Popular historians

Elizabeth I preferred thoughtful new year gifts suited to her own tastes such as cloth, personal jewellery and trinkets. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Sobriety, royal presents and Victorian-era musings on failure: an unexpected history of New Year

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January 2020 issue of BBC History Magazine out now!

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2019 round-up: we choose our top 12 HistoryExtra podcasts of the year

Queen Elizabeth I

“All unperfect and incorrect”: Tracy Borman on the discovery of an Elizabethan gem

Olivette Otele for BBC History Magazine.

Olivette Otele: UK’s first female black history professor to research Bristol’s links to slave trade

George Frederic Watts' 1846 painting 'Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes'

Michael Wood “As a racism row rumbles on, is it time to retire the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’?”

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi.

Second World War

The WW2 obsession: why the world can’t move on from 1945

Max Hastings by Fran Monks

Second World War

Max Hastings on the Dambusters

Suzie Lipscomb by Steve Sayers.

Suzannah Lipscomb on women’s lives in Reformation France

Tom Holland by Helen Atkinson

Tom Holland on Christianity’s enduring legacy

Tracy Borman

“If you think you know Henry VIII, think again”: 5 minutes with Tracy Borman

Actor and comedian Lee Mack in 'Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans'. (Image by Nick Wall)

Making history funny: is any historical topic off-limits?

Historian Greg Jenner

Making jokes about Romans

Historian, presenter and author Dan Jones. (David Levenson/Getty Images)

Dan Jones on the Templars and ‘Knightfall’

Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family. (Image Credit: BBC/Wall to Wall Media/Jack Coathupe)

Danny Dyer is “making people think again” about history, say historians