Innholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2022 i History Extra

I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that this year is the BBC’s centenary. The corporation has celebrated this milestone with a raft of programmes and web content, and here in the magazine David Hendy has spent 2022 exploring different aspects of the BBC’s rich history. He’s now come to the conclusion of the series and, on page 68, he considers how the BBC has embraced the digital age and rounds off by selecting six programmes that sum up its history - do let us know whether you agree with his suggestions. For our cover feature this month, we’re heading to the mid-16th-century, when tensions were erupting in the West Country. The “Prayer Book Rebellion”, as the revolt is often called, has sometimes been dismissed as a relatively minor affair,…

LETTER OF THE MONTH A regal relative In November’s Letters, Jenny Martin requested a feature on Queen Margaret of Scotland (c1045–93). However, the Saxon Princess Margaret of Wessex – as she was also known – is not all she seems. Rightly revered as a saint, her legacy was, though, not at first appreciated in Scotland. On her death - days after that of her husband, Malcolm III - the perceived Anglicisation of the Scottish court and church was immediately overturned, and the royal children were forced into exile in England. Margaret’s marriage to Malcolm III was a political move to advance the cause of her brother, Edgar Ætheling. Both Edgar - the Saxon claimant to the English throne usurped by William the Conqueror - and Margaret were direct descendants of…

An intriguing point about the Western Rising is that it appears to have been partially fuelled by a desire to protect the distinctive Cornish culture. At the start of the 16th century, Cornish - a Brythonic language closely related to Welsh - was still widely spoken in western Cornwall. But the onset of the Reformation accelerated its retreat, and the reformers' determination to ensure that English, rather than Latin, became the chief language of religious instruction meant that the Cornish found themselves increasingly obliged to learn it. In 1548, Edward VI's government directed that a new "order of communion" in English should be incorporated within the traditional Latin mass. The fact that a popular insurrection broke out in west Cornwall within days of the new order of communion being introduced seems…

Will Little Larry live? In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim (shown below, in an engraving) was nearly Puny Pete. Dickens had a habit of playing around with his characters' names: for Martin Chuzzlewit, written about the same time as the tale of the miser Scrooge, the hero's surname could have been Chuzzletoe. For Bob Cratchit's disabled son, Dickens considered not only Puny Pete but other alliterative names such as Little Larry and Small Sam before settling, wisely, on Tiny Tim. Jingle bowls The first advertising jingle heard on radio was aired on Christmas Eve 1926 in Minneapolis. It was for the breakfast cereal Wheaties, and was sung by a barbershop quartet. "Have you tried Wheaties?" the foursome sang. "They're whole wheat with all of the bran. Won't you…

The BBC featured entertainment from the start, but it was the launch of In Town Tonight in 1933 that truly announced the arrival of a new, confident age of popular variety at the corporation. The show's mix of guest interviews and live stunts, all delivered in a slick, chatty style, provided the template for our now-familiar fun-packed Saturday night TV schedule. There had already been plenty of programmes for women, but Woman's Hour, which began in 1946, offered more than the traditional mix of fashion and housekeeping. It covered social issues, politics, the menopause and more. The aim, its producers said, was to take listeners beyond the four walls of the home. It refused to see domestic topics and public affairs as mutually exclusive, and it paved the way for…

PODCAST Victorian visions of a renewable future EXPLORE Mithraeum, London TRAVEL Strasbourg, France WATCH Trust issues Nicholas Elliott (1916-94) and Kim Philby (1912-88) both worked for the British intelligence services. They were also the closest of friends over many years. And yet, considering that Philby - one of the most infamous double agents of the 20th century and part of the notorious Cambridge spy ring - betrayed his country before fleeing to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War in 1963, how well did Elliott really know him? Based on Ben Macintyre's book A Spy Among Friends: Philby and the Great Betrayal, a new six-part espionage series dramatises the interlinked lives of the two men. In doing so, it not only touches on themes of trust, loyalty…

Every issue we highlight a recent edition of our podcast. You can find it along with more than 1,500 previous episodes at our website: historyextra.com/podcast When the Victorians pictured the year 2000, what did they see? “They imagined the 20th century as an almost entirely electrical century. People would be travelling in electric cars or zooming about in new-fangled flying machines. You would pick up a phone to order your supper, and it would be electronically delivered to you”. Sound familiar? Iwan Rhys Morus joined me on our podcast this month to speak about the Victorians’ visions of the future, and the staggeringly ambitious inventions they hoped would get them there. This was a time when innovation moved at a dizzying pace, each development opening up new vistas of possibility.…

Across: 1 Relic 4 Navarino 10 Frost fair 11 Indus 12 Liddell 13/30 Pelican Portrait 14 Swazi 16 Via Appia 18 Hereward 21 Omaha 24 Erasmus 26 Glencoe 28 Sudan 29 Gaugamela 31 Petard Down: 1 Raffles 2 Lloyd 3 Catherine 5 Agrippa 6 Ariel 7 Indochina 8 Orsini 9 Bar Lev 15 Alexander 17 Promenade 19 Assegai 20 Dugout 22 Abelard 23 Jessop 25 Minor 27 Cheka Five winners of Kings and Queens C Greenwood, Lancashire; P Simkins, Staffordshire; C Woodhall, Surrey; B Cooper, Hertfordshire; N Porter, Oxfordshire…

MY HISTORY HERO BBC foreign correspondent Jeremy Bowen chooses IN PROFILE Vincent Sheean was an American journalist, foreign correspondent and author. He reported from Palestine in the 1920s and also covered the Spanish Civil War and the Blitz. His 1935 memoir, Personal History, helped inspire Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 Hollywood drama, Foreign Correspondent. "Foreign correspondents had to take boats to get around, and once you’d reached somewhere you’d often be there for months" When did you first hear about Sheean? Several years ago, when I came across his memoir in a second-hand bookshop. It’s a rather dated work in some respects but it’s still an interesting period piece, and lifts the lid on what was quite a heroic period in terms of foreign correspondents reporting from the world’s trouble spots. What kind of…

Ryan Gingeras "An understanding of late Ottoman history gives us a critical window into the development of modern states and society throughout the wider Middle East and eastern Europe." Ryan considers the factors that caused the Ottoman empire to crumble in 1922 on page 36 Sumita Mukherjee “The intersections of race and class, and the legacies of post-colonial migration, cannot be underestimated in understanding Rishi Sunak’s rise to power” Sumita shines a light on the forces and figures that paved the way for Rishi Sunak to become prime minister on page 9 Mark Stoyle “My new book argues that the so-called ‘Prayer Book Rebellion’ of 1549 posed a more serious threat to the regime of King Edward VI than has previously been recognised.” Mark reveals how the bloody West Country…

"In just a few months they had started a new life in a new country" FIFTY YEARS AGO, IN THE SUMMER OF 1972, ON the orders of Ugandan president Idi Amin, south Asians living in the country were given three months to leave. In an address on 5 August, Amin said, “I am going to ask Britain to take over responsibility for all Asians in Uganda who are holding British passports, because they are sabotaging the economy of the country.” British headlines warned of an influx of tens of thousands from Uganda. There were those, including Conservative MP Enoch Powell, who argued against taking them in. The UK did look into settling some in other countries, including the Solomon Islands or the Falklands. But after much debate in parliament, Conservative…

Cover story / Prayer Book Rebellion On Whit Monday 1549, William Underhill and William Seagar two respectable inhabitants of the little Devon village of Sampford Courtenay - got into an argument with their vicar at the parish church. They told him that they disliked the new Book of Common Prayer in English, which had recently been introduced by an act of parliament and which he had read in church the day before. They urged him to revert to the traditional service in Latin instead and, after some debate, he acceded to their request. Within hours, the church had become the centre of a popular demonstration against the Protestantising religious policies of Edward VI, which sought to remove all vestiges of the traditional Catholic faith. Within days, that protest had spread…

July 1908 Following decades of autocratic rule by Sultan Abdülhamid II, the Young Turk Revolution erupts. It leads to the restoration of the Ottoman constitution and the reopening of the imperial parliament. October 1912-May 1913 The states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece attack the Ottoman empire, leading to the First Balkan War. The conflict results in the loss of most of the empire's remaining Balkan territory. August 1914 The Ottoman empire agrees to a defence pact with Germany, resulting in its entrance into the First World War. February 1915 -January 1916 The Gallipoli campaign. After months of bloody trench warfare, Ottoman troops force Allied soldiers to withdraw from the Aegean coast. April 1915 The deportation and massacres of Ottoman Armenians begins. December 1917 British troops seize Jerusalem from Ottoman…

Cleopatra VII was the Egyptian queen who Romans loved to hate. By the end of 30 BC, her reputation plumbed the depths. She was, after all, the “fatal monster” who had seduced Mark Antony and lured him into an alliance that had ended in defeat to Rome’s emperor-in-waiting, Octavian. The whole squalid episode had reached a climax earlier that year when, with Octavian’s forces closing in on the Egyptian capital of Alexandria, the couple had taken their own lives. But there’s another side to this story. For at the same time as Cleopatra’s name was being dragged through the mud, enthusiasm for Egypt – which Octavian had seized for the Roman empire – was at an all-time high in Rome. There was an explosion of Egypt-inspired decoration, from ornate frescoes…

Trailblazers sees Ruby Wax, Melanie Brown and Emily Atack travelling in the footsteps of Isabella Bird. What was your involvement in the series? I was interviewed as an expert. Isabella is a legend in Estes Park, Colorado, where she’s considered to be the mother of the Rocky Mountain National Park. She wrote so glowingly of the place that it brought millions of tourists to the area. I first went there because of her book, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. It was because of Isabella that I became a travel writer. And my 2021 novel, Embrace of the Wild, was inspired by her life. What was Isabella like? She was an adventure junkie. She found adrenaline and became alive in her body when she was in the wild. She…

Mystery & movies In September 1890, inventor Louis Le Prince hopped on a train to Paris and promptly vanished without a trace. What happened to him? And could his promising innovations in early motion-picture cameras have gone on to rival those of Thomas Edison? Paul Fischer joined me to unravel the mystery – from theories that Le Prince was the victim of a freak accident or mugging, to conspiracies that Edison might have bumped off his competitor. historyextra.com/vanishing-inventor Clean-up operation A hospital slab in the early 19th century is not a place you would want to end up. The unsanitary conditions of the time are perhaps best summed up by the fact surgeons referred to the smell of rotting flesh as the “good old hospital stink”. But, as Lindsey Fitzharris…

Nativity scenes 1. Which nativity character has been portrayed in film by Cab Calloway, Christopher Walken and Tilda Swinton? 2. In memory of whom do Sicilians carry dried fava beans, to commemorate how he saved the island from famine in the medieval period? 3. What punishment did Pope Julius II order for the hoaxers who tricked a fellow Swiss monk into believing he’d seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary? 4. Who had a first wife called Doris and died of a painful putrefying disease in Jericho? 5. How many Magi visited the newborn Jesus, according to the New Testament? 6. Which group of worshippers came quickly to Bethlehem because, as the Venerable Bede said, “the presence of Christ must not be sought with sluggishness”? 7. In West Country folklore,…

25 DECEMBER 1492 Columbus's flagship runs aground An unexpected storm causes chaos for the exhausted crew Christopher Columbus was wretched with exhaustion when, at about 11pm on 25 December 1492, he finally lay down to sleep. This journey had been his first across the Atlantic - he had set sail on the Santa Maria from Spain almost five months earlier, trying to chart a new western route to Asia. While he never reached Asia, he did discover an island in the Bahamas, which he dubbed San Salvador. But it was on the journey home that Columbus and his flagship ran into trouble. That night, the sky was "dead calm… the sea like a small bowl". As the water was so still, the sailor at the helm of the ship took…

Rare Roman mosaic unearthed in Syria An intact 1,600-year-old mosaic discovered in Syria has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds in the country since war broke out 11 years ago. "What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale," Hamman Saad of the General Directorate of Museums and Antiquities told the Associated Press. The large (around 120 square metres) mosaic in Rastan, near Homs, includes depictions of the Trojan War, the Roman sea god Neptune and 40 of his mistresses, plus - unusually - Amazon warriors. Skeletons found under former department store The remains of 240 people, almost half of them children, have been found by archaeologists digging on the site of the Ocky White department store in Haverfordwest,…

THE CONVERSATION "In the west we have been dazzled by the myth of history's golden boy" I WAS AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY THE OTHER DAY for the opening of a fascinating exhibition on the legend of Alexander the Great. Instead of spelling out the history of the fourth century BC, it makes use of manuscript paintings, books and images to examine the extraordinary myth that has grown up over more than two millennia. Along with the tales of King Arthur, the Alexander legends are one of the great story cycles of the western world. There are epics in Old French, Serbian, German, Polish and Russian, plus an Icelandic Alexander saga and an Ethiopian Alexander romance. He’s in the Talmud and (most think) in the Bible and the Koran. Meanwhile, in…

1547 Disquiet brews in Devon and Cornwall as proponents of the Reformation challenge religious conservatives. 21 January 1549 The Act of Uniformity establishes the new Book of Common Prayer as the only legal liturgy in England, replacing Latin missals. 10 June 1549 On Whit Monday, parishioners of Sampford Courtenay in mid-Devon decry the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer. Within days, the protests have spread across Devon and throughout Cornwall, with “captains” assembling an army of local men. c18 June 1549 Lord Russell, the former lord president of the Council of the West, is sent from London to quell the rising - initially with only a small band of troops. 2 July 1549 Protesters outside Exeter, bolstered by volunteer forces - thousands later arriving from Cornwall under the leadership…

1 Play dead, and always keep a rotting chicken handy Military leaders pulled off some outrageous stunts to outfox their enemies in the Middle Ages. But the one that the Norman leader Bohemond of Taranto deployed at the beginning of the 12th century - pretending he was dead - surely takes some beating. When crusading armies from western Europe conquered the city of Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey) in 1098, Bohemond decided to settle there and declared himself prince of Antioch. By September 1104, however, this new "crusader state" was in trouble. Not only was it surrounded by hostile Muslim city states, but it was threatened by Alexios Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor, who believed the city was rightfully his. Bohemond decided that he must return to his lands in Italy to…

This coin depicts Cleopatra Selene accompanied by the Greek legend "Kleopatra Basilissa" (Queen Cleopatra). The queen is wearing her hair in the "melon" hairstyle favoured by her mother 1. She is also sporting a diadem 2 (the headdress of Hellenistic monarchs), indicating her rank as a queen in her own right rather than by marriage. A crocodile 3, which was often used as the symbol of Egypt in this period, takes centre stage in this coin. The animal appeared on coins issued on Crete during Cleopatra Selene's brief reign over the island, so it is possible that she considered it something of a personal symbol. Through this coin, which depicts the accoutrements of the goddess Isis -her crown 4 and sistrum 5, a ceremonial rattle - Cleopatra Selene may be…

“A thousand initiatives bloomed in the mid-1990s as BBC staff began to explore the internet and create web pages of their own” The playwright David Hare wrote recently that, alongside the NHS and the welfare state, the BBC represents “the finest expression of mid-20th-century public idealism”. Yet, from our vantage point in the third decade of the 21st century, such praise can be a dangerous thing. It associates the BBC with past glories: the analogue era, “old media”, the world of radio and television. This raises a profound existential question for an organisation marking its 100th birthday. Having emerged in the first wireless age, can it survive in anything like its current form in the era of internet, mobile social media and highspending multinational streaming giants? Before reaching for the…

For centuries, volumes about the history of the transatlantic slave trade focused on European abolitionism. But this has changed in recent decades, with scholarship concentrating on American and Caribbean emancipation movements and key figures. In LourenÇo da Silva MendonÇa and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century, José Lingna Nafafé examines the trajectory of an abolitionist prince who spearheaded the legal battle and debates about emancipating Jewish people, indigenous Americans and black Christians in the 17th century. Nafafé’s outstanding volume underlines a long history of brutality that echoes Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence. Elkins’ sharp analysis explores how violence became a useful tool for the British empire. The book successfully examines how physical, cultural and even archival violence were practices that have been carefully curated and transmitted from…

Rome in the first century AD was an empire populated with many gods, and temples dedicated to Mithras provide some of the most fascinating cult sites from this period. This solar cult proved particularly popular with the Roman army, and temples (known as Mithraea) devoted to the deity sprang up where the soldiers were sent – we still have some great examples of these ancient structures on the frontiers of the empire, such as Britain. But, as a mystery cult, our knowledge of what really went on inside these spaces is limited. With Mithraism, the ancient equivalent of the “first rule of Fight Club” was in effect – the full details of the rites died with their participants. London’s Mithraeum is located in the Bloomberg SPACE building, just across the…

Nativity scenes 1. The Archangel Gabriel 2. St Joseph 3. Burning at the stake 4. Herod the Great 5. The number is never given (although they brought three gifts) 6. The Shepherds 7. Kneel, in celebration of the old (Julian) Christmas 8. The silver star marking the spot where Christwasborn-often given as one of the casus belli for the Crimean War Deep and crisp and even 9. Ice 10. Ice Hockey – on 3 March 1875 at the Victoria Skating rink in Montreal 11. Cholera – transmitted by people sharing poorly washed glass “penny licks” 12. The rubber ice-cube tray 13. a. By climbing out and chipping it off Present indicative 14. Stonehenge 15. His wife 16. The British people 17. Eeyore 18. No.5 19. It had barbed wire strings…