Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 i History Extra

“It must be one of the most precipitous downfalls in English history. In April 1540 Thomas Cromwell seemed to be at the pinnacle of his career – adding a new noble title to his already burgeoning power base. But just three months later he found himself on the scaffold at Tower Hill, preparing to be executed for treason. What had gone wrong for Henry VIII's right-hand man? In our cover feature this month, Cromwell's biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch offers his answer to this Tudor conundrum. You'll find that on page 32, and it should be a helpful primer for the BBC drama Wolf Hall, which is set to return to our screens later this month. Also arriving on our screens in the next few weeks is the sequel to Ridley Scott's…

“Half the population live in a land where hopes cannot exist” “IF WE CAN'T SPEAK, WHY EVEN LIVE? WE'RE like dead bodies moving around.” These heartbreaking words were spoken by Shabana (not her real name) in a BBC report produced in September. She was responding to a new law from the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry – the Taliban's morality police in Afghanistan – decreeing that, when a woman is outside her home, her voice must not be heard. Even when she is in the home, nobody outside should be able to hear her speak. Other edicts included the command that women should stay at home unless the need to go out was “urgent” – and that, if they do go out, they must be completely covered…

Cover story / The fall of Thomas Cromwell As downfalls go, it was spectacular – and brutally swift. On 10 June 1540, Thomas Cromwell – Henry VIII's immensely gifted chief minister and among the most powerful men in England – arrived at court for what should have been a routine meeting of the Privy Council. As this son of Putney was soon to discover, the meeting was anything but routine. On entering the council, Cromwell, dressed in his formal splendid attire as Knight of the Garter, was arrested and humiliated by his old enemy the Duke of Norfolk. The duke ripped the collar of St George from Cromwell's neck, while the Earl of Southampton, not to be outdone in malice, untied the garter from his knee. Cromwell was then bundled…

John Milton's epic work John Milton was an early riser. He woke each morning with poetry in his head, itching for it to be recorded. The verses came to him during the night, he said – a special delivery from his very own lyrical muse. By 1652, he had completely lost his sight, so the disgruntled Milton had to wait patiently for a scribe to arrive. In the popular imagination, one of them was his daughter, Deborah, who has been depicted putting pen to paper as her father dictates his intricate poetry. Milton's biographer wrote that on some days, when it took longer than usual for someone to begin transcribing, the poet “would complain, saying he wanted to be milked”. That was in the mid-1660s, when Milton – in an…

What was the dance marathon craze of the Great Depression? Contests in which couples danced for extended periods – in some cases, many weeks on end – became a feature of Depression-era America. Participants competed for prize money, or simply for the free food and shelter such competitions provided to often poor and hungry participants. Rules varied but, generally, contestants had to keep their feet moving, with regular short breaks permitted. In one Chicago dance marathon in 1930, nine couples were still moving 145 days after the contest started. Some competitors, such as June Havoc – later a Broadway star – became ‘professional' marathon dancers, able to fall asleep instantly in the pauses. The 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, starring Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin, is reckoned to…

On 19 March 1279, the Song dynasty came to an end in the waters off Yashan, 12 miles south of Macau. Its empire in southern China was already lost, but on that day the fleet bearing its last emperor, accompanied by his most determined supporters, rallied for a final stand. The result was a violent clash marked by fire, explosions and mass suicides; the seven-year old emperor died during the battle, as did his pet parrot. In later years, loyalists nurtured the dream of restoring Song China, yet that day never came. The victor in this conflict was Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, whose overthrow of Song China replicated a painful scene familiar to so many empires across Eurasia: downfall in the face of Mongol invasion. At its height,…

Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, £25 It was not surprising that David McWilliams, a leading Irish economist who has made the subject accessible to so many via his podcast and festivals, would write an economics book that is much more than a standard text. Instead, this is a vast history of money and how it has affected our lives. The story begins with the Ishango bone, dating from 18,000 BC, which might have been a kind of early commercial ledger. It then proceeds past Babylon and the adoption of coins and other physical forms of money, before concluding in the modern era. There's also a fascinating chapter about the psychology of money. To describe this as a history of commercial ledgers, coins…

SOCIAL HISTORY Reading the tea leaves The story of tea is a global saga encompassing trade, consumerism and exploitation. In our latest Everything You Wanted to Know episode, Jane Pettigrew answers questions on the contentious history of the now ubiquitous beverage. VIKING Secrets of the Norse The Vikings were much more than just bloodthirsty bands of raiders. Using precious fragments of original source material, Eleanor Barraclough delves into the stories of Viking men, women and children, revealing a lesser-known side of Norse life. VICTORIAN Unsuspected sleuths Apprehending thieves, spying on adulterous husbands, and exposing child abuse – the exploits of female detectives in the Victorian era were dramatic and often dangerous. Sara Lodge reveals the role these sleuths played in fighting crime. MEDIEVAL Bad King John Does King John really…

BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE For the love of God Diarmaid MacCulloch explores the complex history of Christian celibacy, from the ancient world to today Christmas issue on sale 21 November 2024 The greatest Briton? On Churchill's 150th birthday, David Reynolds reflects on how we should view the war leader today Pooches past Chris Pearson picks out five surprising facts about humanity's relationship with dogs over the millennia A medieval murder mystery Gordon McKelvie delves into the still unexplained killing of Scottish king James III Reasons to be cheerful Katie Barclay draws on centuries of history to reveal the secrets to happiness Books of the Year A group of Britain's best-known historians highlight their favourite reads of the past 12 months…

Hetta celebrates the lives of four pioneering medieval women on page 63 Chris considers how the past can help us confront today's environmental challenges on page 11 Annie charts the evolution of Britain's high streets on page 70 Islam explores the extraordinary life of the iconic poet and polemicist on page 41…

Cromwell's death did not immediately end the killing. Two days later a notorious event embodied Henry VIII's idiosyncratic notion of ‘middle way'. Six priests were executed: three evangelicals burned for heresy, and three papalist Catholics hanged, drawn and quartered for treason. The evangelical clerics Robert Barnes, Thomas Garrad and William Jerome were clearly identified with Cromwell, and their clashes with the conservative bishop Stephen Gardiner had sparked much political turmoil in Cromwell's last months. What is extraordinary is how little Cromwell's friends suffered after that. From the moment that Henry was satisfied in his urgent quest not to be married to Anne of Cleves – through the legal pronouncement that the marriage was null because of non-consummation – his rage against Cromwell began cooling. In fact, by winter 1541 he…

GETTY IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN/ALAMY/SNAKE PATH, 1992/ALEXIS SMITH/STUART COLLECTION/UC SAN DIEGO/PHOTO BY: PHILIPP SCHOLZ RITTERMANN PAINTING & POETRY The devil's party Poet and painter William Blake quipped that Milton was “of the Devil's party without knowing it”. The protagonist of Blake's illustrated Milton: A Poem is that author, whose soul is re-embodied from Heaven. Describing blindness, the narrator of Paradise Lost mentions that a “cloud” of “ever-during dark Surrounds me”; in the first picture of his illustrated epic, Blake drew a naked Milton surrounded by darkness and clouds. In the 1800s, Blake also created a series of striking watercolour plates illustrating Paradise Lost (including the image above, of Satan). SCULPTURE O how fallen! Milton's Satan is a complicated character who has altered perceptions over the centuries, as seen in some fascinating sculptures. Jacob…

Accompanies the new BBC Radio 4 series The Lucan Obsession Just before 9pm on Thursday 7 November 1974, the rarefied calm of Belgravia, that oasis of white stucco in the heart of London, was defiled by violence. Behind the stately façade of 46 Lower Belgrave Street, family home of the 7th Earl of Lucan, 29-year-old nanny Sandra Rivett descended from the top of the six-storey house into the basement to make tea. In the darkness, an assailant was waiting. Sandra was bludgeoned to death with a length of piping, bundled into a sack and left on the bloodied kitchen floor. Shortly afterwards, near the top of the basement stairs, another woman – 37-year-old Veronica Lucan, the earl's estranged wife – was similarly battered. She fought off her attacker and, just…

CRIME “Female detectives often worked to the detriment of other women” Rebecca Rideal is enthralled by a fresh look at the roles played by women in 19th-century crime detection → page 78 ECONOMICS “At the book's heart are characters, often colourful, who used and created the various forms of money to support commerce, trade and livelihoods” Linda Yueh recommends a book exploring the history of money and how it has affected our lives → page 79 WWII “Allied bombing caused more damage and more casualties in Naples than did the Germans” Peter Caddick-Adams on a powerful account of the south Italian city in wartime → page 76 ASIA “Kublai Khan's life is a remarkable and sobering tale of turmoil, change and upheaval” Nicholas Morton lauds a new look at the…

Cromwell's Britain The period between Charles I's execution in 1649 and the Restoration of the monarchy 11 years later was dominated by one man: Oliver Cromwell. In a 2023 instalment of our Everything You Wanted to Know series, historian Ronald Hutton answers listener questions and popular search queries on the man and his period of rule. historyextra.com/cromwell-life-pod Chaotic times The brief experiment with republicanism was both a cause and effect of one of the most turbulent centuries in British history. In a podcast episode from 2023, Dr Jonathan Healey discusses the events of the 17th century, an era radicalised by civil war, a coup d'état, regicide and witch hunts – a revolutionary century that forged modern Britain. historyextra.com/people-power-pod Return of the king Little over a decade after beheading one king,…

Richard Cobb, who died in 1996, is the rock against whom all sweeping interpretations of the French Revolution must beat. Relentlessly sceptical of the schemas of the great Marxist historians, his meticulous research into the surviving records of common life, cast onto the page with a novelist's eye for telling detail, also defies the scorn heaped on the “swinish multitude” by those on the right. The Police and the People sets out a series of arguments about the nature of popular engagement with revolutionary politics that still challenge the reader today. His opening chapters depict the relentless surveillance that authorities sought to impose on the common people, and the concomitant development of a police mentality driven almost entirely by stereotypes. He also reminds us that virtually everything history can know…

The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects by Carol Cooper Aurum, 304 pages, £18.99 Is it possible to recount the history of medicine through just a handful of objects? That's the ambitious task Dr Carol Cooper sets herself in her vividly written new book. The items she surveys range from sophisticated medical machines (X-ray, ECT and heart-lung machines, the microscope) to specialised medical and surgical tools (the stethoscope, obstetric forceps, the bone saw) and material artefacts that are applied to or incorporated in the body (the mask, the prosthetic hip). A helpful timeline enables the reader to navigate the book's extensive chronology, stretching from 10,000 BC to the 1990s, though the most detailed discussion relates to medical technologies and techniques from the 17th century onwards. Cooper is skilled at explaining…

Hot topics It seems extraordinary now but, until smoking in enclosed public places was banned in Scotland in 2006 and the rest of the UK in 2007, going to the bar in Britain's pubs often involved walking through an acrid, carcinogenic smog. Why did this situation endure for so long? In Archive on 4: Up in Smoke (BBC Radio 4, Saturday 2 November), Alan Hall traces the social-cultural history of cigarette smoking, touching on key moments including James Albert Bonsack's 1880 invention of a cigaretterolling machine and the King's Cross fire of 1987 – likely caused by a smoker's dropped match – that killed 31 people. Archive on 4: Upon the Education of the People (BBC Radio 4, Saturday 30 November) focuses on the 1944 Education Act that split secondary…

IN PROFILE Robert Peel was Conservative prime minister from 1834–35 and 1841–46, and was simultaneously chancellor of the Exchequer during his first premiership. He was also twice home secretary (1822–27 and 1828–30). He is best known for founding the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829 and repealing the Corn Laws in 1846. He died after being thrown from his horse, aged 62. “I admire his drive and capacity for hard work – he and Gladstone were the towering political figures of 19th-century England” When did you first hear about Peel? I first came across him at school during a history lesson, when we were studying 19th and early 20th‑century parliamentary reform. I remember being fascinated by him and the positions he took on some of the big issues of the day.…

“Ladybird books have reflected the history of our times for over a century” WHEN I WAS A CHILD, ONE OF MY FAVOURITE books was a Ladybird: What to Look for in Winter, first published in 1959. With its companions, Spring, Summer and Autumn, it constitutes a beautiful portrait of the natural world of Britain through the seasons, with pictures by one of the great 20th-century nature illustrators, CF Tunnicliffe. Conceived a decade after the Second World War – and, therefore, already perhaps unknowingly tinged with nostalgia – it remains a delight. Turning its pages now, 65 years on, seems all the more poignant as climate change alters our world forever. I was reminded of this in the summer by a lovely exhibition of Ladybird books and artworks in St Albans.…

The village of East Quantoxhead lies not far from the sea in north Somerset. Its medieval church still stands, a charming stone building with sandstone dressing and a slate roof, set back from the road, bordered by a low wall and surrounded by green fields. This sleepy little spot, a picture-perfect chocolatebox scene, was the birthplace of one of the most entrepreneurial and resolute artists in British history. What made Sarah Biffin unique was not just her talent but the fact that she had to overcome such significant physical disadvantages. The record of her baptism at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in East Quantoxhead on 31 October 1784, when she was six days old, states that the “Daughter of Henry and Sarah Biffin” had been “born without arms…

In 1992, the high court made this declaration: “Be it known that the Right Honourable Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, died on or since the eighth day of November 1974.” That, effectively, was an acceptance of the evidence of Susan Maxwell-Scott, who said that Lucan drove away from her house in Uckfield in the early hours of 8 November. Of course, that statement is unprovable. The car that Lucan was driving was seen, parked in Newhaven, in the early morning of that November day – but there was no way to prove who had driven it there. So it is possible that Lucan was at that moment being flown out of the country – and even that he is, at the age of nearly 90, still alive today.…

Ellie Cawthorne: What can looking at a high street in any given era tell us about that period? Annie Gray: So much. If you walk down any high street, you'll see the things that people want and need on an everyday basis. So if you were strolling down a high street in, say, 1903, you'd have saddlers and leather workers, and specialist shops selling pork and different meats. You'd see a lot of shops selling cloth, because ready-to-wear clothing wasn't around then. And you'd encounter lots of items that we simply don't have a role for in our lives today – tiny little bits of ironmongery and things like that. Alongside the quotidian stuff, high streets have always been relatively prestigious areas for leisure shopping, featuring the likes of jewellers,…

Having been impressed with the research behind Keith Lowe's Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943 (2007), I was happy to reconnect with his deft scholarship in this latest work. Here again he leads us away from front-line military history to explore the effects of war on the civilian inhabitants of a large city. The title echoes Naples '44 (1978) by army intelligence officer Norman Lewis. Another shadow is Curzio Malaparte's autobiographical novel of 1949, The Skin (La Pelle). Some of Spike Milligan's war memoirs are set here and, having been stationed in the vicinity, Joseph Heller's 1961 anti-war novel Catch-22 was also influenced by Naples. This incisive tome is really three studies rolled into one. The first part provides a tour of a wartime Naples crippled by the apocalyptic four…

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge Yale University Press, 384 pages, £20 On 15 August 1896, the weekly Illustrated Police News ran a sensational headline story about a man and woman who'd been caught by a “Female Detective” in the act of committing adultery. The accompanying illustration showed the pair in a hotel room, dressed only in their nightwear, as a smartly dressed woman pointed at them in an accusatory manner through an open door. The article reported that the couple, who had booked into the hotel as “Mr and Mrs Griffiths”, were in fact Welsh chemist Tudor Williams and Lina Hughes, a married pub manager. The story caused a scandal, and a costly divorce followed. The detective who made the discovery was a retired…

Across 7 See 27 down 9 Hedy ____, Hollywood star who coinvented technology that became the precursor to Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth (6) 11 Hitler's chief architect and war production minister (5) 12 Medieval dungeon accessible only through a hatch in its high ceiling (9) 13 Bloody ____, notorious 1685 trials after the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth (7) 15 Danish archbishop, close adviser to Valdemar I and founder of what became Copenhagen (7) 16 Henry VIII's sister, who ruled Scotland on behalf of her infant son James V (8,5) 22 Icelandic parliament, one of the world's oldest (7) 24 Adriatic port the Romans called Tergeste (7) 26 One of central Asia's oldest cities, occupying a strategic location on the Silk Road (9) 27 French city whose Roman and…