HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-13T17:31:05.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: What did Anne Boleyn REALLY look like? Our new research could change everything
items: "We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
items: "It wasn't very open about its queer connections": the hidden history of the National Trust
items: "She was like an angel – albeit one with claws": Zandra Rhodes chooses Adel Rootstein (1930–62) as her history hero
items: 10 children and 12,000 pieces of art: the remarkable life of Lady Charlotte Schreiber
items: How did people understand pregnancy BEFORE modern medicine?
items: Did Hitler have sexual relations with Eva Braun? What my research reveals about the Führer's love life
items: Meet the incredible woman who saved Portugal's Jews
items: In 1756, a young Englishwoman was taken hostage by Barbary pirates. This is her story
items: She defied the Nazis and paid the ultimate price: why I'm in awe of Sophie Scholl's courage

What did Anne Boleyn REALLY look like? Our new research could change everything
type: item
date: 2026-03-13T17:30:55.000Z
creator: Dr Owen Emmerson
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: British queens
subject: Henry VIII's wives
subject: Royal weddings
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: Dark or brunette? Fair or swarthy? A paragon of beauty or a refined charmer? Our picture of Henry VIII’s ill-fated second queen has become distorted over five centuries – but new research by Owen Emmerson and others comes closer to revealing her true appearance
encoded: Close your eyes and picture Anne Boleyn. Chances are you can conjure up a pretty clear and detailed image in your imagination – because few figures in English history seem as visually familiar as Henry VIII’s second queen. Representations of her face appear everywhere: in films, television dramas and novels, in museum gift shops and digital reconstructions. She is often depicted in popular culture as an elegant brunette whose sophistication distinguishes her from others at court. Over time, this image has hardened into something close to fact. Anne Boleyn, we are told, was devastatingly beautiful. Yet this certainty is built on fragile foundations, and surviving evidence provides a less concrete understanding of Anne’s appearance. No formal painted portraits from life survive today, though images in a number of smaller, more intimate formats – particularly miniatures – are candidates for having captured her true likeness based on contemporary encounters. The more-familiar portraits featuring the now-iconic ‘B’ pendant necklace, meanwhile, were likely created decades later, influenced by politics, artistic convention and hindsight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/DXFXNM-38bec64-e1773309603951.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A woman with long dark braids, wearing a white period-style gown, sits on a cushioned bed and gently holds a baby wrapped in richly patterned blue and gold fabric. Dark wooden furniture and white bedding frame the intimate, historical-feeling scene" title="Natalie Dormer played Anne Boleyn in the television series The Tudors, which perpetuated modern ideas of the ill-fated queen as a dark-haired beauty (Image by Alamy)" /> For generations, historians assumed that any accurate representations created during Anne’s life had been lost altogether, erased after her execution in 1536 on the orders of Henry VIII. That story is compelling, but it is wrong. My research – which underpins Capturing a Queen: T…

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"We shall never surrender": 14 quotes that have defined the past century
type: item
date: 2026-03-13T15:54:08.000Z
creator: Dr Seán Lang
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical people
subject: Wartime Britain
description: Words have the power to alter the course of history. They can harden the resolve of an entire nation or people, encapsulate the ideals of a movement, and evoke joy – or provoke anger – long after they have been said. Here, Dr Seán Lang explores 14 of the most influential quotes of the past 100 years
encoded: <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/RooseveltGettyImages-464783507-622899f-e1773405930967.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Franklin D. Roosevelt sits at a desk in an official setting, with papers, a microphone, glasses, and an ashtray arranged in front of him, heavy curtains framing the background." title="President Franklin D Roosevelt prepares for his inaugural speech, 1933. The former New York governor had won the presidency based on his promised ‘New Deal’, which lasted until the Second World War (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933 The United States lay devastated by the Great Depression, an economic collapse without precedent that destroyed the country’s global image as a land of opportunity and reduced millions of Americans to poverty and destitution. The governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had run for and won the presidency on the promise of a massive recovery programme, dubbed the ‘New Deal’, but he knew he could do nothing unless the American people first regained their self-belief. In his inaugural address on 4 March 1933, Roosevelt reassured them that they had nothing to fear, except fear itself – “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The New Deal lasted throughout the 1930s until World War II set the country back towards full employment. Through the programme of reforms, regulations and projects, Roosevelt understood the power of words. He explained policies simply and clearly to radio listeners in his ‘fireside chats’, reassuring Americans that they had what it would take to improve their own lives and that the government would help. Roosevelt was elected an unprecedented four times, but it was that first inaugural message that set the tone for his time in office and helped give back the US its self-belief. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production…

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"It wasn't very open about its queer connections": the hidden history of the National Trust
type: item
date: 2026-03-06T15:30:11.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Michael Hall speaks to Charlotte Vosper about the long-hidden stories of LGBTQ people whose lives were connected to the properties owned by the National Trust
encoded: Charlotte Vosper: In A Queer Inheritance, you explore histories of sexual difference connected to the National Trust. What drew you to those historical figures and their stories? Michael Hall: That goes back a long way. For quite a few years I worked for Country Life magazine, and in that role I wrote articles about country houses. I actually began with one of those I mention in my book: Packwood House in Warwickshire. It was acquired in 1904 by an industrialist for his son, Graham Baron Ash, who spent years renovating and transforming the property. It struck me that he never got married – and the idea that a bachelor might do up a house and then give it to the National Trust to look after seemed quite intriguing. I didn’t really spot that it was part of a pattern until I wrote a similar article on Anglesey Abbey. That’s when I realised that there was a story about the National Trust that hadn’t really been told before. It’s important to mention that I’ve never worked for the Trust, and A Queer Inheritance isn’t an official National Trust book in any way. I don’t speak on the Trust’s behalf – and indeed they may very well disagree with a lot of what I say. The National Trust was founded in 1895, when homosexual acts of ‘gross indecency’ were still illegal in Britain – yet in your book you suggest that the Trust had queer connections from its very beginnings. Can you expand on this? That’s actually quite a complicated question. The origins of the National Trust were rooted in an anxiety about London’s urban poor and how they could be morally improved. Its founders thought that if the urban poor could be given access to architectural and natural beauty, this would do away with what they saw as their worrying vices – of which homosexuality was a rather prominent example. Yet several people on the Trust’s original council and executive committee were in fact queer. They included the 5th Earl of Rosebery, who was worried that he might be named in the Oscar Wilde trials o…

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"She was like an angel – albeit one with claws": Zandra Rhodes chooses Adel Rootstein (1930–62) as her history hero
type: item
date: 2026-02-26T09:31:30.000Z
creator: York Membery
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Fashion designer Zandra Rhodes chooses Adel Rootstein as her history hero
encoded: In profile Born in South Africa to Russian parents, Adel Rootstein became arguably the leading British mannequin designer from the late 1950s onwards. She revolutionised mannequin design and played a key behind-the-scenes role in the London fashion scene of the 'swinging sixties', founding the successful mannequin company Rootstein with her husband, industrial designer Richard Hopkins. She died in London at the age of 62. When did you first hear about Adel Rootstein? When she turned up at the front door of my little design studio near Paddington Station in London in 1969, following my first fashion collection. She’d tracked me down, wanting some dresses of mine for the mannequins in the showroom she’d just opened in Golden Square, Soho. It was the start of a lifelong friendship. What kind of woman was she? She was a petite, mousy-looking woman, wore her brown hair in a bob, and spoke with a slight South African accent. But for all her sweetness, she was incredibly tough – you crossed her at your peril. She’d been a window dresser in the West End, but back then there was nothing much to show dresses on, just ordinary dummies – lumps of plaster – which looked awful. So she decided to make her own mannequins. Her father was a rabbi, but I don’t think she was a practising Jew. However, when she died she left money to a Sephardic cemetery on the Fulham Road. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion What made her a hero? She was the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. She had the strength of Frida Kahlo and was one of those people who just make things happen. She and her husband started producing their handcrafted mannequins, using the latest fibreglass technology, in a small Soho workshop before moving to bigger premises. She was a great talent-spotter, too – she immediately realised the potential in Twiggy’s elfin look – and could identify a trend before it hit the streets. She also supported me through thick and thin when my business …

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10 children and 12,000 pieces of art: the remarkable life of Lady Charlotte Schreiber
type: item
date: 2026-02-20T15:30:55.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Amazing lives
description: She was a headstrong scholar who contributed hugely to the study of medieval literature and challenged the societal norms of the 19th century. So why isn’t she better known? Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth traces the adventures of an unsung heroine
encoded: While hunting for antiques in the Netherlands in the 1880s, the esteemed art dealer Joseph Joel Duveen received a tip-off that some “wonderful pieces of china” had come up for sale in a remote village. Getting there would involve a tediously long journey but, undeterred, Duveen set out. Several hours later, however, he spotted a carriage speeding past in the opposite direction, and was able to make out its passenger. Recognising the face of his great rival, Duveen promptly turned around, empty-handed, ruefully realising that she had beaten him to the village and “snatched the prize”. The victor on this occasion was Lady Charlotte Schreiber. Surprisingly, given her long life – she was 82 when she died, in 1895 – which included two marriages, 10 children, scandalous affairs and a celebrated translation of the medieval Welsh Mabinogion, Lady Charlotte remains relatively unknown today. Often erroneously dismissed as a mere magpie obsessed with trinkets, for decades her second husband and sons were credited for accumulating her great collection. Yet, shortly before her death, she donated a trove of some 5,000 pieces to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) and the British Museum. Defiance and scandal Charlotte endured a difficult childhood. Born Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Bertie in 1812, she lost her father, the 9th Earl of Lindsey, when she was only six years old. Her mother remarried, and her new stepfather, the Reverend Peter Pegus, turned out to be a violent alcoholic; he once drank a whole mug of lamp oil, mistaking it for beer. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain At the age of 10, Charlotte started keeping a diary, in which she wrote almost every day until she lost her eyesight in her late seventies. A true polymath, she gave herself “a man’s education”, studying history and literature, and learning Arabic and Farsi (Persian) as well as Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian and even Hebrew. She dedicated hours to her “oriental …

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How did people understand pregnancy BEFORE modern medicine?
type: item
date: 2026-02-06T10:17:32.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne took a brief look back at the wonderfully strange, surprisingly clever and occasionally downright bizarre history of pregnancy
encoded: What did people in the past do to not only diagnose pregnancy, but to ensure the health of mothers and babies in the nine months before birth? To find out, HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne took a brief look back at the wonderfully strange, surprisingly clever and occasionally downright bizarre history of pregnancy – it's a far from comprehensive but fascinating snapshot into this subject. View Green Video on the source website

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Did Hitler have sexual relations with Eva Braun? What my research reveals about the Führer's love life
type: item
date: 2026-01-25T16:00:59.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical people
subject: Holocaust
description: Last year, the results of a groundbreaking study into Adolf Hitler’s DNA were revealed to the world. The project’s senior historical consultant, Alex J Kay, looks at what the findings might be able to tell us about the Führer’s relationship with Eva Braun and the other women in his life
encoded: In November 2025, I was lead historian on the television documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator, which revealed the results of a world-first analysis of Adolf Hitler’s DNA. The results – as explained by the project’s lead geneticist, Turi King – revealed that Hitler had a disorder known as Kallmann syndrome. Among other things, this condition can result in impaired testosterone production, low libido, underdeveloped reproductive features and, by extension, a disrupted reproductive function. The revelation that Hitler had Kallmann syndrome is intriguing because of the likely implications for his private life. This finding strongly suggests a causal relationship between Hitler’s genetic make-up and particular facets of his behaviour. It complements what we already knew about this part of Hitler’s biography, and it sheds light on aspects of his life that we could previously only speculate about. Born in provincial Austria in 1889, Hitler had a very traumatic childhood, experiencing abuse at the hands of his father and losing four out of five siblings as well as both parents by the time he turned 19. He later wrote in his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf that his mother’s death had been “a dreadful blow, particularly for me”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/2-Traumatic-childhood-248974imagno-5c13625-e1769175795531.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two black and white photos alongside each other. A woman is on the left, wearing a high collar and looking straight at the camera. On the left there is a man, wearing a jacket with several buttons down the middle. He is facing the left, and has a large moustache" title="Hitler’s parents, Klara and Alois, pictured around 1890. The future Nazi leader would go on to describe his mother’s death in 1907 as “a dreadful blow” (Image by Topfoto)" /> The family doctor, Eduard Bloch, subsequently remarked: “While [Hitler] was not a ‘mother’s boy’ in the usual sense, I have …

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

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In 1756, a young Englishwoman was taken hostage by Barbary pirates. This is her story
type: item
date: 2026-01-09T15:00:12.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: Historical people
subject: Islam
subject: Pirates
description: Taken hostage by a Barbary ship’s captain in the 18th century, a young Englishwoman found herself fighting for her freedom in Marrakech. Adam Nichols introduces a brave captive who later wrote a book about her dramatic experiences
encoded: The Barbary corsair ship appeared suddenly on the horizon, bristling with cannon. Its decks swarming with armed men, it sliced through the waves at a clip that its quarry – the British merchant ship Ann – could not match. At that time, in the mid-18th century, such pirate attacks were violent, bloody affairs; if the Ann’s captain tried to resist, he would be risking the lives of his crew, his passengers and himself, and would likely see his ship sunk. He surrendered. The corsair captain swaggered aboard the British vessel without firing a shot, and surveyed his captives. He was one of the infamous Sallee Rovers operating out of Salé, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, who sold any Europeans they captured into slavery. The captain ordered the Ann’s four passengers to be taken to his ship, along with the crew, who were chained up in the hold. One of the passengers was a young Englishwoman named Elizabeth Marsh, barely 21 years old. It is because of her that we know these details. She later published an account of her experiences: The Female Captive: A Narrative of Facts Which Happened in Barbary in the Year 1756, Written by Herself. The corsair attack occurred in August 1756, a few months after the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Marsh’s father, an administrator for the Royal Navy, had moved his family from their home in Menorca to Gibraltar, which he considered safer. To further protect his daughter, he then booked her a berth on the Ann, which set sail for England in late July. Read more | Liquor, loot and death on the high seas: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the history of pirates Marsh’s family aspired to be “respectable people”, and she had received a genteel education. The future planned for her was typical of young women of her position and era: to marry a well-to-do man and bear his children. Now, torn from that sheltered life, she faced a very different fate. As a young, attractive European woman, Marsh would have been a highly sought-after comm…

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She defied the Nazis and paid the ultimate price: why I'm in awe of Sophie Scholl's courage
type: item
date: 2025-12-31T15:00:01.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Civil rights
subject: Death
subject: Fascism
description: Novelist Simon Scarrow chooses Sophie Scholl as his history hero
encoded: In profile Sophie Scholl was a German student and political activist in the White Rose, a non-violent resistance group opposed to Hitler. After being observed distributing anti-Nazi flyers at her university, Sophie, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and executed by guillotine; she was just 21. When did you first hear about Sophie Scholl? While I was doing research for my Nazi-era novels about a fictional German police detective. I came across the White Rose resistance movement, and that led me to Sophie. What kind of woman was she? First and foremost, she was an incredibly brave person – as was her brother Hans [co-founder of the White Rose]. She had a huge amount of integrity and wisdom for someone of her age, and understood what they were up against in opposing the Third Reich. I actually consider her a far more impressive figure than someone like Wilhelm Canaris [the German admiral and military intelligence chief executed for treason just before the end of the war], who was a Nazi for a long time before deciding that he wasn’t. What made her a hero? First, her realisation that she and her fellow White Rose activists were involved in a life-and-death struggle for the soul of Germany. Most students in Nazi Germany did themselves no good in terms of historical reputation – after all, they led the infamous Nazi book burnings. Sophie was one of a tiny minority of students who stood up to be counted. Second, her diehard courage. She pursued her anti-Nazi activism regardless of the consequences, and died a hero. If only there had been more like her in Germany at that time. Read more | Simon Schama on British history if Hitler had beaten Churchill: "The Holocaust would have happened here" What was her finest hour? Her refusal to flinch under interrogation or in the courtroom when she and fellow White Rose activists were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by a Nazi judge, Roland Freisler. Her executioner, Johann Re…

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