshire in July 1665. When that epidemic abated, he made his way back to London early the following year – only to be met by another disaster: the Great Fire of London. Though his house survived, the majority of his city was razed. Milton had spent the first half of the 1660s focusing on Paradise Lost, with an inevitably different outlook on life. “I now must change / Those notes to tragic,” laments the poem’s narrator. Milton was by then blind, lonely and essentially under house arrest, the powers he had challenged now restored: “fallen on evil days, / On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues; / In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, / And solitude.” Read more | Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London The well-read Milton alluded to the scriptures, poetry and tragedy from across the continent to tell his epic tale of humanity’s fall from grace. The result is a dramatic, imaginative take on Satan’s rebellion against God, and the subsequent fall of Adam and Eve. Set at the beginning of human history, it boasts an expansive setting, with Heaven at the top and Earth dangling from it, Hell at the bottom and a dark Chaos in between. Its story is one of ambition and rebellion, questioning the extent of free will and divine justice. Its characters – even God the Father and Son – are complicated and imperfect. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-463907993-5e42463-e1731929089161.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels, by William Blake, 1808. The English artist created the illustration for John Milton's Paradise Lost (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels, by William Blake, 1808. The English artist created the illustration for John Milton's Paradise Lost (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> And no Miltonic character is more famous than the deeply intense Satan, who rallies the fallen angels with populist rhetoric but also contemplates his condition with psychological rigour: “Me miserable! Which way shall I fly / Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? / Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” It’s difficult not to read Milton’s politics into his great epic. In the preface, entitled ‘The Verse’, he explains why the poem doesn’t rhyme – a fact that appears to have disconcerted his publisher. Milton decries “the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming”. Not only had royalist poets used rhyming couplets, but rhyme served as a symbol for the shackles of the ruling powers, he thought. By opposing rhyme and writing freely, Milton’s style was inherently nonconformist. Even more surprising is Satan’s often justified, if overambitious, opposition to the omnipotent but stubborn and out-of-touch God. It’s no surprise that this has long been interpreted as a metaphor for brave opposition against the seemingly immovable monarchy. In 1667, publisher Samuel Simmons paid Milton £5 for the rights to Paradise Lost; according to his contract, he received a further £5 once sales reached an agreed figure. In 1674, he republished the most authoritative version of Paradise Lost, in 12 books – like the classic epics with which he may have felt it was on a par. A few weeks later, Milton prepared his will, in which he mentioned the money still owed by his first wife’s father. He died in November that year. All is not lost It’s both intriguing and telling that Milton didn’t venture to North America. As well as Puritans and Quakers, many anti-monarchists crossed the Atlantic to set up republican structures in the colonies. Indeed, the founding fathers of the US drew on Milton’s work as they shaped the fundamental republican ideals of their new nation. In an alternative universe, he might have been America’s greatest poet. Yet though Milton was a radical, he was also an idealist who stayed put, believing that he could change the system. Read more | "They decided that God must be leading them to North America": the Puritan journey to the Mayflower He had seen some of the world beyond England, travelling to Italy, Geneva and France in 1638. He appears to have had no trouble mastering Italian, claiming that it’s “easily learned at any odd hour”. It’s even said that Milton rolled his letter R when he spoke in Europe, in an effort to differentiate himself from other embarrassing compatriots on the continent. That trip had a formative effect on Milton, evident in Paradise Lost. When Satan ventures from Hell to Eden with the intention of taking down Adam and Eve, his shield, “massy, large and round… Hung on his shoulders like the moon”. Satan is essentially carrying his shield like a big backpack: it looks like the moon only if “through optic glass the Tuscan artist views” it. That artist was the astronomer Galileo Galilei, who’d championed the idea that the Earth moves around the sun. This view was officially deemed “foolish and absurd… formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of holy scripture”. By the time Milton met him, the Italian was elderly and blind. He had challenged authority but been forced to retract his beliefs, and was under house arrest – just as Milton was when writing Paradise Lost. No wonder Milton also challenged authority. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-600041375-c1a0392-e1731928957762.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 19th-century painting of John Milton visiting Galileo Galilei in Florence in 1638, when the astronomer was blind and under house arrest – echoed in the poet’s later life (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A 19th-century painting of John Milton visiting Galileo Galilei in Florence in 1638, when the astronomer was blind and under house arrest – echoed in the poet’s later life (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> Never to yield Yet there is much to suggest that a spark of idealism lived on. Adam, Eve and Satan seemingly all lose in Paradise Lost. But its ending sees the human couple locking hands as they step into a new world, free from Eden’s baggage – a world in which they can explore themselves and engage their free will. Even Satan, “in dubious battle… shook his (God’s) throne”. Here, Milton holds on to the thought that, for a short while, he played a part in shaking the establishment. “What though the field be lost?” Satan asks himself, before continuing to declare that “All is not lost; the unconquerable will… And courage never to submit or yield.” Milton’s influence on the English language is as profound as his views on politics and religion were radical. It’s claimed that he invented almost three times as many words as William Shakespeare did. Throughout his career, too, he conceived phrases, many of which speak to the enduring necessity of optimism. In his masque Comus, the character of the Lady spots a “cloud / Turn forth her silver lining”. And in the elegy Lycidas, Milton ends by confirming the temporary nature of grieving – that life must go on: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: / Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” John Milton’s artistic legacy In the 350 years since its creator’s death, Paradise Lost has inspired generations of painters, musicians and writers Painting and poetry Poet and painter William Blake quipped that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it”. The protagonist of Blake’s illustrated Milton: A Poem is that author, whose soul is re-embodied from Heaven. Describing blindness, the narrator of Paradise Lost mentions that a “cloud” of “ever-during dark Surrounds me”; in the first picture of his illustrated epic, Blake drew a naked Milton surrounded by darkness and clouds. In the 1800s, Blake also created a series of striking watercolour plates illustrating Paradise Lost. Sculpture Milton’s Satan is a complicated character with altered perceptions over the centuries. Jacob Epstein’s Lucifer is a towering and unsettling bronze statue completed during the Second World War. The figure’s asymmetry, suggestive stance and possible androgyny reflect Satan’s sexual tensions in Paradise Lost and the poem’s description of how “spirits when they please / Can either sex assume, or both”. Several decades earlier, Spanish sculptor Ricardo Bellver’s Fallen Angel portrayed Satan’s agonising fall from heaven – a move away from the stern and hypermasculine pre-Miltonic devil. Literature In Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein, the creature discovers a book inside an abandoned bag: Paradise Lost. He assumes that it’s a true story, and compares himself to lonely Adam and mistreated Satan. “Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence,” he reflects, “I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.” More recently, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy drew heavily on the plot and themes of Paradise Lost. Its very title borrows the epic’s description of the mysterious elements that God employs during the act of creation. Landscape art A footpath in San Diego, California, takes the form of a beguiling serpent that turns Paradise Lost into a physical journey. Since 1992, artist Alexis Smith’s 170-metre-long Snake Path has invited individuals to walk through temptation, passing a small Edenic garden of fruit trees and a granite statue of an oversized book. It is carved with words from the finale of Paradise Lost, in which the angel Michael reminds Adam – and, in turn, readers – about the path to true bliss: “Then wilt thou not be loath / To leave this paradise, but shalt possess / A paradise within thee, happier far.” Stained glass During the 19th-century Gothic revival, Paradise Lost appeared in stained glass – a form that Milton described as “storied windows richly dight [ie adorned]”. The Milton memorial window in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, made by Clayton & Bell in 1888, includes portraits of Milton at various stages of his life: at school, visiting Galileo, dictating to his daughters. Its Paradise Lost scenes show Satan rousing the fallen angels in one panel and spying on Adam and Eve in another. Music Themes and images from Paradise Lost have influenced countless musicians over the decades, from a metal band of the same name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eminem. Lana Del Rey reimagined the epic story in her short film Tropico, with songs Body Electric, Gods and Monsters and Bel Air exploring the states of bliss, fall and redemption. It takes cues from Milton’s epic poem: there’s a “muttering thunder” when Adam and Eve eat the fruit, while at the end the first couple depart “hand in hand”. “It’s innocence lost,” sings Del Rey, “like Paradise, Paradise Lost.” This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine