BBC History Magazine

“Henry V was a hard act to follow. A renowned warrior king, he triumphed at Agincourt, conquered large swathes of France and secured the French throne for his son and heir – all before dying at 35. By any measure Henry VI did not live up to his fathe

A family of three cast in bronze, standing proud on a pile of suitcases, has been installed in London’s Waterloo station as the National Windrush Monument. The statue – designed by Jamaican sculptor Basil Watson, and unveiled by the Duke and Duchess

Writing in The Times, the History Reclaimed (@History_Reclaim) group of scholars made the case for creating “a prominent national monument” remembering “our many forebears, both celebrated and unknown, who fought tirelessly against slavery, sometimes

The discovery of the bones of some 8,000 frogs and toads alongside the site of an Iron Age roundhouse near Cambridge is puzzling experts. Zooarchaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) did not find marks consistent with consumption by hum

Boris Johnson’s fall as prime minister early in July was spectacular. It was forced, not by any formal vote, but instead by the resignation of dozens of ministers and aides following a series of damaging political scandals. Indeed, the number of resi

The overthrown king may have been murdered while in prison During the night of 23-24 September 1327, the young Edward III received a messenger informing him that his father, the former king who had been forced to abdicate earlier that year, had died

What do we know about the recording of Love Me Do? For such a basic song, their debut single proved difficult to record, in the end requiring 15 takes to get right. Even then, their producer George Martin wasn’t convinced, so a week later the band di

After reading your feature A Space Menagerie (March) I thought your readers and the author, Stephen Walker, would be pleased to know that Miss Baker [the squirrel monkey who was fired into space in 1959] lived a long life as a star at the US Space &

Want to know why Henry VI’s reign was such a disaster? Then look no further than his father In Westminster Abbey, the tomb of Henry V is hard to miss. Towering above the mosaic-encrusted tomb of St Edward the Confessor and his royal successors, for c

In September 1942, German lieutenant colonel Friedrich Roske declared himself “the master of the centre of Stalingrad” after his troops had smashed their way into the heart of the city. But with thousands of Soviet guardsmen poised to launch a furiou

Germany launches the offensive codenamed Case Blue in southern Russia. Hitler orders simultaneous offensives aimed at Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Stalin demands that Soviet troops retreating across the steppe should take “Not One Step Back!” The Luf

In November 1956, a 14-minute televised address to the nation by the British prime minister Anthony Eden triggered possibly the single biggest Cold War-era clash between government and the BBC. It stripped bare the intimate, if awkward, relationship

» Though exact specifications varied, a scold’s bridle generally consisted of an iron helmet or cage that encased the head, incorporating a spiked plate or bit that was placed into the mouth to constrain the tongue and render speech impossible. The “

The BBC from wireless to web Listen to our podcast series with David Hendy on the history of the BBC at historyextra.com/podcast Grace Wyndham Goldie has been described as sharp-witted and practical as well as quixotic and something of a bully. She w

In 1678, Catholic assassins hatched a plot to murder Fake news. Misinformation. Disinformation. Today these are terms with which we are all too familiar. They exercise a powerful influence – enough to shape, or misshape, our political world. Modern s

The Whig Party coalesced during the 1679–81 struggle over the exclusion of James, Duke of York from the succession. The party’s name originated as a term of abuse: a “Whigga-more” (later shortened to “Whig”) was a Scottish Presbyterian extremist. Opp

75 years ago, Britain’s control over 400 million people on the Indian subcontinent ceased. It was the beginning of the end of the British empire. On 14 August 1947, people in Pakistan proudly marked the creation of the new dominion with a ceremony in

Forget wings and legs, the earliest western dragons resembled massive snakes Every small child of the modern west can describe a dragon: it is a broadly serpentine creature (colour of choice: green); it has an animalian head; between its longish neck

On 27 February 1962, hundreds of people crammed into Winchester Guildhall for a public meeting. It was, in many ways, not such an unusual event: the foundation of a local committee, in this case the Winchester Excavations Committee. The meeting was,

The Yorkshire soil has ottered up tantalising glimpses of a “princess” who straddled England’s pagan and Christian ages A few beads and pendants was all they found. It wasn’t much to go on, but these diminutive treasures nestled in the soil threw up

Scotland: The Global History, 1603 to the Present by Murray Pittock Yale, 512 pages, £25 While Scotland has existed, geographically, in roughly its present form for half a millennium, the small nation has adapted to huge political, economic and socia

It was a society wedding that caused a sensation. On 4 January 1898, Prince Victor Albert Jay Duleep Singh (1866–1918), the son of Sir Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Lahore, married Lady Anne Coventry (18741956), the Earl of Coventry’s daughter,

In The Compleat Cook (1681), Rebecca Price’s recipe begins: “Take a twopenny lofe grated; and the same quantity of raw caret grated very small.” The key word there is “raw”. Most 18th-century recipes for carrot pudding, such as Henry Howard’s in Engl

If you’re looking for a Greek island holiday with history around every corner, Rhodes is an excellent choice. Many civilisations have passed through the largest Dodecanese island – ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine among them. All left their mark, b

1 Great Roman writer, statesman and orator (106-43 BC) (6) 4 Strait in the English Channel where the Mary Rose sank in 1545 (8) 10 Queen of Jerusalem who ruled (alongside her husband and, later, her son, often amid tension and opposition) in the 12th

October issue on sale 1 September 2022 A decade after Richard Ill’s remains were discovered in Leicester, Mike Pitts reflects on an astonishing archaeological discovery Toby Wilkinson charts the 19th-century race to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs Anna

Here’s a selection of the exciting content that’s coming up on our website historyextra.com The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 has been so manipulated and mythologised that it’s time we spoke of a “Sarajevo myth”, argues historian