HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-12T12:28:32.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: We often refer to countries as 'female' – so why has history excluded women from nation-building?
items: My history hero: Rain Newton-Smith chooses Helen Keller (1880-1968)
items: The lie of succession: did James I steal Elizabeth I's crown?
items: My history hero: Isabel Allende chooses Inés Suárez (c1507–80)
items: Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry
items: The sinister secrets of Samuel Pepys
items: Far away from England, the mystery of Harold Godwinson's lost crown might have just been solved
items: Maria of Modena: life of the week
items: From a scandalous threesome to classical stardom: the actress who found redemption in Handel’s Messiah
items: Flower power: how plants transformed the lives of 17th-century women

We often refer to countries as 'female' – so why has history excluded women from nation-building?
type: item
date: 2025-12-15T09:00:09.000Z
creator: Dr Janina Ramirez
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Joan of Arc
subject: Medieval life
description: Janina Ramirez speaks to Danny Bird about how women and their stories have been co-opted and curated by men attempting to forge nations across Europe
encoded: Danny Bird: What was the genesis of Legenda? Was there a moment when you knew you had to write this book? Janina Ramirez: From the start of my academic career, I learned from [Palestinian-American literary critic and activist] Edward Said and others the value of acknowledging one’s perspective: being transparent about who you are, rather than claiming some sense of neutral empirical truth. For me, identity rests on three pillars. First, I am a woman. Second, class: I come from an immigrant, working-class background. Third, heritage: Polish-Irish, born in Dubai, raised in the UK, married to a Spanish-Scot, with a distinctly European sense of self. With all that, I wasn’t going to get away without a Catholic upbringing: convent school, just very Roman Catholic foundations. I’m not practising now, but it gave me empathy for faith and an understanding of belief. These roots inevitably shape my work. When I published The Private Lives of the Saints [in 2015], my aunt, a Franciscan missionary, told me how proud she was. I had to laugh because the book dismantled saintly myths rather than celebrating them. Yet she was right: I was still that Catholic schoolgirl, writing about religious figures, even as I reframed them. Questions of nationality also ran through my research. My first book required careful choices of terms: ‘Irish’, ‘Welsh’, ‘Scottish’, ‘British Isles’ – each politically charged. By Femina [2022], the pattern was striking: nations everywhere reclaiming heritage, from Scandinavia’s Vikings to France’s Cathars. The focus of my latest book crystallised while writing about [queen and saint] Jadwiga of Poland. My grandmother, who owned a bronze of Pope John Paul II, reminded me how faith and identity intertwine. In my lifetime, that pope canonised women I now study, using them to shape national narratives. So the direction of this new book was clear even as I finished the last one. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/ali053…

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My history hero: Rain Newton-Smith chooses Helen Keller (1880-1968)
type: item
date: 2025-11-05T15:54:13.000Z
creator: York Membery
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: History hero
description: Economist Rain Newton-Smith chooses Helen Keller as her history hero
encoded: In profile Helen Keller was an American writer and activist. Having lost her sight and hearing at just 19 months old, she later learned how to speak, read and write. She became a prolific author and campaigner for blind and deaf people, women’s suffrage and world peace. In 1964, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson. Her ashes were interred at Washington National Cathedral with long-time companions Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson. When did you first hear about Keller? It was when I was eight or nine years old, growing up in Canada, and I borrowed a book about her from my local library. I was fascinated to learn how a teacher, Anne Sullivan, was able to connect with this deaf and blind child, and to teach her the basics of language – spelling out words such as ‘water’ on her hands – which unlocked a whole new world for her. I was also struck by the fact that Helen didn’t just go on to live a long life but became an advocate for people with disabilities, as well as a speaker and author. What kind of woman was she? She was one of five children born to a Confederate captain-turned editor, once part of Alabama’s slave-owning elite. After being struck deaf and blind as a baby, Helen initially got by using simple sign language to communicate. She learned to rely on taste, smell and touch, using her hands to read people’s lips. Despite never being able to speak as clearly as she might have liked (something she always regretted), she became a public speaker, though her words were translated for her audience by one of her constant companions – first Anne Sullivan, later Polly Thomson. Read more | 9 things you (probably) didn’t know about Helen Keller What made her a hero? The incredible tenacity and resilience she showed in overcoming her disabilities. After learning to read and write, she thrived at school and graduated from university – one of very few women then undertaking higher education. Most impressively of all, she sought to use the powe…

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The lie of succession: did James I steal Elizabeth I's crown?
type: item
date: 2025-10-13T08:00:19.000Z
creator: Tracy Borman
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: British queens
subject: Stuart kings and queens
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: Did James I ‘steal’ Elizabeth I’s crown? Tracy Borman considers evidence that the transition from Tudor to Stuart dynasties may not have been quite as seamless as we’ve been led to believe
encoded: Richmond Palace, 22 March 1603. Elizabeth I – the self-proclaimed Virgin Queen who had ruled England for 44 years, seeing off the Armada, healing religious divisions and creating a court so magnificent it was the envy of Europe – lay dying. Her anxious advisers clustered around her bedside, urging her to do the thing she had resisted throughout her long reign: name her successor. Rousing herself from her stupor, the 69-year-old queen declared: “I will that a king succeed me, and what king, but my nearest kinsman, the king of Scots?” Wanting to make completely sure, her chief minister, Robert Cecil, asked whether that was her “absolute resolution” – to which she irritably retorted: “I pray you trouble me no more, I’ll have none but him.” That “kinsman” was James VI of Scotland, son of Elizabeth’s old rival Mary, Queen of Scots. Her closest surviving blood relative, he had emerged as the front runner in the race for the English crown. He had the support of Cecil and most of his fellow privy councillors, who had been working behind the scenes to smooth James’s path to the throne. The queen, too, had shown him favour, sharing the pearls of her monarchical wisdom during their 20-year correspondence, as if grooming him as her successor. But she had always flinched from actually naming him as such. Now, almost with her last breath, she had. Elizabeth died two days later – and the Tudor dynasty gave way peacefully to the Stuarts. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-544183312webready-e7c6f5b.jpg" width="3727" height="2485" alt="A portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. She had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth's throne, but her son would go on to be the next monarch (Image by Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. She had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth's throne, but her son would go on to be the next monarch (Image by Getty Images)" /> This dramatic depiction of Elizabeth’s last-gasp naming of the…

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My history hero: Isabel Allende chooses Inés Suárez (c1507–80)
type: item
date: 2025-10-09T07:30:16.000Z
creator: York Membery
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: History hero
description: Novelist Isabel Allende chooses Inés Suárez as her history hero
encoded: In profile Born in Spain, Inés Suárez participated in the conquest of Chile with her lover, Pedro de Valdivia, and defended the new settlement they founded, Santiago, from an attack by the Indigenous Mapuche people. She subsequently became a symbol of the Chilean woman standing up to authority, and has been immortalised in historical novels including Allende’s Inés of My Soul (2006), inspiration for the Spanish-Chilean television drama of the same name. When did you first hear about Suárez? When I was studying Chilean history – though she is hardly mentioned in most Chilean history books, despite being the only Spanish woman to accompany 110 Conquistadors to what was then considered the end of the world. There is no monument erected in her memory. What kind of woman was she? She came from a humble family in Spain, and was originally a seamstress. Her hair was described as “flaming”, and she never had children. Interestingly, there’s no record of her suffering any accident or illness, so she must have been incredibly strong. She also had the gift of finding water, and helped save the Conquistador army when crossing the Atacama Desert. While the other Spaniards were fighting, looking for gold and raping Indigenous women, she was collecting chickens and cows, and buying land. She became the second-richest person in the country, the envy of the Conquistador captains. Unlike those men, who all died in their thirties or forties, she lived to her seventies. Read more | Two worlds collide: Spanish conquistadors and Aztecs What made her a hero? She defied everyone and did things her way, challenging the church and the world. She was unstoppable, and I love that. Women were not allowed to accompany Conquistadors unless joining a husband – and only with the permission of the king and the church. The Conquistador men didn’t feel that they needed their wives, because they were raping Indigenous women. In contrast, Inés went to Chile for love, not in search of gold or glory. What…

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Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry
type: item
date: 2025-09-17T08:00:01.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
subject: Medieval battles
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: "We should remember the unknown women who made the Tapestry", writes Michael Wood
encoded: Like all readers, I am sure, I was thrilled to hear the news that the Bayeux Tapestry is coming to England next year. 1066 is the most important date in British history, and the Tapestry is the greatest single source, taking the tale from the last days of Edward the Confessor through the drama of Harold and William, the Norman invasion, and the defeat and death of Harold at Hastings. The Tapestry has been in Bayeux since the Middle Ages and has never left, save briefly during the Franco-German War and under Napoleon and the Nazis, who both sought to weaponise it prior to their own invasion attempts. But it was made in England in the aftermath of the Conquest, probably at Canterbury by English needlewomen. Scholars think that it was commissioned by the Conqueror’s brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who features prominently on the Tapestry along with his followers. One of those, Vitalis, is singled out and named, shown mounted and in full armour, reporting to William the whereabouts of the English army. Perhaps he was the leader of a scouting detachment who had gone ahead of the Norman army. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year The artistic inspiration was the English school of manuscript painting in Canterbury, but there may have been Roman models, too. Trajan’s Column, in particular, depicts the emperor’s Dacian campaigns in a similar manner – like a strip cartoon. Odo himself had been to Rome; so, too, had Scolland, abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey, who may have designed the Tapestry – perhaps using a sketch book from his travels? It’s a huge artwork, some 68.3 metres long, but damaged at the end: perhaps as much as 3 metres is missing. It is generally agreed that the Tapestry originally finished with William’s crowning at Westminster at Christmas 1066 – a mirror image to the opening panel of the enthroned Edward the Confessor. Based on that assumption, a brilliant full-scale reconstruction has been completed by …

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The sinister secrets of Samuel Pepys
type: item
date: 2025-09-12T08:00:15.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Historical people
description: His diaries are revered for their kaleidoscopic evocation of Restoration England. Yet a fresh analysis of Pepys’ world-famous journals – carried out by Guy de la Bédoyère – reveals a man with a proclivity for coercion and sexual violence
encoded: Samuel Pepys is England’s most celebrated diarist. Between 1 January 1660 and 31 May 1669, he recorded his day-to-day life in fascinating and illuminating detail. He wrote about his relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, and the frustrations of managing his household and the servants. He left first-hand accounts of the plague epidemic that likely claimed around 100,000 lives in the capital in 1665–66, and of the Great Fire of London that followed. He has come down through the years as one of the key primary sources for anyone trying to understand the early Restoration era. But there was a dark side to Pepys’ writings, which was never intended to be made public. He described a sordid litany of sexual encounters ranging from his relationships with long-term mistresses to his assaults on maids, including members of his own staff. In an era when corruption was commonplace, Pepys also wrote about using his position as a civilian naval official to coerce sexual services from women seeking promotion for their husbands or payment of unpaid wages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-660416773webready-b8ec9d0.jpg" width="3680" height="2453" alt="London blazes in a colourised woodcut depicting the Great Fire of 1666, published the following year. Pepys’ diaries include valuable first-hand accounts of such events – but also explicit details of his often troubling personal activities (Image by Getty Images)" title="London blazes in a colourised woodcut depicting the Great Fire of 1666, published the following year. Pepys’ diaries include valuable first-hand accounts of such events – but also explicit details of his often troubling personal activities (Image by Getty Images)" /> Take the events of 18 February 1667, a day when Pepys met in his office with Elizabeth Burrows, who was around 30 years old and the widow of a naval lieutenant killed in action in 1665. Pepys had promised her financial assistance. His diary entry – tell…

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Far away from England, the mystery of Harold Godwinson's lost crown might have just been solved
type: item
date: 2025-08-28T14:00:57.000Z
creator: Isabel King
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: New research into the history of a long-lost Belgian church suggests that something very precious may have been sold to fund its upkeep
encoded: Overlooking Bruges’ market square and a few hundred metres away from the neo-Gothic Provincial Palace stands a popular chain hotel, providing accommodation for some of the millions of tourists that visit the Belgian city each year. Looking at this unremarkable redbrick building, it’s hard to imagine that on the same site, an important place of worship once towered over this historic metropolis: the medieval St Donatian’s Church. And a new detail that has emerged from the archives of the church leads us to consider something even harder to imagine: could the crown of England’s last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, have been sold to pay for its upkeep? A church of sanctuary and sacrilege St Donatian’s church – named after the fourth-century French saint, Donatian – was established around AD 950 by Arnulf I, the count of Flanders. Prior to its destruction during the French Revolutionary Wars, the church was a college of canons, built to hold relics of St Donatian brought to Bruges from Torhout (a municipality in West Flanders) in around 870. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/PublicDomainsander-WL-45d2aa1.jpg" width="800" height="534" alt="A sketch of a beige church with many arched windows and a tower in the centre. It has a grey roof and many smaller buildings around it too. In the corner, there is a label reading "ECCLESIA CATHEDRALIS S. DONATIANI"" title="An illustration of St Donatian's in Flandria Illustrata, 1641 (Public domain)" /> Today, the church is best-known for being the scene of the brutal murder of another Flemish count, Charles the Good, who was attacked by a group of knights in 1127. Lesser-known, however, is the fact that the place of worship also played a significant role in the exile of Lady Gunhild – sister of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson. Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? The church b…

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Maria of Modena: life of the week
type: item
date: 2025-08-12T06:30:47.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Life of the week (podcast series)
description: Breeze Barrington explores the extraordinary story of Maria of Modena – the Italian-born queen consort to James VII and II – and considers how her controversial childbirth in 1688 paved the way for the Glorious Revolution
encoded: Born into Italian nobility and raised with quiet ambitions of becoming a nun, Maria (or Mary) of Modena was thrust on to the European political stage as a teenage bride to James, Duke of York, who was later crowned as James VII of Scotland and II of England. Talking to Elinor Evans, cultural historian Breeze Barrington shares how Maria navigated a foreign court, vicious anti-Catholic sentiment, and personal loss, to emerge as a resilient and principled queen. Breeze Barrington is the author of The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the Restoration Court (Bloomsbury, 2025) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?id=489797&clickref=historyextra-288187&awinmid=3787&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fthe-graces%2Fbreeze-barrington%2F9781526663788%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe%2520Graces%253A%2520The%2520Extraordinary%2520Untold%2Cat%2520the%2520Restoration%2520Court%2520%28Hardback%29%26text%3DA%2520spellbinding%2520work%2520of%2520history%2Cmisogyny%2520of%2520the%2520Restoration%2520court.#:~:text=The%20Graces%3A%20The%20Extraordinary%20Untold,at%20the%20Restoration%20Court%20(Hardback)&text=A%20spellbinding%20work%20of%20history,misogyny%20of%20the%20Restoration%20court." rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Buy now on Waterstones

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From a scandalous threesome to classical stardom: the actress who found redemption in Handel’s Messiah
type: item
date: 2025-06-27T14:31:40.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Susannah Cibber’s journey from abuse and scandal to a role in the debut of Messiah is one of the most remarkable stories in music history. Elinor Evans spoke to Charles King, author of Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah, to reveal how an actress embroiled in a salacious courtroom drama became the emotional heart of one of the most enduring pieces of Western music
encoded: When George Frideric Handel’s Messiah was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, the audience could not have anticipated the weight of emotion the work would carry. Now one of the most beloved compositions in the classical canon, Handel’s Messiah is an oratorio with powerful choruses and solos that tells the story of Christ – from prophecy and birth to passion and resurrection. The German composer hoped his new work would not just entertain, but cause an awakening of the soul in those who listened, to bring about, as he saw it, a kind of redemption through art. Listen on the podcast | Handel's Messiah: the scandalous birth of a classical masterpiece On the night it debuted as part of a concert to raise funds for the poor, perhaps no one better personified this narrative of suffering and redemption better than one woman central to the work’s debut: Susannah Cibber. Cibber was a celebrated actress and contralto, who gained a name for herself in the mid-18th century for her remarkable stage presence. But by the time she arrived in Dublin, she was infamous for another reason: a scandalous court case that had laid bare the intimate details of her personal life. As Messiah debuted, “she was notorious,” explains historian Charles King on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Everyone knew intimately these quite embarrassing details of her sexual life.” The rise and fall of Susannah Cibber Born Susannah Arne in 1714, she was raised in the Covent Garden area of London, which by the early 18th century was an area famous for its theatres and music halls. Though her father and grandfather were upholsterers by trade, a musical vein ran through her family. Her elder brother, Thomas Arne, would later compose Rule, Britannia!, and another brother also trained as an actor and singer. Though she sang from an early age, Susannah was never taught to read music (Handel would later coach her through her singing parts note by note). Susannah would soon find her calling in the theatre, making he…

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Flower power: how plants transformed the lives of 17th-century women
type: item
date: 2025-06-19T08:00:34.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Few 17th-century women could travel the world. But the world could visit them in their gardens. Susannah Lyon-Whaley reveals how exotic plants – from Chinese rhubarb to South American passionfruit – opened new horizons in fashion, food and science
encoded: Anna Buckett had never seen a pineapple. Undeterred, on 12 July 1656, she took the bold move of stitching one. While the fine stitches on her sampler show dexterity, the result is more artistic than realistic. The red pineapple looks a little like a monstrous jelly with beetle legs. Amid Anna’s stitched pinks, pansies and honeysuckles, the pineapple – a native of countries like Brazil and Suriname that would not grow successfully in English gardens until the 1700s – was out of place. She had never seen a pineapple, but Anna may have seen pictures. The first printed depiction of a pineapple in Europe was in black and white in Gonzalo de Oviedo’s Historia General de las Indias (1535). Another herbal text (1641) claimed that the fruit tasted “as if wine, rosewater and sugar were mixed together”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2HHR700cmyk-ce191d2.jpg" width="1545" height="1030" alt="A detailed and colourful piece of needlework shows a scene with two people, a lion and a horse at the top, with several plants, leaves and red pineapples across the bottom" title="A needlework sampler stitched by Anna Buckett in 1656, including her depiction of a red pineapple, resembling a “monstrous jelly with beetle legs” (Image by Alamy)" /> Anna may have been the Anne Buckett baptised in May 1643 in Middlesex, or the Ann Becket baptised in December 1644 in Surrey, though neither is certain. Like other daughters of merchants or gentlemen learning the gentler arts, she stitched both gardens she saw and those she imagined. Needlework creations of the time swarmed with peacocks, parrots, lions, leopards and sunflowers from foreign lands. In the 17th century, voyages to new colonies in North America, the Caribbean, Africa and India turned plants like tobacco and sugarcane into profits. They also sent waves of plants rippling back across the sea. For women at home, gardens made the wider world a material reality. Dainties for a queen In 1629, John…

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