HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-14T15:53:50.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: History's Greatest Battles: Bosworth
items: History's Greatest Battles: Tewkesbury
items: History's Greatest Battles: Barnet
items: History's Greatest Battles: Towton
items: History's Greatest Battles: The First Battle of St Albans
items: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors
items: The rise of Henry VII: how a life of cheating death prepared him for the throne as the first Tudor king
items: Margaret Beaufort: mother of the Tudors
items: Margaret of Anjou: the 'she-wolf' queen who wouldn’t go quietly
items: Wars of the Roses quiz

History's Greatest Battles: Bosworth
type: item
date: 2026-04-14T15:53:50.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: History's Greatest Battles (podcast series)
description: Dr Lauren Johnson and Emily Briffett round off our series on the Wars of the Roses with Bosworth, the battle that ushered in the Tudor dynasty
encoded: In 1485, England stood at a crossroads, scarred by decades of civil war. Against this grim backdrop, two armies headed for a fateful confrontation: one led by a battle-hardened king determined to ensure the success of a dynasty he had fought to protect for years; the other by a new challenger in an old conflict. In this final episode of our History’s Greatest Battles series charting the Wars of the Roses, Emily Briffett is joined by historian and author Lauren Johnson to explore how, in one fateful meeting on one remarkable day, a new king would be crowned – and history would never look the same again. History’s Greatest Battles is produced by HistoryExtra, the home of ‘History’s Greatest’ podcasts. Listen to our other podcasts: History's Greatest Dishes, History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, History’s Greatest Scandals, History’s Greatest Cities and HistoryExtra Long Reads.

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History's Greatest Battles: Tewkesbury
type: item
date: 2026-04-14T15:53:48.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: History's Greatest Battles (podcast series)
description: Dr Lauren Johnson and Emily Briffett consider the blood and brutality of the battle of Tewkesbury, where the Lancastrian cause was broken
encoded: Survivors desperately fleeing to the apparent safety of a nearby abbey. A young prince on the brink of death. A dynasty on the precipice. The battle of Tewkesbury, which played out during May 1471, certainly had its fair share of high drama, and high stakes, as armies clashed and the Lancastrian cause was shattered. In this fourth episode of our History’s Greatest Battles series charting the Wars of the Roses, Emily Briffett joins historian and author Lauren Johnson to consider those remarkable events – and their legacy. History’s Greatest Battles is produced by HistoryExtra, the home of ‘History’s Greatest’ podcasts. Listen to our other podcasts: History's Greatest Dishes, History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, History’s Greatest Scandals, History’s Greatest Cities and HistoryExtra Long Reads.

History's Greatest Battles: Barnet
type: item
date: 2026-04-14T15:53:46.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: History's Greatest Battles (podcast series)
description: Dr Lauren Johnson and Emily Briffett travel delve into the fog of war of the battle of Barnet
encoded: April 1471: a thick, blinding fog smothered the fields near Barnet, swallowing banners, muffling orders and turning friend into foe. Opposing armies became disoriented – and then one mistake proved fatal. In this third episode of our History’s Greatest Battles series charting the Wars of the Roses, Emily Briffett joins historian and author Lauren Johnson to chronicle the clash at Barnet, in which lines buckled and trust collapsed. History’s Greatest Battles is produced by HistoryExtra, the home of ‘History’s Greatest’ podcasts. Listen to our other podcasts: History's Greatest Dishes, History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, History’s Greatest Scandals, History’s Greatest Cities and HistoryExtra Long Reads.

History's Greatest Battles: Towton
type: item
date: 2026-04-14T15:53:44.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: History's Greatest Battles (podcast series)
description: Dr Lauren Johnson and Emily Briffett travel to 1461 and the frost and fury of the battle of Towton
encoded: In the bitter spring of 1461, the freezing fields of Yorkshire became a blood-soaked battlefield in which two rivals fought for the throne of a divided nation. But who would emerge victorious? In this second episode of our History’s Greatest Battles series charting the Wars of the Roses, Emily Briffett joins historian and author Lauren Johnson at the 1461 battle of Towton. History’s Greatest Battles is produced by HistoryExtra, the home of ‘History’s Greatest’ podcasts. Listen to our other podcasts: History's Greatest Dishes, History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, History’s Greatest Scandals, History’s Greatest Cities and HistoryExtra Long Reads.

History's Greatest Battles: The First Battle of St Albans
type: item
date: 2026-04-14T15:53:36.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: History's Greatest Battles (podcast series)
description: Dr Lauren Johnson and Emily Briffett explore the clash that ignited the Wars of the Roses: the First Battle of St Albans
encoded: History’s Greatest Battles is back! This time around, Emily Briffett and historian and author Lauren Johnson will be chronicling the most momentous clashes of the Wars of the Roses. In this first episode, they explore 1455’s First Battle of St Albans, a bitter brawl that sparked a dynastic struggle and set in motion a chain of events that would redefine power in England for centuries to come. History’s Greatest Battles is produced by HistoryExtra, the home of ‘History’s Greatest’ podcasts. Listen to our other podcasts: History's Greatest Dishes, History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, History’s Greatest Scandals, History’s Greatest Cities and HistoryExtra Long Reads.

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

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The rise of Henry VII: how a life of cheating death prepared him for the throne as the first Tudor king
type: item
date: 2024-08-01T08:58:06.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
encoded: Portraits of Henry VII typically share a few key traits. They depict a man with a lean, strong face, a shock of brown hair escaping from beneath a black cap. A long nose; often the ghost of a smile. And dark, piercing eyes. Watchful? Wary? Suspicious, even? Certainly that’s how history has remembered him: as a king driven to the edge of tyranny by his rampant paranoia, cursed with a debilitating suspicion of those around him that left him isolated and unloved towards the end of his reign. Francis Bacon, writing in the early 17th century, remarked that Henry was “a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious”, who would admit no one “to his power or to his secrets”. There is an element of truth in Bacon’s judgment that Henry became “lost in a wood of suspicions”. Read more | Henry VII: the greatest pretender Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king. Growing up with the enemy Henry was not born to rule. Indeed, he was born far from the throne, both figuratively and literally. The son of Margaret Beaufort, an English heiress of royal descent, and a half-Welsh, half-French earl named Edmund Tudor, Henry was born in Pembroke Castle on 28 January 1457. It was an inopportune moment to arrive in the world: civil war was brewing between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, remembered today as the Wars of the Roses. Henry was related on both sides of his family tree to the beleaguered Lancastrian king Henry VI, who was both his maternal cousin and his paternal half-uncle. He never knew his father, Edmun…

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Margaret Beaufort: mother of the Tudors
type: item
date: 2024-04-08T09:35:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Historical people
description: She was pregnant at 12, widowed by the Wars of the Roses and almost died at the hands of Richard III. But, writes Michael Jones, nothing could prevent the indomitable Margaret Beaufort from engineering the rise of her son, Henry VII, to the English throne...
encoded: On 14 February 1453, a nine-year-old girl was travelling to London to be introduced to the court of King Henry VI. Her name was Margaret Beaufort, the only child of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and inheritor of a large landed estate. Margaret (born on 31 May 1443) had royal blood in her veins. But it was tainted blood, for her family was the illegitimate offspring of the king’s great-grandfather, John of Gaunt, by his mistress, Katherine Swynford. When Gaunt subsequently married Katherine, the Beauforts were legitimised – but barred from succeeding to the throne. As Margaret approached the royal court that day in 1453, her family harboured hopes that that Henry VI would overturn this provision. Margaret’s father had died shortly before her first birthday and so she was brought up by her mother, Margaret Beauchamp. Her mother instilled in her a strong sense of personal destiny and family pride. Despite her young age, Margaret was bright and remarkably self-assured. Above all, she was well aware of the opportunities beckoning her. Read more: the ultimate history guide to the Tudors That she would go on to take full advantage of these opportunities is beyond doubt. For, in the face of huge obstacles and sometimes mortal peril, Margaret played the 15th-century game of power-politics with bravery and determination. And, on 22 August 1485, her perseverance was rewarded when her son, Henry Tudor, defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth to become king. Charting Margaret’s role in Henry VII’s rise to power – and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty – reveals the skill-set of one of the great political survivors of the late Middle Ages. Margaret Beaufort's early life As the young Margaret travelled towards the royal court in February 1453, she found herself at the centre of a high-stakes tug-of-war. Three years earlier, Henry VI’s chief minister, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, had arranged her marriage to his son John. The dynastic implications of this plan…

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Margaret of Anjou: the 'she-wolf' queen who wouldn’t go quietly
type: item
date: 2023-07-06T07:44:26.000Z
creator: Joanna Arman
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: Margaret of Anjou was a foreigner and a woman: two facts that should have sunk her bid to regain the English throne for her husband, Henry VI, in the Wars of the Roses. Yet, writes Joanna Arman, when it came to fighting her family’s corner, the 'she-wolf' of Shakespeare simply didn’t know when she was beaten
encoded: Margaret of Anjou crossed swords with some of 15th-century England’s most formidable warriors. But it was a playwright born eight decades after her death who inflicted the most damage on the queen’s reputation. When William Shakespeare had Richard, Duke of York describe Margaret as the “She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,” in Henry VI Part III, he helped secure the queen a place in historical infamy. For 500 years, Margaret – wife of Henry VI, and towering figure in the Wars of the Roses – has been labelled an unfaithful wife, a foreign enemy within, a Machiavellian schemer and a bloodthirsty monster who delighted in exacting terrible vengeance on her enemies. Even in modern times, some say Margaret was the inspiration for Game of Thrones’ notoriously manipulative monarch Cersei Lannister. The truth is, inevitably, far more nuanced – and compelling – than the stereotype. Margaret was neither the unscrupulous ogre of Shakespeare’s portrayal, nor the innocent bystander that some historians have presented in recent years. She was a woman who fought with no little skill and tenacity on behalf of her husband, her son Edward of Westminster – and, of course, herself – in the maelstrom of one of England’s most protracted and vicious civil wars. She suffered setbacks and endured abuse (much of it a result of her gender) that would have broken many of her contemporaries. And yet she so nearly realised her aim of securing her son the English throne. That in itself makes her one of the most fascinating figures of the 15th century. Margaret of Anjou’s route to power Margaret was born in 1430, probably in Lorraine in modern-day France. Her parents were Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine and René of Anjou, brother-in-law of King Charles VII of France. With René a prisoner of war for much of Margaret’s childhood, and Isabella called away to the Italian peninsula to oversee her husband’s lands, Margaret lived with her grandmother Yolande of Aragon until she was 12. War h…

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Wars of the Roses quiz
type: item
date: 2022-08-22T16:08:27.000Z
creator: Kev Lochun
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Quiz
description: How much do you know about the Wars of the Roses? Test your knowledge with this quiz on the clash of kings that ended with the rise of the Tudors...
encoded: View Riddle on the source website How did you score? Share your result on social media to see how your knowledge compares with other HistoryExtra readers! Want to improve your knowledge? You can start with exploring our Wars of the Roses hub, including our primer to the conflict, the greatest mysteries of the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudor dynasty.

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