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On location at Royal Observatory, Greenwich in southeast London, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans unpacks how astronomers, mathematicians, and global powers collaborated to create Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Long before smartphones and digital clocks, time was a local affair, creating chaos, confusion and even danger. On location at Royal Observatory, Greenwich in southeast London, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans unpacks how astronomers, mathematicians, and global powers collaborated to create Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Joined by Louise Devoy, Senior Curator of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, we investigate the milestone innovations in this story, including the story of the Observatory Time Ball, the Shepherd Motor Clock, and George Biddell Airy's meridian Prime Meridian. From solving longitude at sea to defining timezones for the entire planet, this is the story of how we learned to master time. View Green Video on the source website Find out more about the history of time, space and navigation and plan a visit to the Royal Observatory
The first king of the English can teach us valuable lessons about how to navigate a world revolutionised by AI, says Professor David Woodman
Are we losing the need to learn? That’s one of the things that people are worrying about with the advent of AI. Feels like a fair concern to me. Rather than learning something yourself, you can ask AI to tell you the answer, translate something for you, tell you how to fix something, even transcribe a medieval manuscript, if that’s your bag. It’s all a bit too easy, isn’t it, and humans, like water, tend to seek out the easiest route, the path of least resistance. So that’s potentially a pretty big problem. If we don’t need to learn, will we bother to learn, and if we don’t bother to learn, are our minds going to atrophy? Academics talk about ‘digital dementia’, and researchers are looking at whether AI is going to cause a general downturn in our cognitive abilities. Unless something changes, and with AI’s rapid development, chances are that we won’t actually need to learn in the future, or at least not in the same way that we do today. So maybe we need to learn to love learning, if we’re going to avoid falling victim to brain rot. And that, perhaps surprisingly, is where Æthelstan, first king of England, comes into the mix. Creator of the kingdom Æthelstan, to remind you, was the grandson of King Alfred the Great, son of King Edward the Elder. Crowned in 925 in Kingston-upon-Thames (an event marked to this day by a tooth-shaped stone ringed by Victorian railings on the side of the road), Æthelstan went on to create the kingdom of England as we recognise it today. Famously he won a substantial victory over an alliance of his adversaries at the battle of Brunanburh in the year 937. Read more | King Æthelstan: England's colossus Professor David Woodman, from Cambridge University, is Æthelstan’s most recent biographer, and he is a keen observer of the apparently contradictory sides of the character of the man: “One of the great paradoxes of early medieval history is that Æthelstan absolutely was a great military figure. He was somebody who secured his position by military victories. He had to put down various coalitions that rose against him. But simultaneously he was somebody who had a very keen sense of the importance of learning and sponsoring reading.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2WE1KADbattle-218bf1c.jpg" width="1648" height="1214" alt="A black and white painting showing a large battle scene, with hundreds of soldiers fighting on foot and horseback. In the background, there are cliffs and three ships on the sea" title="A 20th-century depiction of the great battle of Brunanburh in 937, which was a turning point in the creation of English national identity (Image by Alamy)" /> Æthelstan encouraged scholars to come to his court, and he also facilitated the exchange of texts and learning between these visitors. He probably took inspiration from his grandfather in this, because Alfred sponsored a rejuvenation of learning, in the 880s when he was less occupied by Viking raids. Following Alfred’s lead, Æthelstan ran with this love of learning. He drove for even mundane documents to be dressed up in learned language, as an ostentatious demonstration of the scholarly nature of his court. The diplomas that were issued in his name were works of literary scholarship, which demanded the attention of the reader. “In order to understand the brilliance of these diplomas, you have to do a very close reading of them today, where you uncover the literary allusions. We have allusions to seventh-century works by Aldhelm of Malmesbury, for example, embedded in these works,” says David. “Now, you can imagine that for your average nobleman sitting at a meeting of the royal assembly of Æthelstan, these allusions probably would have been lost on that person. They wouldn’t have been able to understand them. And in fact, maybe they thought, oh no, not another long turgid Latin diploma of the royal scribe being trotted out. And in a way that’s the point. I think they were designed to impress. They were designed to show the advances that were taking place.” So, according to David, we need to see Æthelstan as a real lover of learning, and an advocate of a learned culture among his courtiers. That’s a powerful statement by a powerful figure. He even seems to have had an allegorical board game, the Gospel Dice, which might have allowed players to study the Gospels in an innovative way. In modern terms, we might call that a gamified learning experience. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2B8GMG2-1a48607.jpg" width="1155" height="1732" alt="A page of text, showing a game. Across the top of the page, there is writing in several small red boxes in columns, followed by some paragraphs of text. At the bottom, there is a large red grid, with several black squares on it, in a circular shape" title="The Gospel Dice was an allegorical board game that is thought to be have been played by King Æthelstan (Image by Alamy)" /> Making the effort What can we take from this? Well, there was a lot going on in Æthelstan’s reign, not least the project to create a new polity and fend off the Viking threat. So if he could maintain an interest in learning under that sort of pressure, maybe there’s a lesson for us as we wrestle with how to deal with the threat, or opportunity, of AI. “In this age that we’re living in, we are witnessing a revolution in terms of the way that people access information. Large language models, things like ChatGPT, are enabling instant access to lots and lots of details: very useful tools are at our fingertips. But I do think we lose something in that shorthand access to detail. It’s only by engagement, close reading of a scholarly article or a primary text that you really get a sense of that text, you really understand the nuance of it,” notes David. If we rely on summaries created by artificial intelligence, if we forego the close reading, then we lose the ability to do that work for ourselves. That, says David, is where we can take a leaf out of Æthelstan’s book: “For me, a big lesson from the reign of Æthelstan is that emphasis on engagement of learning, on close reading.” Read more | Be wary of technology’s big promises, but roll with the changes The beauty of the printed page We’re talking about the concentrated hard yards of Æthelstan Intelligence over the easy option of Artificial Intelligence. But I suppose the question is whether we can be convinced to get our heads down and really engage with the written word, when we know that AI will be able to make things quicker and less onerous for us. Maybe, that’s where the beauty of the printed page comes into play, and that takes us back to Æthelstan and the Anglo-Saxons once more. If you’ve ever looked at a 10th-century illuminated manuscript, you’ll know what fantastic works of art they can be, and how much labour must have been invested in them. It’s hard not to want to study them up close – they demand detailed attention, precisely because so much attention was lavished upon them. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2PK8DWK-7720151.jpg" width="3814" height="3814" alt="A manuscript illustration showing a king wearing green and orange, holding a sceptre. He is sitting in the middle of a large blue circle" title="Can paying attention to illuminated manuscripts, like this one depicting King Æthelstan, help rekindle our love for physical print products? (Image by Alamy)" /> Though most of these manuscripts are digitised and available for virtual study, David’s first choice is to head to the library, turn the vellum pages, and get to grips with the physical object. Given the chance, I’d absolutely do that too. We’re not all academics with the opportunity to research these amazing Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts in the original, but perhaps we should be encouraged by the continuing enduring power of print in wider culture. People are still making and buying handsomely produced books and magazines (like BBC History Magazine, for example), when we could just as easily be looking at the digital versions. Obviously there’s a balance, and we would be foolish not to make use of the benefits that AI is bringing, both to scholarly research and to life generally. But we should be mindful of letting too much learning potential slip away, for the sake of a quick answer or easy solution. “We need to maintain that close reading, that close understanding. But we also need to use tools like ChatGPT to advance our knowledge in various ways. You can get so much more done with these large language models, the way in which they can access data and trawl through it much faster than us. That’s a huge advantage. So I think if they’re used in complementary terms, that’s very important. But we need not to forget the core skills that we have in the first place.” According to David Woodman, Æthelstan would have approved of this message – he reckons the Anglo-Saxon lover of learning would have been a pragmatist when it came to the potential of AI. And that’s the Life Lesson from History we should take from this formative English monarch – let’s embrace learning for the sake of learning, and not let AI disempower our mental faculties. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
My history hero: Katya Adler chooses Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012)
Journalist and broadcaster Katya Adler chooses Rita Levi-Montalcini as her history hero
In profile Rita Levi-Montalcini was a renowned neurobiologist who was a joint winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of nerve growth factor. Born in Turin to Italian Jewish parents, her early career was hindered by Mussolini’s Racial Laws and she had to go into hiding during the Nazi occupation of Italy. In 1992, she established a foundation to boost girls’ science education in Africa, and 10 years later she set up the European Brain Research Institute. When did you first hear about Rita Levi-Montalcini? When I had to help my daughter find an inspirational woman in history for a school research project. Rita, who achieved such amazing things against the odds, really struck a chord with me and my daughter. Her life story also provides a new lens on a fascinating period in history. What kind of woman was she? Rita was a strong, determined, intelligent woman, but was born in the early 20th century – still a sexist time. Initially wanting to be a writer, she went into medicine after a close family friend died of stomach cancer. She was an outstanding student but, as a Jew in Fascist Italy, she was barred from working at a university. Headstrong Rita set up a laboratory in her bedroom instead. When the Germans invaded Italy in 1943, she was hidden by non-Jewish Italians to save her from a concentration or death camp, and continued her research in an ‘underground’ laboratory. What made her a hero? First and foremost, her medical research, which is key to our understanding of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. She’s one of only 25 women to have won a Nobel prize for science, so that was a massive triumph. I also love the fact that, despite the difficulties she faced, Rita never gave up. She always kept hope alive – continuing with her scientific research until she died, aged 103. Another thing I admire is the way she championed both the young and the elderly. Her motto was “add life to your years” – make the best of things and live life to the fullest! What was her finest hour? I don’t think there was any one finest hour. Instead, I’d argue that it was a life well lived – she never stopped trying to make the world a better place. The most impressive people I talk to as a journalist are not necessarily political leaders or celebrities but those who, like Rita, break down barriers and try to fight prejudice. Is there anything that you don’t particularly admire about her? Rita was embroiled in a funding scandal for a medical drug later in life. I think it’s important to know when a public figure messes up – but do you ‘cancel’ the life of someone who sought to make the world better? That said, I do find it rather troubling that she credited her success in part to eating one meal a day and not having a life partner – I wouldn’t want my daughters to grow up thinking a woman had to live her life that way to be successful. What would you ask her if you could meet her? I’d invite her to join me and another hero of mine, Al-‘Ijliyyah [the 10th-century Muslim astronomer and astrolabe maker credited with creating the foundations of modern GPS navigation systems] around the dinner table – along with other innovating women. I’m sure it would make for a lively, thought-provoking discussion. Katya Adler has been the BBC’s Europe editor since 2014. She has twice been named Broadcast Journalist of the Year. This article was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
My history hero: Dame Stephanie Shirley chooses Tommy Flowers (1905–98)
The late tech pioneer and philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley, who died in August 2025 aged 91, chose Tommy Flowers as a history hero
In profile Tommy Flowers was a British engineer with the Post Office. He’s best known for designing and building Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, which helped decrypt German messages during the Second World War. After the end of the conflict, Flowers continued to work for the Post Office, where he was involved in developing ERNIE, the random number generator used to pick Premium Bond winners. When did you first hear about Flowers? I had the privilege of working as a member of his team (on the first electronic telephone exchange, and later ERNIE) at the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill in the 1950s, when it was one of the leading research institutions in the world. However, he was a very senior figure in the organisation so my interaction with him was limited. I understood that he’d done something remarkable during the war, but the Official Secrets Act was taken very seriously in those days, and the story of Colossus didn’t really emerge until the 1970s. What kind of man was he? He was born in London’s East End, the son of a bricklayer and the grandson of a charlady. Growing up, money was tight and he was taught to be frugal. While doing an engineering apprenticeship, he took evening classes, gained a degree in electrical engineering and went on to have a distinguished career. I always found him polite, unassuming, and never sexist. What made him a hero? Because he changed the course of history, not once but twice. First, with his Colossus computer, which decrypted a huge number of high-level German messages during the Second World War, part of work estimated to have curtailed the conflict by up to two years. Second, with his pioneering work on early computers that paved the way for the modern digital world. He was also inspirational to me personally, as the sort of manager I wanted to become: he listened to his staff, got quality work out of them and attracted great loyalty. He was the nearest thing to a mentor to me. What was his finest hour? Designing and building the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park in 1943–44. The Mark I Colossus processed information five times faster than Bletchley’s previous code-breaking system. Tommy’s Mark II Colossus, which began operation on 1 June 1944, decrypted a German message confirming that Hitler, believing that preparations for landings in Normandy were a feint, wanted no extra troops sent there. That helped convince Eisenhower to go ahead with the D-Day landings on 6 June. Can you see any parallels between his life and your own? We both came from modest beginnings, and both studied part-time in the evenings to get our degrees at London University – his was in engineering, mine in mathematics. What would you ask Flowers if you could meet him now? I’d like to ask how he felt about the ridiculous lack of recognition he received in his lifetime. He was given an MBE and a couple of honorary doctorates, but that was pretty small fry. I don’t know how many people appreciate the true significance of his wartime work. The late Dame Stephanie Shirley CH was a tech pioneer and philanthropist who came to Britain via the Kindertransport in 1939. Her memoir, Let It Go: My Extraordinary Story (Penguin), is available in paperback. This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
To celebrate a quarter-century of BBC History Magazine, we asked 25 expert contributors to nominate the most important historical discoveries and revelations since the publication launched in 2000
1. Women played major roles in the Viking Age Just 25 years ago, there seemed to be little new to say about the Vikings – and that was particularly the case for Viking women. The centuries-old consensus was that Viking wives and daughters stayed at home, passively watching as the Viking Age unfolded around them. New technologies have forced a rethink, though, completely revolutionising what we know about Viking women. The first significant discovery came from a systematic survey of a nationwide database of metal-detected female dress jewellery. This demonstrated for the first time that Scandinavian women migrated to England in substantial numbers. Next, isotope analysis of teeth from the graves of Viking women showed that they had formed a key part of the migration process elsewhere, too, moving across the Viking world alongside their families. The most dramatic and most debated discovery, however, came through analysis of ancient DNA. In Birka, Sweden, an individual buried in a high-status warrior grave turned out to be biologically female. This led to a worldwide discussion of the roles of Viking women: we now agree that, though many certainly did stay at home, some played active roles in trade, craft and manufacturing processes, and even held military positions. Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, author and TV presenter. Her books include The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons (William Collins, 2023) 2. Britain has been culturally diverse for far longer than most believed The murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 signalled a turning point in the way the histories of people of African descent were taught and perceived across Europe. From that moment, the British press and institutions felt that they had to engage better with narratives about minority ethnic communities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1292414316-CMYK-6ff23f7.jpg" width="1451" height="967" alt="A black and white photograph of a man sitting in a chair, leaning on one arm. He is wearing a suit." title="Walter Tull, an English footballer of Caribbean heritage, c1908–11 and (below) with the FA Amateur Cup-winning Clapton FC team of 1908–09. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British Army, he was killed in action in France in March 1918" /> A renewed interest in personal histories and trajectories of people of African descent in Britain showcased stories about their links to major events – from the celebrated story of the British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole during the Crimean War to the experiences of black British football player Walter Tull and other soldiers of Caribbean and African descent who fought for Britain during the world wars. We also saw a number of new black history courses launched in UK universities, and school classes featuring black, Asian and minority ethnic histories. Uncovering these multiple trajectories further highlights how culturally diverse Britain has been over many centuries, and why sharing stories about a common past can bring communities together. Olivette Otele is a distinguished research professor at SOAS University of London. Her books include African Europeans: An Untold History (Hurst, 2020) 3. The Tudors got Richard III wrong We learned many things from the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton beneath a Leicester car park 13 years ago. We learned about the king’s physique, his diet and the injuries he sustained while fighting for crown and country at Bosworth against a foreign-backed invader. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/BAL1066157-CMYK-2-7311920.jpg" width="2889" height="1925" alt="A painted portrait of Richard III. He is wearing a red top with a gold cape around his shoulders, with a black cap that includes a gold jewel on the front" title="Richard III, portrayed after 1510 – long after his death at Bosworth. “History can make no progress unless it’s ready to test and deconstruct generally held assumptions,” says Philippa Langley (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> But, for me, two lessons in particular stand out from the discovery. The first is that history can make no progress unless it’s ready to test and deconstruct generally held traditions and assumptions – even those held by historians and archaeologists. Those of us working on the Looking for Richard Project trusted only our own painstaking, personal research in primary sources. Second, we learned that Shakespeare’s hunchback and withered arm never existed. Analysis of Richard’s skeleton – which had lain underfoot and peacefully undisturbed for 500 years – revealed that his limbs were sound, and that his spine showed a scoliosis that was invisible to onlookers. Richard’s makeshift burial in the wake of his defeat at Bosworth, in a grave cut too short, was hugely revealing. It speaks across the centuries of a victor’s disrespect for a fallen king. Philippa Langley is a historian, author and producer. Her latest book is The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case (The History Press, 2023) Read more | The final mystery of Richard III: how 21st-century science cracked a 500-year-old cold case 4. Magna Carta was only part of a truly revolutionary settlement King John’s Magna Carta is perhaps the best-known document in world history, generally regarded as the first attempt to place kingship itself under the rule of law. Not surprisingly, it has been much studied. Yet a torrent of new evidence has been brought to light over the past 20 years, transforming understanding of both the document and its wider context. We now know of many more ‘original’ Magna Cartas (from its subsequent reissues) than were previously dreamed of. And incidental discoveries in archives from Paris to New England have reshaped our appreciation of what actually happened in 1215. A fortuitous discovery in Lambeth Palace Library, for example, reveals that the charter was part of a truly revolutionary settlement, with the barons briefly permitted dual control of local government in tandem with the king. We know, too, that John himself made no attempt to publish the charter. On the contrary, it was the bishops who ensured its distribution, preservation and even, in some cases, its physical copying. The archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, is unmasked not so much as an honest broker between king and barons but as an ideologically committed adherent of the anti-royal party. By such means can new evidence help us rewrite the past – even for the oldest and best-known stories. Nicholas Vincent is professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. His books include John (Allen Lane, 2020) 5. We ignore the past at our peril Most compellingly, the past 25 years have reminded us that history matters. Every life-sapping conflict since the millennium – Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Ukraine, Gaza – has its roots deep in the past. Of course, the past does not determine the future, but the future is shaped by the past. Merely railing against adversaries or shouting ‘victory’ from the rooftops may make for good headlines but, in the absence of some understanding of ‘how we got from there to here’, such indulgence is vacuous grandstanding. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-2198688988-CMYK-2766b77.jpg" width="3500" height="2331" alt="A group of Sudanese women and children dressed in bright clothing sit on the ground together. They all look serious." title="Women and children displaced by the civil war in Sudan, February 2025. The roots of such conflicts lie deep in the past, says Jonathan Dimbleby (Image by Getty Images)" /> The past has never been ‘another country’. This is especially true of Europe, where the tectonic plates did not stop shifting with the end of the Second World War in 1945 or the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The events of the past 25 years have demonstrated only too cruelly that our continent is inherently, and sometimes alarmingly, unstable. All leaders claim to act in what they believe to be the national interest. The. less they make ill-judged declaratory statements of intent and the more they demonstrate a realistic vision of the future, based on a clear awareness of the past, the better it will be for all of us. History is a great mentor. Jonathan Dimbleby is a historian, biographer and broadcaster. His latest book is Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War (Viking, 2024) 6. Hitler tapped into hard-wired emotions to stir up hatred For my new book, I found it tremendously helpful to talk to academic psychologists and neuroscientists about the insights we can gain, in general terms, from their disciplines. For instance, I learned how Hitler – without knowing the science behind his actions – tapped into a profound truth about the way the brain works. In stirring up hatred against Jews and Bolsheviks, Hitler targeted the amygdala – the part of the brain that immediately processes feelings of anxiety, fear and anger. These powerful emotions are produced almost instantly, because it’s the amygdala that helps us avoid sudden danger. It’s a survival mechanism that, as the neuroscientist Professor Robert Sapolsky explained to me, is “hard-wired into us… and we’ll never get rid of it”. Hitler capitalised on this neurobiological tendency, and in the process did his best to subdue the parts of the brain that offer a more logical analysis. Indeed, he seemed to confirm that he was well aware of the immense power of this approach when he remarked, during a private speech to the Hamburger Nationalklub in 1926, that “the only stable emotion is hate”. Laurence Rees is a historian, author and documentary film-maker. His new book is The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History (Viking, 2025) 7. Hunter-gatherers and farmers joined in wild rituals 12,000 years ago Around the turn of this millennium, in a remote south-eastern corner of Turkey, an astonishing discovery was being made – one that stretched the story of humanity back more than 12,000 years. Still today, only about 5 per cent of the archaeological site known as Karahantepe has been excavated – but even that tiny fraction is changing our understanding of the beginning of society as we know it. Emerging from the earth is a giant chamber with 11 huge stone phallus columns, overlooked by the face of a man with a splendid handlebar moustache and the body of a snake. The head of a big cat is visible in the centre, and carvings on 250 obelisks in the area could be mistaken for gargoyles on any medieval cathedral.We expect the female equivalent of the chamber to be unearthed soon. Karahantepe, it turns out, is just one site in a constellation of a hundred or so – the Taş Tepeler – which together are rewriting the story of human collaboration. The orthodoxy used to be that hunter-gatherers invented farming, then settled down, then manifested religion to establish common mores to live by. But the discoveries seem to show that hunter-gatherers and the very first farmers gathered together in huge, collective spaces for wild ritual parties to share know-how and ideas. This is one of the joys of history: it is constantly protean. Every year, new finds reveal earlier and earlier evidence of human achievement and sophistication. Bettany Hughes is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her latest book is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (W&N, 2024) 8. Returning stolen artefacts to Africa is no longer a naive dream Some 25 years ago, when I was starting my career in museums, a sense of optimism and renewal imbued the sector – yet the restitution of stolen African objects did not seem a realistic possibility. Today, the culture has changed profoundly. My old employer, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, has returned its contested Benin plaques; the Dutch, Germans and French have either begun programmes of return or discussed the possibility. In Britain, the Horniman has returned ownership of its Benin plaques, and the V&A and the British Museum (both restricted by law from giving collections permanently) have entered into long-term loan agreements with the Asante royal family in Ghana. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1432612271-CMYK-85c7997.jpg" width="2806" height="1869" alt="A collection of Benin Bronzes – objects stolen by British troops in 1897 – displayed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC in 2022 before repatriation to Nigeria (Image by Getty Images)" title="A collection of Benin Bronzes – objects stolen by British troops in 1897 – displayed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC in 2022 before repatriation to Nigeria" /> Conversations that were inconceivable a generation ago – about ethics, about custodianship, about narrative, about ghosts – have begun to happen. We have to find ways to tell complex stories of empire, enslavement and colonialism more effectively and inclusively. It’s important that museums can craft their curatorial narratives with moral confidence, and the resolution of such thorny, long-term issues is vital. There is still much to do. Our museums must go further in building partnerships and programmes with museums across the African continent. We need to learn from African expertise – and in turn we must share our resources and expertise to improve the telling of these rich and amazing histories everywhere. Gus Casely-Hayford is a curator, historian and broadcaster. His books include The Lost Kingdoms of Africa (Bantam, 2012) 9. Anne Boleyn was a proto-feminist heroine Anne Boleyn is unique among English queens, and her story is remarkable, but much of the modern fascination with that tale lies in perceptions of her fuelled by films and novels. She is now revered as a feminist heroine – a concept I would once have dismissed as anachronistic. When I said as much to the historian Sarah Gristwood, she replied: “Well, actually…” and very generously allowed me a preview of her research for her marvellous book Game of Queens (Oneworld, 2016), which inspired me to find out more. Feminism was unknown in Tudor England. But in early 16th-century Europe, where Anne spent her formative years, there was an intellectual debate that questioned traditional attitudes to women, and looked forward to an era – the ‘reign of virtue’ – in which they would enjoy more power and equality. In this age of female rulers, Anne had two shining examples to study: Margaret of Austria and Marguerite of Valois, both of whom she served or knew. We have to study her in this European context in order to understand the cultural influences to which she was exposed, giving her the confidence to pursue her brilliant career. Alison Weir is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Cardinal: The Secret Life of Thomas Wolsey (Headline, 2025) 10. Mary Seacole was a true heroine of the Crimean War One of the most significant changes over the past 25 years is the extent to which researching and writing black history has opened up. This is partly down to the dedication of historians determined to extend knowledge of the black experience by digging deeply and stubbornly into little-consulted sources. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2PJ0WEX-CMYK-06a24e3.jpg" width="2422" height="1614" alt="British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole, who cared for sick and wounded troops in Crimea. Digitisation of sources helped Helen Rappaport paint a more rounded portrait of her (Image by Alamy)" title="British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole, who cared for sick and wounded troops in Crimea. Digitisation of sources helped Helen Rappaport paint a more rounded portrait of her (Image by Alamy)" /> In my own case, 20 years of concerted searching across digitised newspapers and in genealogical archives gave the lie to the till-then widely perpetuated view that Mary Seacole had been wildly overrated and undeserving of the ‘Greatest Black Briton’ sobriquet awarded her in 2004. For decades, detractors dismissed her as a colourful but largely irrelevant presence who had done little more than ‘sell tea and buns’ to the soldiers in Crimea. But my searches, enabled by digitisation of sources, brought me to a more complete view of a woman who deserves to be viewed as a heroine. She journeyed 1,600 miles to Crimea under her own steam and at her own expense to set up shop in the middle of a war zone – a lone black woman facing prejudice and risking her own safety to help the wounded, sick and dying. Delving into previously unseen sources over an extended period enabled me to challenge the conventional sanctification of ‘the black Florence Nightingale’ and present a fully rounded personality. Helen Rappaport is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Rebel Romanov (Simon & Schuster, 2025) 11. Public history can play a major role in understanding the past One great change over the last 25 years has been the huge growth in public history – not just as an academic discipline, though of course it rests on the work of professional historians, archivists and museum workers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-473083908-CMYK-5eef700.jpg" width="5184" height="3454" alt="A woman wearing plain clothing and with her hair in a bun sits at a spinning wheel" title="A re-enactor at a recreation of a medieval German monastery village. Such projects contribute to public – and academic – understanding of the past (Image by Getty Images)" /> Public history is the product of us all. It is about public interaction with the past, its interpretation and popularisation – changing our understanding not only of the past but also of our own times. It’s about the link between historians and the general public. Films, podcasts, radio, heritage societies, living archaeologists, local history and re-enactment groups – even readers of this magazine – are all part of it. Good popularisation is the necessary link between professionals and the population at large, without which history becomes a closed debate between historians. And in a democracy, that link is vital: it’s part of a healthy information ecosystem, our reality check in the face of the tide of fake history on social media. Perhaps not surprisingly, in Trump’s America the US National Council on Public History is becoming more important in keeping minds open. When I hear people argue that you can’t rewrite history – though that is our actual collective job as makers of history! – it makes me think that perhaps we should have one here, too. Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. Read his column from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine here 12. Charles I wasn’t so very chaste Traditional accounts of Charles I, the so-called ‘martyr king’, have always presented him as a grave, austere and chaste figure – the very opposite of his indecorous, bawdy father, James VI & I, and his dissipated, promiscuous son, Charles II. Charles’s marriage to his wife, Henrietta Maria, was undoubtedly a happy one and, until the royal couple were torn apart during the Civil War, he does indeed appear to have remained true to her alone. However, in an article published in 2006, the historian Sarah Poynting revisited a series of encrypted letters written by Charles in late 1647 and 1648, while he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight after his defeat by the parliamentarians. Previous attempts to decipher these letters had not been entirely accurate, Poynting showed, and in fact one of them revealed that Charles had been attempting to inveigle the royalist agent Jane Whorwood into his bed. Using the frankest language, Charles went so far as to suggest to Jane that she should secretly conceal herself in the ‘stool-room’ adjoining his chamber while he was out on his daily walk so that, after his return, he could dally with her at length. It was a remarkable discovery – and one that suggested previous characterisations of the king as “blamelessly uxorious” may well have been a little wide of the mark. Mark Stoyle is professor of history at the University of Southampton. His latest book is A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549 (Yale University Press, 2022) Read more | "Tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy": was Charles I really that bad? 13. Mesolithic Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes One of the major scientific advances in archaeology over the past 25 years has been the ability to extract and analyse DNA from the remains of long-dead people from the distant past. Such ancient DNA can shed light on how people were related to one another, on a family or population scale, and provide insights into the migration and movement of people over time. It can also tell us what diseases they had and – perhaps most compelling – what they looked like. In 2018, researchers at the Natural History Museum revealed that one of the inhabitants of Mesolithic Britain, a man who lived around 10,000 years ago, had dark skin and blue eyes. This individual – known as ‘Cheddar Man’, because his remains were discovered in a cave in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset – is represented by one of the oldest complete skeletons ever identified in Britain. Earlier results from remains found from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary confirm that most hunter-gatherers in Mesolithic Europe looked this way. The genes for lighter skin pigmentation arrived thousands of years later, in waves of migration from the east during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. In addition, natural selection over time favoured lighter tones that allow more Vitamin D synthesis in the skin, essential in northerly climes. Susan Greaney is a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Exeter 14. Premodern Japan was surprisingly progressive One of the most fascinating and dynamic periods of Japanese history was the Meiji Restoration, which began with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and ended with the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912. Japan opened up as never before to diplomatic and trading relationships with the west and, over little more than four decades, modernised its economy and society at an astonishing rate. By 1912, it had become one of the world’s great powers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-566421965-CMYK-53c95d9.jpg" width="2704" height="1802" alt="A print showing a large blue river with little boats on it. A large arched bridge crosses the river. In the background, a volcano can be seen" title="An 1856 print of rural Japan by Hiroshige. Under the Tokugawa shogunate that preceded the 1868 Meiji Restoration, Japan enjoyed an artistic and intellectual flourishing (Image by Getty Images)" /> For a long time, this explosion of activity was contrasted with the preceding 250 years of the Tokugawa shogunate. That system was regarded as feudal, backward and badly out of date, requiring rescue at the hands of modernising and westernising reformers. Much though this view of history suited western historians across the 20th century, and flattering as it was to western modernity, since 2000 historians have increasingly been exploring the myriad achievements of the shogunate. Across two and a half centuries of peace, Japanese commerce, intellectual life and the arts enjoyed extraordinary growth and creativity, from theatre through to a tourism industry and a publishing boom. Without the commercial and technical expertise, high literacy rates and great bustling cities that developed under the shogunate, the Meiji Restoration could not have happened in the way that it did. Christopher Harding is senior lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh and creator of the IlluminAsia newsletter and podcast (illuminasia.org). His latest book is The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) 15. Egypt’s great pyramids at Giza weren’t built by foreign slaves Dominating the Giza Plateau for almost five millennia, the great pyramids still capture imaginations around the world. For centuries, archaeologists and historians have tried to determine how these magnificent monuments, including the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World, were created – and now we know who built them. Contrary to popular depictions, construction wasn’t completed by foreign slaves but by Egyptian employees. Excavations of a workers’ village over the past couple of decades, and the discovery of builders’ tombs in 2009, have transformed the narrative. The village, dating from the Fourth Dynasty (starting c4,600 years ago), boasted bakeries, breweries, butchers and a hospital. In the burial sites, skeletons show signs of hard labour, as one might expect, but they’re also accompanied by jars of bread and beer, ready for the afterlife. There are female skeletons, too, confirming that women played roles in building the pyramids. Hieroglyphs suggest a system of skilled labourers and artisans, from “overseer of the side of the pyramid” to “inspector of the craftsmen”. It’s also clear that villagers from surrounding areas came here to work in construction, usually in three-month stints. Their graffiti indicates that each cadre might associate themselves with one particular pharaoh or pyramid: the “friends of Khufu”, for example, or “drunkards of Menkaure”. The inscriptions confirm that the pyramid builders were Egyptian. And the manner and location of the burials, in the shadow of the great pharaohs, puts the slave myth to bed. Islam Issa is professor of literature and history at Birmingham City University. His latest book is Alexandria: The City that Changed the World (Sceptre, 2023) 16. Personal links to empire can reshape old narratives Astonishingly, I completed my entire education without learning about the British empire. I don’t even have a recollection of hearing the world ‘empire’ mentioned at school – and I studied History A-level! I now know that my experience is not unique. In the past 10 years or so, though, I have gained a growing understanding of not only what happened and how it shaped Britain today, but also of my own personal connection to empire and its tumultuous end. I feel lucky to be making programmes and writing books at a time when there is a greater interest in knowing about Britain’s imperial past – not that it is without complications or controversies. And things continue changing: a new generation of historians is exploring archives and asking different questions. Teachers are choosing to explore empire in all its complexity, and conversations are being had between people in the diaspora and their family members about a time when they were subjects of empire. I am learning that, just because an area of history is overlooked or not spoken of, it doesn’t always have to be that way. Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4. Read her Hidden Histories column from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine here 17. Stonehenge was built in an already sacred area The past two and a half decades have seen a transformation in our understanding of one of the most iconic ancient monuments in Britain and, indeed, the world: Stonehenge. Archaeological research has revealed that the 4,500-year-old prehistoric ‘temple’ stood at the heart of a sacred landscape infinitely richer than previously thought. Scores of ritual monuments have been discovered in a vast halo scattered across the countryside around the monument. Even more extraordinarily, tests have revealed that one of Stonehenge’s most important stones was transported all the way from what’s now northern Scotland – and that a large number of the smaller stones had probably originally formed part of another stone circle in south-west Wales before being brought here. And research shows that some of the Neolithic people buried at Stonehenge did not come from the area but from western Britain, possibly from modern-day Wales – significant, given the origins of many of its smaller stones. We now know, too, that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were active in the Stonehenge area some 5,000 years before the monument existed. This remarkable new information, together with earlier evidence that a series of Mesolithic wooden obelisks may have stood adjacent to the site of Stonehenge, suggests that the area had been sacred for millennia. David Keys is the archaeological correspondent for The Independent 18. The tide seems to have turned against the British empire By the year 2000, the British empire – formerly a global superpower – had been transformed into an organisation with entirely voluntary membership, the Commonwealth. At the time, academic assessment of this extraordinary transformation resulted in a number of books – including my own – which concluded that British imperialism had been overall, and in a remarkable variety of ways, both a blessing and a curse. In the 25 years since that relatively benign consensus, however, there has been a profound anti-imperial swing resulting in a wholesale condemnation of British imperial history – shifting the dial remarkably. It is, however, vital to understand that, even at its Victorian zenith, the empire faced trenchant criticism from within. Anti-imperial attitudes were commonplace on the left wing of the Liberal Party, the infant Labour Party and the generally hostile Irish Nationalist Party. Nonconformist churches – Methodists, Congregationalists and, above all, Quakers – voiced criticisms of imperial aims and methods. Internal opposition, from resentful Afrikaners, French Canadians and diverse displaced and conquered Indigenous peoples, also inevitably arose. To cope with such internal opposition, and to prolong its existence, the imperial system undertook much self-correction – a process that led to mass devolution, the end of empire and the birth of today’s Commonwealth. In short, we are now keenly aware that there is no neat and fireproof analysis of the nature, governance and purpose of the British empire. It was such a huge, complex and long-lived organisation that almost every criticism, as well as almost every justification, has some validity somewhere and at some time. Denis Judd is professor emeritus of imperial and Commonwealth history at London Metropolitan University, and author of Empire (IB Tauris revised paperback edition, 2012) 19. The world is in danger of reverting to its darkest days After the collapse of Soviet-style communism in Russia and eastern Europe in 1989–91, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man. In it, he predicted optimistically that the demise of the Soviet system meant that western liberalism would roll out across the world, and that the future belonged to progressive democracy, with no rivals to challenge it. In fact, since the first issue of BBC History Magazine was published in 2000, history has evolved along a drastically different path to the one that Fukuyama predicted. So far, the 21st century has belonged to resurgent strongmen. In country after country, authoritarian regimes led by dictatorial rulers have come to power – and stayed there, with scant regard for democracy. Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Erdogan’s Turkey, Kim’s North Korea and Sisi’s Egypt are leading examples of a worldwide trend that shows no sign of ending. So what we have learned from history in this century is a rather troubling lesson. After the terrors of the 20th century, the world is not moving into broad, sunlit uplands but is in danger of reverting to the darkest days of the past. Nigel Jones is a historian, journalist and former reviews editor of BBC History Magazine. His latest book is Kitty’s Salon: Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich (John Blake, 2023) 20. Technology enables deep-sea shipwreck discoveries – but we should beware hubris In recent years, sophisticated modern technologies have allowed humans to dive deeper, explore the seabed autonomously, and locate shipwrecks. Lost in 1915 in the Weddell Sea, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance made headlines when its wreck was rediscovered in 2022. Recovering or even visiting the wreck, which lies at a depth of 3,000 metres, are major challenges. But submersible robots were able to photograph the Endurance from every angle, enabling scientists to create a digital model of the whole vessel as well as many artefacts preserved just as they were when the crew abandoned ship. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1137373443cmyk-1b64874.jpg" width="5248" height="3496" alt="Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance clamped in a fatal ice embrace in 1915. The discovery of its wreck on the Antarctic seabed in 2022 made headlines (Image by Getty Images)" title="Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance clamped in a fatal ice embrace in 1915. The discovery of its wreck on the Antarctic seabed in 2022 made headlines (Image by Getty Images)" /> The wreck of the Gloucester, lost in 1682 after hitting a sandbank while transporting James, Duke of York and his court, was discovered in 2007. Future excavation of the site could provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore a Restoration royal court frozen in time. Just as the Mary Rose Museum has captured the public imagination, making Henry VIII’s warship part of British national conversations, telling the Gloucester’s stories could transform public understanding of a historical period that laid the constitutional foundations of modern Britain. In 2025, mid-point in the United Nations ‘Ocean Decade’, a key task is to meaningfully integrate Britain’s remarkable maritime cultural heritage into ocean governance to help create a sustainable blue economy. Nonetheless, humanity should remain humble in the face of the ocean’s uncontrollable forces. The implosion in 2023 of the submersible Titan on its expedition to the wreck of the Titanic – resulting in the death of all on board – is a cautionary tale. Some 3 million shipwrecks around the world prove that the sea – so elemental, so powerful – shouldn’t be disrespected. Claire Jowitt is professor of Renaissance studies at the University of East Anglia 21. We now know how many enslaved African people were trafficked across the Atlantic The transatlantic slave trade was one of the largest forced movements of people in world history – yet for decades it was difficult to quantify. Then, in the early 1990s, an international team came together to solve this problem. The result was the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which showed that 12.5 million people were transported. Of those, 10.7 million survived the journey and arrived in the Americas. Many people, particularly in the US and the UK, assumed that most enslaved people were trafficked to the United States. In fact, the database showed that fewer than 400,000 Africans were forcibly taken directly to mainland North America; about 4.8 million arrived in South America and 4.7 million in the Caribbean. First published as a CD-ROM in 1999, the database was greatly expanded in the early 2000s to include the Portuguese trade in the South Atlantic. Re-released as an open-access website in 2008, including details of an additional 7,000 journeys, it has been described as one of the greatest historical achievements of the 21st century. Though the database does not give us a rich picture of the experiences of enslaved peoples, it has been critical to understanding the scale of one of the world’s worst human-rights violations. Hannah Cusworth is a historian, curator and history education consultant Read more | The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation 22. Richard III was behind the disappearance of the princes in the Tower… probably It’s history’s most compelling missing persons case: what happened to Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, after they were placed in the Tower in 1483 on the orders of their uncle, who soon afterwards seized the throne as Richard III? The mystery has been the subject of intense debate ever since. Some three decades later, Thomas More had established the narrative that Richard had his nephews murdered with the help of his henchman, James Tyrell. There was no shortage of other suspects but, though every scrap of evidence has been pored over by generations of historians since, the trail was already cold. Recently, Tim Thornton, professor of history at the University of Huddersfield, took a novel approach. Rather than researching the events leading up to the princes’ disappearance, he traced the lives of those involved in the years that followed – and found links between Thomas More and the two men he claimed had carried out the murder for Tyrell. Then, last year, Thornton came across a book of wills in the National Archives that included one made in 1516 by a wealthy London widow, Margaret Capel, half sister-in-law of Sir James Tyrell. Among her chattels listed in the will was “the chain of Edward V” – the only one of the boys’ possessions referenced in sources after their disappearance. The fact that it turned up in the family of the prime suspect makes it close to a ‘smoking gun’. Tracy Borman is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her documentary The Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery is on My5 23. History can help veterans cope with PTSD A remarkable discovery made this century is that history can be hugely therapeutic for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It might seem deeply counterintuitive but when veterans undertake top-level archaeological research on battlefields, rather than re-igniting their traumas it often tends to work in positive ways for them psychologically, and can be a useful step on their road to recovery. The work done by the organisation Waterloo Uncovered, founded in 2015 by former Coldstream Guards captain (and PTSD sufferer) Mark Evans, has been instrumental in this regard. Its mental-health experts found that, after helping to discover facts that are useful to military historians – the musket-ball scatter-pattern outside the orchard at the Hougoumont farmhouse in a key sector of the Waterloo battlefield, for example – veterans often saw improvements in their mental conditions. There are various theories about the mechanisms of this effect. Perhaps such work reminds veterans that their predecessors two centuries ago encountered much the same kind of perils they did themselves in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Evans also noted that the project provided a safe and structured environment in which veterans with shared experiences could start to open up to one another about the challenges they faced. Whatever the reason, history is helping in a tangible way today. Andrew Roberts’ latest book, with General David Petraeus, is Conflict: The Evolution of War-fare from 1945 to Gaza (William Collins, 2024) 24. Technology has revolutionised how historians work and collaborate One of the great things about historical research is that it keeps on moving. When I was a young historian, looking back in time required me to handle complex written materials and work out how to supplement them with reference material culture, to archaeology or to finds such as coins and lead seals. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-3433569-CMYK-2f40b22.jpg" width="2726" height="1815" alt="A sketch shows a massive explosion with black smoke billowing into the air" title="The catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, depicted in a contemporary lithograph. Technological advances enable historians to better understand the impacts of such events (Image by Getty Images)" /> The past quarter-century has revolutionised the tools available to historians. Huge advances in the sciences, combined with plunging costs, mean that we now have access to data sources that don’t just provide new insights into topics such as human migration or the spread and lethality of pandemic diseases, but also enable us to do so with increasing accuracy. These are tools we must learn to rely on. Many of these new materials are related to climate archives, enabling historians to reconstruct past periods of environmental change – or even, in some cases, to better understand the effects of single, one-off extreme events such as floods, storms or volcanic eruptions. That, in turn, has changed how historians work, not least in the ways we can collaborate more often and more meaningfully with colleagues across research groups. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a historian – to be part of the community of people interested in the past. Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at Oxford University. His latest book is The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (Bloomsbury, 2023) 25. Powerful female leaders weren’t the sex-crazed failures of (manmade) myth Our understanding of queenship has, thankfully, moved forward in the past 25 years – just as women’s history has also moved forward. Female rulers such as Cleopatra and Mary, Queen of Scots have all too frequently been cited as cautionary tales about what follows when you give women power: sex and death. But in recent years, revisionist historians such as Kara Cooney, Joyce Tyldesley and Joann Fletcher have written brilliant accounts of Cleopatra, challenging the perception of her as a sex-mad failure. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-544268988-CMYK-27bfceb.jpg" width="3025" height="2016" alt="A woman with red hair tied back into a bun, wearing a brocaded red dress with a high white collar, and a lot of jewellery" title="Mary, Queen of Scots, painted c1558–60. Historical female rulers must be seen in context, says Kate Williams (Image by Getty Images)" /> Mary, Queen of Scots was surrounded by men attempting to seize her power – and, when she had a son, she was set on a course that led to her being deposed in favour of him. Lord Bothwell made her go back to his castle, where he assaulted her in an attempt to force her to marry. Past historians framed her for setting up this event. Today, though, we understand that a woman who had been seized and sexually assaulted was expected to agree to marry the man who attacked her. In Mary’s case, all of the lords were in agreement with that course of action – so what choice did Mary have? As we are increasingly coming to understand, female rulers need to be seen in context. If they lost to the powerful men of the time or, indeed, the Roman empire, we need to grasp why that happened. Such insights can shape perceptions of the past – and a future with women in power. Kate Williams is professor of public engagement with history at the University of Reading. Her latest book is The Royal Palaces: Secrets and Scandals (Frances Lincoln, 2024) This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Iwan Morus revisits the life – and myth – of the enigmatic pioneer of electrical power
Nikola Tesla is remembered as an enigmatic, eccentric genius who harnessed the power of electricity. But if we strip away some of this myth, what can we really say about the inventor's life and legacy? For this Life of the Week episode, Iwan Morus joins Ellie Cawthorne to reveal how Tesla believed he could invent a death ray, whether he was really a recluse, and how he would feel about Elon Musk's company using his name today.
The female codebreakers of Bletchley Park
Historian Tessa Dunlop shines a light on the secret and undervalued work of the women of Bletchley Park, without whom the codebreaking successes of the Second World War could not have happened
Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire was one of Britain's most famous institutions during the Second World War, home to codebreaking triumphs that turned the tide against the Nazi regime. Britain’s codebreaking operation has been dominated by a male narrative – a star-studded cast of 20th-century brain boxes, led by mathematician Alan Turing. His outstanding role in the creation of the bombe machine, an electromechanical testing device essential for unravelling German Enigma encoded messages, was hugely significant. It is a feat perhaps only rivalled by that of Tommy Flowers, the engineer who designed the even more advanced Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. Yet Bletchley Park depended on the heft of a predominantly female workforce, not least Turing's own fiancée, Joan Clarke. The women who worked at Bletchley have often been overlooked in this story because, with the exception of three or four female cryptanalysts, the vast majority of top-end codebreakers during the war were men. The story of how girl power – often school-girl power – turned what began as an eccentric experiment into the world’s most impressive codebreaking factory is less well known, but no less important. Who worked at Britain's wartime intelligence factory In 1938, with war on the horizon, the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) – the precursor to the modern GCHQ – temporarily moved out of London, to avoid bombing raids, but by August 1939, its secret home in Bletchley Park had become permanent. Initially, this fledging operation was staffed by just 186 people. ‘Men of a professor type’, particularly mathematicians were targeted, with early recruits including Turing, Gordon Welchman and Alfred Dillwyn Knox. Their work, however, was supported by an expanding team of chiefly civilian women. Perhaps inevitably at the beginning of the war, Establishment Britain recruited from their own when it came to Bletchley’s secret operations. The German military must never know that Britain was in the process of achieving what Hitler believed to be impossible – the decoding of Enigma. It was imperative that those selected could be trusted to keep quiet, and from kinship springs trust. Many of the first women at Bletchley Park came from ruling-class families who knew each other. Who were the Bletchley women? Lady Jean was a 19-year-old Scottish aristocrat and debutante. She had been tipped off about a “hush, hush mission at Bletchley Park” by her father’s friend, Lord Mountbatten. Actress Pamela Rose (née Gibson), received a letter from an “interfering godmother”. If girls’ education was rarely a priority between the wars, an upper-class focus on being accomplished and attending foreign finishing schools certainly had its advantages. Pamela’s understanding of German, for example, was deemed to be useful for filing decrypted messages. For that work she sacrificed her first role on the West End. From the outset, Bletchley, aka Station X, could not operate without the constant ‘traffic’ of German Enigma messages. This came from the Y Service, Bletchley’s vital other half, with its numerous listening stations intercepting German radio communications. Among the staff of the Y Service were members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, or ‘Wrens’. One of these was 18-year-old Pat Davies (née Owtram). Assigned as a Special Duties Linguist after an intense training course, her first post on a “highly secret mission” was at Withernsea, Yorkshire. “As soon as one of the German ships came up, you wrote down exactly what you heard,” she later recalled. A lot of what Pat remembers was the meaningless clumps of letters. “Anton, Bertha, Cesar... I always thought it was odd hearing the war all the time from the German side. The whole thing would be written down and then one of us would call Station X. I had no idea what Station X was.” Pat was one of many secret ‘listeners’, whose precious encoded data was being sent to the rapidly expanding team at Bletchley. Read more | The changing role of women in British computing In late 1941, for the first time in British history, conscription for women was introduced. By then Bletchley was already reliant on a massive female workforce, like so many other wartime institutions. A group of the original cryptanalysts had sent a stern missive that October to Winston Churchill saying they did not have sufficient resources and staff, which saw the prime minister instantly and dramatically scale up operations. It would keep growing so that by 1944, Bletchley employed 8,743 workers, three-quarters of whom were women. Although ‘posh’ civilian girls were first to arrive, the sheer numbers required saw the majority of staff being recruited by the military services. Among them was Charlotte 'Betty' Webb (née Vine-Stevens), who was 19 when she was selected from her Auxiliary Territorial Service training camp. Shifts took place in a small room in the Bletchley mansion. “I worked on the card index, putting things into date order and registering them under their call signs. Nothing was in clear language. It was all in groups of letters or figures on sheets of paper – masses of them,” says Betty. Her job was not to understand, but to register every message passing across her desk. 3 women of Bletchley Park Pamela Rose (née Gibson) Pamela’s war work began with her recruitment to the indexing department of Hut 4. She was one of the very few examples of women being promoted from “humdrum roles”. Pamela became head of Naval Indexing, a section that has subsequently been hailed as a precursor of the Information Age. Co-ordinating vital fact-finding forays long before the advent of the microchip, she remains modest about her wartime achievements. “I think I was promoted because I couldn’t type! Yes I suppose most of the Heads of Sections meetings were with men. I was given my own room and had some responsibility but I missed the girls’ chatter.” Pat Davies (née Owtram) While she was not based at Bletchley, Pat was a Wren in the Y Service, which saw her move between three English coastal locations. Her final listening post was Abbot’s Cliff in Kent. At the age of 95, Pat remains a tireless champion of her secret war work: lectures, theatre tours, television appearances, she uses any means available to explain her time at the coalmface of Britain’s massive interception mission. “Doing this work at an early age meant my life went down a totally different track. Before the war, my parents said ‘we can’t afford to send you to university’, but in the end I went to three of the very top ones.” Pat studied at St Andrews, Oxford and Harvard, before she embarked on a stellar media career as a producer in the then-new medium of television. Betty Webb (née Vine-Stevens) In 2015, Betty received an MBE in recognition of her tireless campaigning and support of Bletchley Park Trust, the museum that has enlightened millions about the work done in secret by thousands of men and women. The award is the pinnacle of an impressive CV. As a reward for a meticulous performance at Bletchley over three years, Betty was transferred in 1944 to a new building in the US: the Pentagon. “I was staggered by the invitation. Me? A humble staff sergeant.” Despite teething problems, cross pollination between British and American codebreakers had increased since 1942. “I was the only ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) girl in the whole building! I did the same job I left behind at the Park. I suppose I was a natural administrator.” Learning to love the Bombe It was Turing’s development of the bombe that radically increased the rate at which Enigma could be read. By 1944, a force of 1,676 Wrens were dutifully tending more than 200 bombes – described as having the appearance of “great metal bookcases” – which were harvesting up to 18,000 Enigma messages daily. Alongside Pat’s interceptions and Charlotte’s data processing came Wren Ruth Bourne (née Henry)'s mechanical vigilance as another component on the codebreaking conveyor belt. Her job was to operate one of the bombes. Churning with around 100 rotating drums, 12 miles of wire and one million soldered connections, it made for an intimidating prospect, but what Ruth thought of her work was irrelevant. “Nice girls do what they are told,” she explains. The bombe was just the first of the industrial sized behemoths that transformed life at the Park. Another Wren, Joanna Chorley (née Stradling), worked in the Newmanry, a section tasked with reading the highly sophisticated ‘Fish’ communications sent using the Lorenz cipher between Hitler and his high command. Up to a hundred times longer than Enigma, Fish messages were invaluable. So much so that a technological whopper was born to analyse their contents: Colossus. Joanna remembers her first meeting with the machine, which was the size of a room: “It was ticking away, and the tapes were going around and all the valves, and I thought what an amazing machine. Like magic and science combined!” Joanna had fallen in love with the world’s first electronic computer. “It’s a bit silly really isn’t it? But I did love the beast,” she recalled. Life as a Bletchley girl For many of the Bletchley Girls, their roles were compartmentalised and prioritised accuracy, stamina and occasionally a foreign language. Lady Jean was disappointed with her job. Her shift work, designed to make up for a short fall of bombe machines, was frustratingly repetitive. “I marked letters in German messages, then perforated those same marks and compared one message on top of another. If three holes were on the top of three other marked ones, these were put through the hatch to the next room. Doing this for a year sent me nearly crazy.” Exceptional moments were keenly savoured. Rozanne Colchester (née Medhurst) was a teenager who could speak Italian courtesy of a childhood spent in Rome. Her basic decoding was formulaic and the information revealed fairly dull, but late one night “after many trials and errors I found myself faced with a message that made sense”. In her small work room in Buckinghamshire, she read something no one else in the Allied forces knew – in three and a half hours, Italy’s SM.79 torpedo bombers and SM.82 transport carriers would leave Tripoli and head across the Mediterranean. Listen | Tessa Dunlop shares the stories of women who worked at Britain’s codebreaking centre in World War Two With the Desert War over by June 1943, the crippled Italians were making for Sicily, but thanks to Rozanne they never reached their destination. The information she read was radioed to the RAF in North Africa. “Very soon our aeroplanes were in the air and all the Italian aircraft were shot down!” Few experienced such stand-out moments, but all of the women remember the onus placed on secrecy. No one could forget their introduction to the Official Secrets Act. Charlotte recalls a vast document she was forced to read on the spot. Ruth was told if she broke her oath of secrecy, she would go to prison “at the very least”. Joanna was under no illusions, either: “We knew damn well what will happen if we blab. It will kill people. We knew we couldn’t talk for a reason.” During his only visit to the Park in 1941, Winston Churchill described Bletchley as “the goose that laid the golden egg but never cackled”. And everyone kept their secrets for more than 30 years. Bletchley’s impact on the war is now common knowledge, but before the 1970s some Bletchley Girls weren’t even aware they had been involved in codebreaking. Pat was one of them. “It was surprising to hear that Bletchley had achieved such great things,” she says, “because at the time we never got any feedback. We didn’t know how important we had been.” Tessa Dunlop is a historian and broadcaster. This article first appeared in BBC History Revealed
My history hero: James Coomarasamy chooses Andrei Sakharov (1921–89)
BBC broadcaster James Coomarasamy chooses Andrei Sakharov as a history hero
In profile Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet physicist and, later, dissident awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for championing human rights around the world. After playing a major part in the development of a Soviet hydrogen bomb, he grew concerned about the moral and political implications of his work. In 1980, he was arrested and exiled by Soviet authorities, and later became prominent in political opposition in the USSR. When did you first hear about Sakharov? While I was studying Russian at university in the late 1980s. I spent half a year in Moscow during the Gorbachev era – in fact, I was in the USSR when Sakharov was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Soviet Union’s first serious experiment with parliamentary democracy. What kind of man was he? He was a brilliant scientist from an intellectual family. He tried to join the Red Army during the Second World War but failed his medical. He then became involved in the Soviet project to design an atomic bomb – he’s been dubbed ‘The father of the hydrogen bomb’. By the 1960s, though, he’d come to the view that the development of nuclear weapons had created the potential for worldwide destruction, and that the lack of individual freedoms in the Soviet Union also posed a danger to global peace. Read more | How have nuclear weapons shaped global politics? 10 key moments in the post-war atomic world What made him a hero? Sakharov used his position as a member of the Soviet elite to try to change the system from within, and used his platform to urge Khrushchev and Brezhnev to stop testing nuclear weapons, protect human rights and find ways to peacefully co-exist with the west. Speaking out came at great personal cost: by the 1970s, he was regarded as a dissident and traitor. He was prevented from collecting his Nobel Peace Prize, and was later arrested and exiled to the closed city of Gorky. Read more | The history of the Nobel Prizes Eventually, though, the courage he displayed paid off. Gorbachev, who was clearly influenced by Sakharov, came to understand the need for more democracy and for co-existence between the two great power blocs. Sadly, things have moved backwards in Russia in recent years. What was his finest hour? Probably his initial decision to stand up against a totalitarian system that had lauded him – and to accept the consequences. All of his later influence at home and abroad stemmed from that decision and from the far-sighted views – linking individual rights with global security – which he developed in the 1960s and which remain relevant in Russia today. Is there anything you don’t particularly admire about him? No. He led an unblemished private life. His first wife died and his second, Yelena Bonner, was his soulmate in the struggle for freedom; he even went on hunger strike to persuade authorities to allow her to travel abroad for medical treatment. What would you ask Sakharov if you could meet him? I’d love to know what he made of east–west relations today, and of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I’d also ask if he had any advice for those Russians who want their country to pursue a different path. Jamie Coomarasamy is a BBC broadcaster, presenting The World Tonight and Newshour, and was talking to York Membery. This article was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
British TV history: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
David Hendy answers listener questions on the history of television in Britain – from 1950s 'horror plays' to why early presenters were given electric shocks
From early shows that looked as if they were filmed "in a heavy and persistent shower of rain" to today's multi-platform streaming world, the history of television has been marked by rapid innovation and huge transformation – and has reflected equally rapid social change. In this 'everything you wanted to know' episode, historian David Hendy joins Matt Elton to answer listener questions on a century of British TV.
2024 in review: history behind the headlines
Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter look back at the history behind some of the year's biggest news stories in this special episode of our monthly series
From the rise of AI to a plethora of elections and life-saving vaccines, it's been a busy 12 months. Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter look back at the history behind some of the biggest stories of the year – and pick their favourite books of 2024, in this special episode of our monthly series.