HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-05-03T14:31:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Nude inspections, thigh flashers and fights to the death: 15 things you need to know about the Spartans
items: When did Roman Britain really end?
items: A short history of running
items: The Oxford neurologist who broke an 'impossible' record: the incredible life of Roger Bannister
items: What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
items: From Stranger Things to communist cars: why we can't resist nostalgia
items: London 1908 was the weirdest Winter Olympics in history – and here's why
items: From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys
items: From a lion-taming lightweight to the Muscular Maids: 5 Victorian boxing sensations you need to know about
items: Swings and roundabouts: a history of Britain's playgrounds

Nude inspections, thigh flashers and fights to the death: 15 things you need to know about the Spartans
type: item
date: 2026-05-03T14:30:47.000Z
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Death
subject: Historical people
description: In our minds, Sparta has become a near-mythical Greek city-state populated by the tough and single-minded ancient predecessors of today’s special forces troops. But as historian Andrew Bayliss outlines, its supposedly hyper-militarised society was stranger and more complex than its reputation suggests
encoded: 1. The ‘Spartans’ were really called the homoioi Although we know the citizens of the ancient Greek city of Sparta as the ‘Spartans’, they usually called themselves the homoioi. This can be translated as ‘equals’ or ‘similars’. As for outsiders, they usually called the Spartans ‘the Lacedaemonians’. This was because the city-state of Sparta – what the ancient Greeks called a polis – was actually called ‘Lacedaemon’. 2. All Spartan citizens were rich Although ancient sources often describe their lifestyle as austere, Spartan citizens were all wealthy men. Every citizen was required to join a mess group, where he dined each night. To keep his place, he had to supply large monthly contributions of foodstuffs from his estates: roughly 45kg of barley, 3kg of cheese, 1.5kg of figs, a small amount of pork and 37 litres of wine. Modern scholars have calculated that each Spartiate would have needed to own at least 15 hectares of land to meet his mess contributions. Such large holdings would have made them all properly wealthy by ancient Greek standards. 3. They wore their hair long – and sported striking red cloaks To reflect their relative equality as homoioi, Spartan citizens adopted a uniform appearance, keeping their hair long and dressing in red cloaks and tunics. Ancient sources claimed the Spartans’ long hair was designed to make handsome men more attractive and ugly men more frightening. Their red cloaks helped conceal bloodstains in combat. In fact, this appearance was designed to project citizens’ gentlemanly status. This is because the ancient Greeks thought it was impossible for any man with long hair to perform manual labour, while producing the red dye for cloaks was incredibly laborious, a process that required the harvesting of more than 10,000 murex shellfish to produce just a single gram of dye. 4. This was not a ‘warrior’ society Spartans are often described as ‘warriors’, but they didn’t spend all their time preparing for conflict as professional soldiers…

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When did Roman Britain really end?
type: item
date: 2026-04-27T15:54:01.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman Britain
description: Nicholas Higham explains why the story of the decline of Roman Britain, and the rise of England, is more complicated than you might have assumed
encoded: How did England – and Englishness – emerge from the final days of Roman Britain? And what separated Englishness from Britishness? Emeritus professor Nicholas Higham –whose latest book is How England Began: From Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons – speaks to James Osborne to explore the twisting and turning tale of England's origins from post-Roman Britain: a story of clashing cultures, religion, and migration.

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A short history of running
type: item
date: 2026-04-24T07:01:04.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: Carl Morris traces the origins of long-distance running as a sport back to the heyday of 19th-century pedestrianism
encoded: Why do people run marathons in their thousands these days? Carl Morris, in conversation with Dave Musgrove, traces the origins of running as a sport back to the heyday of 19th-century pedestrianism, when Victorian runners seen as the superstars of their day and performed in front of huge crowds. From these humble roots, they chart the start of the modern passion for marathons. To find out more about the strange story of long-distance wheelbarrow pedestrianism, check out the HistoryExtra podcast series, The Tiger Tamer who went to sea

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The Oxford neurologist who broke an 'impossible' record: the incredible life of Roger Bannister
type: item
date: 2026-04-10T14:30:41.000Z
creator: York Membery
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Olympics
description: Olympic gold medallist Amy Williams chooses Roger Bannister (1929–2018) as her history hero
encoded: In profile Roger Bannister was an English neurologist and middle-distance runner. On 6 May 1954, he became the first person to run a mile in under 4 minutes. Later that year he won gold in the 1-mile run at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. Following retirement from athletics, he practised medicine for 40 years. He became the first chairman of the independent Sports Council (now Sport England), and was knighted in 1975. When did you first hear about Roger Bannister? In my early teens – I was a keen athlete from the age of 13. My best distance was the 400 metres but, when I realised that I wasn’t quite good enough to excel in that, I switched to the skeleton. I subsequently learned that Roger and I went to the same school in Bath. What kind of man was he? He balanced his athletic ambitions with his medical career while maintaining the discipline needed to be the best at his chosen distance. He also displayed resilience and mental strength to set a new world record; a lack of mental toughness and self-belief can often hold an athlete back. Everyone said it was impossible for me to win the skeleton at the Winter Olympics when Great Britain didn’t have its own skeleton and bobsleigh ice track, but that just made me more determined to prove them wrong. Read more | London 1908 was the weirdest Winter Olympics in history – and here's why What made him a hero? He made me realise that psychology is so important to athletic success. His scientific approach to training was also a big influence on my approach to the skeleton. He did much shorter, more intensely planned training sessions than many of his competitors, who focused on running mile after mile – he was ahead of his time in that respect. And he bounced back from the disappointment of a fourth-place finish in the 1500 metres final at the 1952 Summer Olympics. What was his finest hour? It’s got to be running a mile in under 4 minutes at the Iffley Road track in Oxford in May 1954. His mindset, cour…

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What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
type: item
date: 2026-04-08T15:30:41.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British prime ministers
subject: Civil rights
subject: Death
subject: Medieval life
subject: The royal family
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors take aim at the most egregious fallacies about the past
encoded: Ancient Athenian democracy was democratic There’s plenty to criticise about that ancient approach We wouldn’t recognise the system practised in ancient Athens as democracy in the sense we understand it today. Women did not have the vote, and the entire society depended on a massive slave population to be able to function. Yet in other ways it was also more democratic than our democracies today. Every (male) citizen took an active role in governing the city, and every major decision was taken by a vote involving every citizen who attended. An even more egregious misconception is the idea there is an unbroken link between ancient and modern democracy. Athenian democracy lasted for only around 200 years; since then, through most of the rest of antiquity, the Middle Ages and more modern historical periods, democracy has not been practised. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1155876683wbebready-ecda02a-e1775040845111.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of an ancient Greek orator standing on a raised platform, wearing a robe and laurel wreath, gesturing toward a crowd of citizens and soldiers gathered below. Classical buildings and hills appear in the background" title="Demosthenes, a defender of Athenian democracy in the fourth century BC, pictured in a c1880s illustration (Image by Getty Images)" /> In more recent times, Athenian democracy has been held up as a system to avoid rather than imitate. During debates between the founding fathers about the Constitution of the United States in the 1780s, many argued that “even if every Athenian had been a Socrates [ie very intelligent], Athenian democracy would have been little more than mob rule”. It is only very recently that we have come (again) to admire Athenian democracy, and want to link our own system of government to that ancient ideal. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Most people in the past had…

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From Stranger Things to communist cars: why we can't resist nostalgia
type: item
date: 2026-03-04T15:30:20.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Communism
subject: Psychology
description: In our politically unstable modern world, the allure of retreating into memories – sometimes mirages – of bygone eras seems to have grown. Six historians explore how this tendency impacts our historical understanding
encoded: “The nostalgia that Stranger Things evokes is complicated” The first thing to remind ourselves is that our view of the past is definitely shaped. The way that we understand history is translated, constructed, created for us in multiple ways – the majority of which have very little to do with the actuality of what happened. We imagine and dream history across culture, making versions of it that comfort us and accord with our world views. Film, television, games, adverts, heritage spaces, novels – they all enable us to inhabit other times, to form our sense of memory, to consume the past. Nostalgia is simply one of the ways that we access these feelings of pastness. It is incredibly powerful because of its appeal to emotion beyond rationality. It is a way of connecting with the historical that ignores order and authority – and historians underestimate it at their peril. Nostalgia has become a keynote for contemporary collective memory. Global populist politics are shot through with a dangerous nostalgia for a claimed glory that has been seemingly squandered. This is not new, but it is newly dominant. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2WX7XXY-CMYK-12a5f8b-e1772530438298.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A poster for the TV show Stranger Things, showing four children on bikes on a long road with a yellow line down the middle. They are all looking towards a red, cloudy sky" title="The hit series Stranger Things is “a confection of an imagined 1980s”, says Jerome De Groot, enjoyed by an audience of whom many have “no memory of the eighties other than a cultural hangover of tropes and clichés” (Image by Alamy)" /> In the television series Mad Men (2007), Don Draper cynically uses the past to sell product, observing: “Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent.” Memories of the past can be manipulated. The biggest English-language show worldwide in 2025 was Stranger Things, a confection of an imagined 1980s – Spielberg, Nike, Kate Bu…

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London 1908 was the weirdest Winter Olympics in history – and here's why
type: item
date: 2026-02-15T15:30:16.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Football
subject: Historical events
subject: Olympics
description: Boxing and football? In a Winter Olympics? In October? Held in 1908, the first-ever winter games was an experimental affair. But, writes Martin Polley, it was one that sowed the seeds for future – and snowier – competitions
encoded: “Outside dirty, slushy streets, a melancholy drizzle and a muggy, uncomfortable atmosphere suggestive of nothing more remote than the crisp, keen, invigorating air that is associated in everyone’s mind with the sport of skating.” This editorial, published in Sporting Life, was far from a sparkling endorsement of the first-ever Olympic skating event. But then this was far from a typical Olympics. In fact, the inaugural Winter Olympics, held in London in 1908, would be unrecognisable to modern eyes familiar with today’s four-yearly snow-and-ice spectacle. Yet it forged the way for what’s now become a major fixture on the international sports scene, the latest iteration of which – Milano Cortina 2026 – is being staged across Lombardy and north-eastern Italy this February. The figure-skating event introduced in such dismal terms by Sporting Life was held in the Prince’s Club, Knightsbridge, and was part of a larger ‘winter’ programme staged in Britain as part of the fourth modern Olympic Games. Those games would witness a number of innovations, some of which today sound odd or even faintly ridiculous – motorboat racing or bicycle polo, for example. Other experiments stuck, though. The 1908 games saw the concept of national teams first formally introduced, while the distance for the Marathon that the London organisers used went on to become the standard for the race. And like these other innovations, the winter programme left a long-lasting legacy. Though it was another 16 years before Olympic organisers staged a full Winter Olympics, it was the British Olympic Council (BOC) that first put an ice-based sport on the programme, and which first organised an event called the Olympic Winter Games. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1236365554webready-ddcdecb-e1770899425786.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A postcard depicting a large white, circular stadium in London. It is surrounded by free spaces and in the backgrou…

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From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys
type: item
date: 2025-11-29T18:00:37.000Z
creator: Hilary Mitchell
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Our ancestors weren’t quite as prudish as we like to think they were. Hilary Mitchell looks at some of the tools past generations have used in the pursuit of sexual pleasure – from steam-powered vibrators to goat eyelids
encoded: This article contains explicit descriptions of sex and sexual practices throughout – please use discretion 1. The Hohle Fels phallus Around 28,000 years ago, an effigy of a human penis was left inside Hohle Fels cave, southwestern Germany. Made from fine-grained siltstone, the object was meticulously ground, polished and etched with grooves at both ends. Given its polished surface and true-to-life size, some researchers have suggested it may well have been an early masturbatory aid – or the first-ever dildo, to put it bluntly. However, that was not the artefact’s only possible purpose. When University of Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas J Conard first announced the find in 2005, he suggested that it was also used for knapping flints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1D3GB1X-3e0e6f1-e1764240558215.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man holds a phallus-shaped object in his hands, while a woman points to it. In the background, a group of people are working on excavating the floor of a cave" title="Archaeologists Nicholas Conrad and Petra Kieselbach pose with the Hohle Fels phallus shortly after its discovery in 2005" /> 2. Bread Yes, that’s right. As well as being a staple food in ancient times, bread may also have been used for less salubrious purposes. A passage from the Babylonian Talmud, for instance, contains a description of what should be done to treat a man afflicted by a puncture in his penis. The suggested solution is that a piece of warm barley bread should be placed on the man’s anus to induce ejaculation, proving whether or not the perforation has properly healed. Notably, the ancient Greeks are also said to have used makeshift sex toys known as olisbokollikes: batons of stale bread that were inserted into the anus, using olive oil as lubrication. It may sound far-fetched (and could have just been a rude joke), but the practice is mentioned in the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria, compiled in the fifth or si…

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From a lion-taming lightweight to the Muscular Maids: 5 Victorian boxing sensations you need to know about
type: item
date: 2025-08-18T08:00:53.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
description: Sarah Elizabeth Cox introduces the pugilists who punched their way into Britons’ affections during the dying days of bare-knuckle prize-fighting
encoded: The lion-taming lightweight How a West Indian warrior became a knock-out success in London’s East End Picture the scene. Two boxers walk out before an uproarious crowd at the Sebright Music Hall in the London district of Hackney and “received a welcome of extraordinary character”. “The house rose en masse when the men appeared on the stage,” declared the Sporting Life of 3 January 1888, “and before they were allowed to place themselves into position, had to bow their acknowledgements over and over again. The place was crammed to suffocation.” The late Victorian era was a boom-time for British boxing. Across London in the 1880s, audiences could watch gloved exhibitions, tournaments and matches every night of the week. And few pugilists drew crowds quite as large as one of the men who stepped onto that Hackney stage back in January 1888: Hezekiah Moscow. Moscow has recently been lapping up the audience’s acclaim once again, in the TV drama A Thousand Blows, inspired in part by his story. So who was this pugilist who made headlines in the 1880s and again in 2025? Instant impact We know that Moscow was born in 1862 in the West Indies – although the 1891 census doesn’t give us any more detail about exactly where – and that he arrived in London at the age of 19. It was then, soon after setting up home in Britain’s capital city, that he began to box. Moscow clearly made quite an impression – so much so that his fellow fighters at the Blue Coat Boy boxing saloon in the impoverished heart of the East End soon started calling him ‘Ching Hook’. This nickname appears to have been inspired both by Moscow’s abilities with his fists and his ethnicity – sporting newspapers from 1882 referred to him as a black Chinese man (we know that east Asian indentured servants were present in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana in the years before Moscow’s birth). Moscow struck up a close friendship with Jamaican mariner and established boxer Alexander Munroe. The two sparred white opponents – and on…

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Swings and roundabouts: a history of Britain's playgrounds
type: item
date: 2025-07-17T08:00:18.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Children
description: We all have childhood memories of playgrounds. But what does the evolution of outdoor play in Britain tell us about the experience of being young over the past 200 years? Jon Winder serves up a history of sandpits, bombsites and battles with cars
encoded: A pub might seem a strange place to begin a history of Britain’s playgrounds. Yet in June 1858, Charles Dickens delivered a speech at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate Street that, he hoped, would transform the lives of children across the imperial capital. As the guests dined on seasonal delicacies and fine wines, Dickens gave an impassioned plea on behalf of the Playground and Recreation Society, an organisation that had been established just a few months earlier with the express aim of providing “playgrounds for poor children in populous places”. To the accompaniment of music laid on by the band of the 1st Life Guards, the celebrated author extolled the benefits that having a “playground near to their own dwellings where they knew their children would be safe” conferred on parents. “I venture to assert that there can be no physical health without play; and there can be no efficient and satisfactory work without play; that there can be no sound and wholesome thought without play,” he declared. It was a powerful argument, and one to which Dickens’ audience evidently listened – for, by the end of the following year, the Recreation Grounds Act had made its way into law. Henceforth, local authorities across the land would be allowed to create and own playgrounds for children and young people. It marked a turning point in British children’s access to play. Or did it? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1300568438cmyk-2620726.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph showing. group of children playing in a playground on a concrete housing estate" title="Children play in London’s Lisson Green estate in 1973. Since the Victorian era, playgrounds have been seen as vital to young Britons’ physical and moral development (Image by Getty Images)" /> The new legislation – and Dickens’ high-profile support – could have been a Big Bang moment for the playground movement in Britain. But, despite celebrity en…

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