HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-05T16:04:15.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Inside Britain's first refugee camp: a 300-year history of immigration
items: The Tudor law that forced an occult practice underground for centuries
items: The overlooked history of Muslims in Europe
items: Meet the incredible woman who saved Portugal's Jews
items: From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
items: The US 'voodoo' scare: why 19th-century racists spread fake news about Haiti
items: Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
items: This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
items: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors
items: Tudor religion: what did people believe?

Inside Britain's first refugee camp: a 300-year history of immigration
type: item
date: 2026-03-02T15:30:01.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: "This was the site for what may have been Britain’s first refugee camp", writes Kavita Puri
encoded: Blackheath in south-east London has a rich history. It was a rallying point for both the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and the Kentish rebellion of 1450. Monarchs through the ages have passed through. But what is less known is that it was also the site for what may have been Britain’s first refugee camp. In 1709, army tents were temporarily erected in Blackheath to give shelter to some of the estimated 13,000 German refugees who had arrived in Britain from the Palatinate, which is the modern-day Rhineland. There were also camps in Camberwell, Clerkenwell and Greenwich. Initially, the refugees were supported with charitable donations. Many arriving were poor and they spoke a different language, but they were viewed as Protestants fleeing persecution from oppressive Catholic regimes. English parishes raised around £20,000 to support the Palatine refugees. The Rhineland had suffered significantly during years of warfare. Most recently, it had been invaded by King Louis XIV of France in 1707. However, when the Palatine arrivals came to England, there was not a particular ongoing dispute making them flee. As part of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, the state was tolerant of Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. The ruling ‘Elector’ was Catholic, yet both Catholics and Protestants used the most important church in the city of Heidelberg, the Heiliggeistkirche (Church of the Holy Spirit), as a place of worship. Read more | Your guide to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 When the British government took a census of the people arriving from Germany, the authorities realised that about a third were Catholic. The reasons they were coming, it turned out, were complex. Many of the refugees had indeed been affected by religious persecution. But others were travelling in search of economic opportunities. They were escaping bad harvests, high food prices, poor prospects. And there were those who wanted to journey on, to America. Britain in 1709 was also facing its own economic difficulties. …

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The Tudor law that forced an occult practice underground for centuries
type: item
date: 2026-02-18T12:45:38.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: As well as creating new regulations on faith, Henry VIII’s 16th-century government also decided which kinds of knowledge were legitimate – and which were criminal
encoded: The people who controlled Tudor England made certain that any belief that didn’t align with strictly Christian values was deemed to be highly suspicious, and likely criminal. Witchcraft and demonology were stark examples, but Henry VIII himself also passed a law that criminalised palmistry: the reading of one’s fate from the palm of the hand. Henry VIII ruled from 1509 to 1547, presiding over one of the most transformative periods in English and wider British history. His reign encompassed religious revolution, repeated rebellions and an unprecedented expansion of royal authority. But while Tudor governments worked to centralise authority and standardise religious belief after decades of dynastic instability, many elite thinkers continued to explore esoteric ideas in private: the truth was, the early modern period was the perfect hotbed for alternative ideas to flourish. The people who lived in the early 16th century were wracked by uncertainty. England was still emerging from the Wars of the Roses, and Henry VIII was only the second Tudor king; his claim to the throne rested on recent victory in battle rather than ancient lineage, making loyalty to the crown a constant concern. Early modern governance relied heavily on local surveillance and reputation, and strangers presented a challenge to that system. Roma communities were newly visible in England in the early 1500s. As historian Alison Bashford explains, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, contemporary Europeans believed these communities came from Egypt. “Hence the term ‘gypsy’,” she says. It was a misidentification that would shape Tudor laws, based on false ideas that Roma people came from a place imbued with ancient, supposedly occult forms of knowledge. The Egyptian Acts and Tudor control Under Henry VIII, Parliament passed a series of statutes known collectively as the Egyptian Acts. They aimed to fix populations in place and eliminate practices that escaped oversight. But they had a much longer reach t…

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The overlooked history of Muslims in Europe
type: item
date: 2026-02-11T15:20:48.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Islam
description: Tharik Hussain speaks to Danny Bird about the long but often overlooked and distorted history of Muslims in Europe – and the enduring resistance to its reappraisal
encoded: Danny Bird: You open your book by recounting a chance visit to an old mosque in Cyprus. What was so significant about that moment? Tharik Hussain: Nothing changed for me on the day itself, because I knew very little about Islam’s history in Europe at that time. On a long, cheap layover in Larnaca – a place I’d never heard of – I was simply looking for a way to pass the time with a toddler in tow. I’d found a brief reference to a nearby mosque, and decided to visit. At the time (2003), I was preparing to make hijrah – to leave Britain, because I felt that I no longer belonged. My education had led me to believe that there was no meaningful Muslim history in Europe. So when we arrived at this neglected Ottoman-era mosque at the Hala Sultan Tekke, I had no framework for understanding it. The elderly guide didn’t speak English, and neither of us knew what we were looking at. What unsettled me was a tomb inside the mosque, which clashed with the theological outlook my wife and I held at the time. We left, dismissing the place, though the guide handed us a small booklet as we went. Two years later, while working as an English language teacher in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I rediscovered the booklet. To my shock, it claimed that the tomb belonged to a relative of the Prophet Muhammad – his maternal aunt, Umm Harâm. That completely overturned my belief that Europe had no real Islamic history, let alone connections reaching back to the Prophet’s own family. When did Islam first come to Europe? If we look at the very beginnings of Muslim presence in Europe, it’s striking how quickly it arrived. Within 20 years of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in AD 632, Muslims were present in places such as Cyprus and, later, Sicily, establishing themselves far more quickly than Christian or Jewish communities had done in the continent. Some of these early arrivals, including members of the Prophet’s family, were then buried in Europe, their tombs becoming sites of ziyara (pilgrimage), holding gre…

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Meet the incredible woman who saved Portugal's Jews
type: item
date: 2026-01-21T15:30:09.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Amazing lives
subject: Catholic
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: With the Inquisition active throughout much of Europe, the first half of the 16th century was a perilous time for Jewish people. Andreé Aelion Brooks explores how the fabulously wealthy Doña Gracia worked tirelessly to protect her community
encoded: Still in her 20s, Gracia Mendes Nasi (Nacy), better known as Doña Gracia, was recently widowed and fabulously rich. She should have been able to live in comfort for the rest of her life. Her husband, Francisco Mendes, a spice dealer and banker, had divided his wealth in his will between Gracia and his brother, Diogo. Yet without her husband’s protection, even her money could not shield her from a looming crisis. Indeed, being in possession of such a fortune in patriarchal and Catholic Lisbon in the middle of the 1530s was inherently dangerous for someone of Doña Gracia’s background. She was a converso, a term for a person forced to convert from Judaism. When the papal nuncio, an ecclesiastical diplomat, paid a visit to her palatial home in the old Jewish quarter of Lisbon, he demanded yet another bribe to keep the Inquisition from beginning work in Portugal. The Inquisition, Gracia knew, rounded up conversos, who were then charged with being insincere Catholics and imprisoned. Whether this was true or not, their assets were confiscated. Furthermore, Doña Gracia certainly wasn’t sincere in her public faith. While she had married Francisco, who was also her maternal uncle, at Lisbon Cathedral, the ceremony had been preceded by a secret Jewish wedding. Compounding Doña Gracia’s problems, representatives of the Portuguese king, John III, had also visited her. They told her they wanted to take her young daughter, Ana, to the palace to live as an adopted child of the royal family. According to local laws, the king could thus gain the use of any portion of the Mendes fortune that belonged to Ana. It was clear Doña Gracia needed to make a new start elsewhere in Europe, but there was another problem: converso families were forbidden to leave Portugal. Demonstrating the skill that would make her an outstanding leader, she set two plans running simultaneously, an approach she would follow for the rest of her life. Read more | Your guide to the Spanish Inquisition Firstly, she …

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From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
type: item
date: 2026-01-02T15:30:11.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Sea monsters have haunted human imaginations for millennia. From the kraken to killer serpents, Prema Arasu explores what five mythical creatures reveal about our deepest fears
encoded: 1. Armed and dangerous The writhing tentacles of the kraken inspired horror and disgust Sea monsters have fired our imaginations – and chilled our blood – for as long as humanity has sailed the seas. The Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš, which dates back to at least 1200 BC, describes the creation of the world from two fearsome primordial beings: Apsû, the embodiment of subterranean fresh water, and Tiamat, the sea. Like the many mythical aquatic creatures that have occupied our dreams and our nightmares, Apsû and Tiamat reveal much about how the Babylonians saw the world, acting as projections through which their anxieties about nature could be expressed, examined and, perhaps, mastered. Fast forward more than a thousand years and, in Naturalis Historia (c77 AD), the earliest extant work of natural history, the Roman author Pliny the Elder argued that the largest animals found in the sea “exceed in size any of the terrestrial animals” because of the “superabundance of moisture with which they are supplied”. One such giant creature is the kraken, its origins lying in Nordic mythology and folklore. In his 1752–53 proto-scientific work The Natural History of Norway, Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan described the “Kraken, Kraxen, or, as some world name it, Krabben” as an island-sized creature, “round, flat, and full of arms, or branches”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was so energised by reports of this monster of the deep that, in 1830, he wrote a poem in its honour, describing an ancient, giant-armed creature slumbering “Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea.” British naturalist Henry Lee offered a more rational perspective. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), he stated that kraken sightings by sailors were most likely exaggerated reports of giant squid (Architeuthis dux), described a quarter of a century earlier by the Danish biologist Japetus Steenstrup. Even after that, though, kraken and other squid-like monsters proliferated in literature. Herma…

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The US 'voodoo' scare: why 19th-century racists spread fake news about Haiti
type: item
date: 2025-12-08T09:00:17.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Slavery
description: From sexual orgies to Satan incarnated as a snake, lurid depictions of ‘voodoo’ in North America long titillated and shocked readers. As David G Cox explains, they were also wielded as justifications for racist oppression during the social and political upheavals of the 19th-century US
encoded: On 2 January 1893, the black American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture on Haiti to an audience in Chicago. It was widely alleged, he reflected, that the Caribbean republic was riddled with “voodooism, fetishism, serpent worship and cannibalism”, and that “little children are fatted for slaughter and offered as sacrifices to their voodoo deities”. Such claims, Douglass declared, were false. He told his listeners that, while serving as US minister (effectively, ambassador) to Haiti between 1889 and 1891, he found no evidence of ritual sacrifice, despite diligent investigation. By the time Douglass spoke in Chicago, the idea of Haitian ‘voodoo’ as a murderous cult was lodged in the American public consciousness. As he noted, the features of this myth would have been familiar to many. According to scores of white writers at the turn of the 20th century, ‘voodoo’ was an imported African religion devoted to the worship of Satan incarnated as a snake. ‘Voodoo’ ceremonies, it was claimed, consisted of frenzied dances, sexual orgies and the ritual sacrifice of animals or humans followed by the consumption of their bodies or blood. The priests and priestesses of this imaginary faith were said to be the real rulers of Haiti, holding all its citizens – from presidents to peasants – in the grip of terror. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-556636225webready-f31fffd-e1765183494712.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting of a black man dressed in a suit with a small bow tie. He has short hair and a thick moustache" title="Ebenezer Bassett denounced claims that the black-led Caribbean nation was a hotbed of ‘voodoo’ cannibalism and human sacrifice (Image by Getty Images)" /> In 1901, claims about Haitian ‘voodoo’ coalesced in a widely reprinted newspaper report on the “demoniacal orgies” of this purported “devil’s cult”. Supposedly reproducing the findings of the famous American geologist …

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Who won the crusades? The causes, death toll, and number of medieval holy wars explained
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:30:10.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Crusades
subject: Historical people
description: Who won the crusades, how many were there, and what caused them? Medieval expert Rebecca Rist answers these major questions, exploring how centuries of religious conflict reshaped the medieval world
encoded: The crusades were a centuries-long sequence of era-defining medieval holy wars that transformed dynamics of power and religious ideas across Europe and the Middle East. But who won the crusades, and just how many crusades were there? Those are two of the questions answered by professor Rebecca Rist, an expert on the crusades and their broader medieval context. Speaking about the topic on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Rist steps into the dust of medieval roads and the heat of besieged cities to explain why these campaigns erupted, what the major expeditions set out to accomplish, how those ambitions played out on the ground, and how the long arc of conflict finally came to an end. Who won the crusades? Overall, the Muslim forces won the crusades, and the Christians lost. However, as Rist explains, while that was the final state of play, the granular details were far from that simple. "The final bastions of the crusader states were lost in 1291 (having been founded originally in 1099) to Muslim forces. In that sense, obviously the Muslims won the crusades and the Christians were defeated. "However, the crusades span a very long period of time, starting with the First Crusade in 1095 and ending with the loss of Acre in 1291. There were many individual crusades within that period, some of which were won by the Christians – by the Western Franks, like the First Crusade – and others by Muslims. For example, the Muslim forces were successful in the Fifth Crusade in capturing Damietta." In other instances, Rist says there were greater degrees of complexity. "In some crusades, we have partial victories. If we take the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart was partially successful, in the sense that he was able to take and maintain Acre. But, of course, he didn't win back Jerusalem with a military victory." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/06/GettyImages-1186332544-4f0a3d8-e1764009254971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Th…

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This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
type: item
date: 2025-10-24T12:00:22.000Z
creator: Isabel King
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Gods
description: The strange and powerful symbol at the heart of one of history’s greatest temples reveals the importance of the goddess Artemis in ruling fertility, childbirth and nature
encoded: When we think of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may be the first examples that come to mind. However, the oldest-known versions of the list start with a landmark that is often forgotten: the Temple of Artemis. Located in the ancient city of Ephesus (near modern-day Selçuk, Turkey), this remarkable place of worship was renowned for its size and scale, standing at least 20 metres tall and boasting an enormous tile-covered roof supported by 127 marble columns. With a floor plan of some 6,000 square metres, the temple was also nearly three times as large as the famous Parthenon in Athens. But some of the most startling archaeological evidence from Ephesus isn’t concerned with the dimensions of the temple, nor its complicated history of destruction and rebuilding. Instead, much attention has been directed towards a collection of statues depicting the temple’s patron deity, Artemis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/BAL957668-36357fc.jpg" width="7715" height="4533" alt="A large temple with a triangular roof and many columns holding it up. It sits on top of a large flight of stairs. The roof has a mural of the goddess sitting in the middle and surrounded by crowds of people and two golden horses" title="A 20th-century depiction of the Temple of Artemis, dedicated to the goddess Artemis (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Rather than portraying the goddess as a conventional Greek beauty, the sculptures display Artemis in an altogether different guise. And, according to classicist and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, these statues bear a particularly striking physical characteristic. Read more | On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end “[This] is not the Artemis that you probably have in your heads… this image of a beautiful young woman in a tiny Greek chiton, artfully pulling a bow and arrow,” reveals Hughes on an episode…

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5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors
type: item
date: 2025-10-20T08:00:29.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Historical people
subject: Tudor kings and queens
subject: Tudor life
description: Ruth Goodman, who teaches our new HistoryExtra Academy course on Tudor life, shares five insights about the dynasty’s legacy
encoded: 1. The Tudors brought peace and prosperity to England Bringing peace was probably the most important thing the Tudors did for us. The British countryside is littered with the sites of medieval battles – places where opposing forces stomped over crops, burned barns and rounded up people’s sons. For centuries, rival aristocrats made and broke alliances, and killed those who got in their way. Henry Tudor took the throne in exactly this way at Bosworth in 1485, when he persuaded a number of warlords to desert their king, Richard III. But there it stopped. Intrigue and power politics were thenceforth undertaken by more covert means. Everyone became a bit safer, the day-to-day became a bit more predictable, and lots of people got a little bit richer. Less war meant that more crops made it to market, more young men were available for work, and there was less damage done to buildings, less thievery with menaces and safer travel. In turn, this meant more trade and a greater willingness to invest. The peace the Tudors brought to their lands benefited all – rich and poor alike. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-540735906webready-614eaac.jpg" width="5572" height="3714" alt="An engraving shows Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, presenting an English translation of the Bible to Henry VIII (Image by Getty Images)" title="An engraving shows Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, presenting an English translation of the Bible to Henry VIII (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. Henry VIII was a reluctant reformer When the Tudors came to power, the Catholic church was already struggling to maintain its grip upon the minds and souls of Europe. New ideas about the nature of God and the state of Christianity were circulating. So when Henry VIII lost patience with the pope, there were plenty of people delighted by the opportunity to rethink England’s official religious position. Read more | Tudor Eng…

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Tudor religion: what did people believe?
type: item
date: 2025-10-08T15:13:44.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
description: In episode two of her HistoryExtra Academy series Tudor Life, social historian Ruth Goodman explores how religion influenced people’s lives in the 16th century
encoded: Religion was at the heart of Tudor life. It shaped how people understood the world, guided their daily routines, and affected everything from politics to personal relationships. In episode two of Tudor Life, Ruth Goodman looks at what people believed in the 16th century View Green Video on the source website Enjoyed this video? Ruth is hosting a live Q&A for HistoryExtra members on 19 November 2025 at 7pm (GMT). Find out more here Want more from Ruth? Find more episodes of Tudor life here Ruth Goodman is a historian of the social and domestic life of Britain. She has advised the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Globe Theatre and presented a number of BBC television series, including Victorian Farm

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