Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i History Extra

“It was Mercia's misfortune that the two dominant histories of the Anglo-Saxon era hailed from rival powers. In the northern kingdom of Northumbria, Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, while in the south, Alfred the Great's Wessex produced the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The upshot of this, argues Max Adams, is that Mercia hasn't had much of a look in. And this is unfortunate because, as he reveals in this month's cover feature, the central kingdom was the setting for great drama and left a profound influence on the future state of England. Head to page 22 to get the full story. One group of individuals who certainly haven't been overshadowed in the historical narrative are the emperors of Rome. Their ongoing fame (and notoriety) owes a great deal…

I'M SURE, LIKE ME, READERS HAVE BEEN BOTH gripped and saddened this last month by the pictures of India's Kumbh Mela, the biggest pilgrimage in the world. This year, events moved from elation to tragedy with the loss of life in a stampede on 29 January. With such gigantic crowds at religious gatherings in India, there is always a risk of disaster. Every 12 years, the mela takes place at Prayag (also know as Allahabad) at the junction of the sacred rivers Ganges and Jumna. In 2001, we took our daughters, then aged 10 and 8, staying in a tent with Tamil friends. Some 25 million bathed then on the most auspicious date, and 50 or 60 million over the whole six-week festival. This time it will be a staggering…

“Being married off to a Russian grand duke was far from glamorous — it could be absolutely terrfying” Danny Bird: What drew you to explore the life of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld? Helen Rappaport: She was a difficult subject because she's so lost to history. I discovered her story while researching the siblings of Queen Victoria's mother Victoria (or Victoire), Duchess of Kent. Victoire was a younger sister of Juliane, known as Julie, who was born in 1781. I found it fascinating that the obscure and impoverished German duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld produced so many children who made strategically significant marriages. Julie's better-known siblings were Leopold, King of the Belgians, whose first marriage was to Princess Charlotte of Wales; and Victoire, who married the Duke of Kent. In 1796, Julie made…

Controversial in life, Mary, Queen of Scots has divided posterity. Variously cast as a “popish whore”, husband-killer and traitress, or else as an innocent victim and glorious martyr to the Catholic faith, Mary continues to fascinate scholars, imaginative writers and the general public. In scholarship and popular biography alike, one assumption long reigned supreme: that, in all she did, Mary was guided by passion – in sharp contrast with her English cousin and nemesis, Elizabeth I, epitome of political wisdom and just rule. Since the 1990s, the myth of ‘Good Queen Bess' has been comprehensively dismantled, and the oft-astringent criticism, even defamation, of Elizabeth by her subjects – and not just Catholic ones – brought to light. Meanwhile, the Scottish queen has been recognised as a far more savvy, artful…

Through the ‘Turk plays' that culminated in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Ottoman headgear was already a familiar sight in the theatres of Elizabethan London. In 1607, the printed edition of the adventure play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers included the turbaned image of Sir Robert Shirley – one of the titular siblings – as its frontispiece. When that freelance diplomat subsequently paid van Dyck to paint his portrait, he sported his bulbous silk headgear with pride. These are just a few moments in the westward journey of the turban from Arabia and the Ottoman empire charted by Chris Filstrup and Jane Merrill in their new book. Focusing on the turban's story after it left the Middle East, they follow its meandering passage from medieval Europe to modern America. Among…

Power plays Said to have been widely displayed in hostels and boarding houses, it was a sign that summed up the racism of a number of Britons in the postwar period: “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.” But did the sign exist? And what does its place in our collective imagination tell us? Archive on Four: No Blacks, No Irish (BBC Radio 4, Saturday 1 March) teases out the complex relationship between the Irish and those from an Afro-Caribbean background. Presented by Peter Curran and Tony Phillips. Listen In (BBC Radio 3, Sunday 2 March) is linked to an exhibition at the Bodleian Library that explores the impact of the wireless (see our feature on page 55). Integral to the exhibition are interviews conducted by Winifred Gill and Hilda Jennings…

1. Bad medicine Some of the 19th-century uses for cocaine will astonish many of you when you read Douglas Small's piece. It was even deemed suitable to treat colds, headaches and sore throats (page 64). 2. A miraculous journey I was intrigued to read in our Q&A pages that the secrets of bird migration were revealed in 1822 when a stork arrived in Europe with an African spear through its neck (page 35). 3. The king who ‘stole' a crown Among many surprising details in Kate Williams' piece on royal scandals, I discovered that Edward VIII made off with a royal coronet after he abdicated in 1936 (page 51).…

I WAS INTERVIEWING AN ALMOST 98-YEAR-OLD man about his memories of the Second World War this week. In his living room in Hertfordshire, it still felt very present. There was a black-and-white picture of him in his navy uniform, and on his wall were the medals of his brother-in-law who saw action in the jungles of Malaya and Burma. He described a bomb falling through his childhood house in south-east London one night and had a clear memory of his mother running down the street in the early hours of the morning to collect sandbags to protect the family from further attacks. As he was talking, I felt extremely privileged. I was able to capture his story, which was incredibly detailed, in his own words. When you interview someone elderly…

Fifth century AD ‘Anglo-Saxons' arrive in Britain – Angles, Saxons and Jutes from northern Europe – as recorded by Bede (right), writing in 731. c626 The warlord Penda unites tribes of south-central Britain to rule the Myrcna rice (‘kingdom of the border people') or Mercia. He defeats King Edwin of Northumbria at Hatfield Chase in 633, and kills that ruler's successor, Oswald, at Maserfield (possibly Oswestry) in 642. 655 King Oswiu of Northumbria avenges his brother Oswald's death, killing Penda and his allies. Nonetheless, Penda's sons and grandsons rule Mercia, defeating their north-eastern rivals in 670, and taking control of London. 716 Penda's grandson King Ceolred dies, and his cousin Æthelbald returns from exile in East Anglia to claim the Mercian throne, endorsed by the influential hermit Guthlac. Ruling for…

1 Deadly deeds in the dead of night On the night of 31 May 1810, residents of St James's Palace were awoken to the spine-tingling shriek of “I am murdered!” The cry emanated from none other than the Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of George III – and what happened next would spark a national scandal. It's little wonder that the duke feared for this life: he had woken up to being hit over the head by a mysterious assailant. The duke set off across the palace to investigate and found his valet, Joseph Sellis, dead in his room, his throat cut. What on Earth had happened? An inquest declared Sellis had tried to kill the duke and then turned the blade on himself. But the public wasn't so sure.…

It may seem surprising, but Sherlock Holmes was one of the 19th century's most famous users of cocaine. The Sign of Four, the second of Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes novels, begins with the detective in his Baker Street rooms, injecting himself with a “7 per cent solution” of the drug. One evening paper observed, three years later in 1893, that “Many people derive their practical acquaintance with cocaine from the part it plays in the career of the renowned Sherlock Holmes.” Doyle had trained to be a doctor before turning to writing full-time, so was aware of cocaine's reputation as a wonder drug. For many Victorians, cocaine wasn't just a remarkable discovery; its almost unprecedented power to relieve pain seemed to symbolise the vast horizons of modern science and the…

“I do not agree with sex being brought into science at all,” declared the electrical engineer Hertha Ayrton in 1919. “The idea of ‘woman and science' is completely irrelevant. Either a woman is a good scientist, or she is not.” A fine sentiment – yet, more than a century later, relatively few women reach top positions in science. In this new book, husband-and-wife author team John and Mary Gribbin tell the stories of 12 exceptional female scientists who did succeed in overcoming the odds stacked against them. To date, 25 women have been awarded Nobel Prizes in science, yet only three of them feature in this collection. Marie Curie is absent, though there's a lively, accessible account of the research into radioactivity carried out by her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie. We…

This idiosyncratic personal journey through the realms of fantasy and the paranormal begins, curiously enough, at a dubious 1930s seance in Sydenham – where a naked ‘dead' child lurks in the shadows – and then proceeds to jump back and forth through time and space, fact and fiction. We encounter the infamous 1970s poltergeists of London's outer suburbs in Thornton Heath, Croydon and Enfield; travel to Dollis Hill for Clive Barker's sadomasochistic horror-fantasy film Hellraiser (1987); step back in time to the disturbing underclass/ underworld of homelessness glimpsed in Dickens's Night Walks (1860); and even revisit Jacobean witch trials. The result is eclectic and pleasantly disorientating. Devotees of the supernatural may already know some of the metropolitan causes celebres: the anonymous pranks of the monstrous ‘Spring-Heeled Jack' in Blackheath; the…

Across 1 Surname of a pioneering radio astronomer and also of an Apollo mission commander (6) 4 Two-handled container for wine etc, common in Greco-Roman times (7) 9 (One spelling of) the name of the leader of the resistance against Romans in Britain during Claudius's reign (9) 11 First name of the Israeli PM who resigned following the Yom Kippur War (5) 12 The body of legislation of Christian churches, ____ Law (5) 13 British historian (1876–1962) whose great uncle was Thomas Macaulay (9) 14 Molly ____, nickname of the legendary heroine of the battle of Monmouth during the American Revolutionary War (7) 16 Ancient stone burial chamber such as that at Poulnabrone, Ireland (6) 20 Mary ____, 19th-century pioneering fossil collector from Lyme Regis, Dorset (6) 21 Indian prime minister who succeeded Nehru and was himself succeeded by…

IN PROFILE Charles Dickens is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. He wrote a string of bestselling books and short stories including The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations, creating some of literature's best-known characters in the process. His books are still in print, and many have been adapted for stage and screen. He is buried at London's Westminster Abbey. “My whole existence is daydreaming, as was Dickens' –you have to imagine something before you can make it tangible” When did you first hear about Dickens? In my childhood. I went to the local library all the time while I was growing up, reading books by Dickens, Shakespeare and Enid Blyton – the ‘classics'. I particularly loved Dickens' use of words – it's…

Tom Holland “Suetonius shows us that the Roman understanding of what was shocking and scandalous about sexual behaviour is not the same as ours.” Tom reveals what the biographer can tell us about the proclivities of Rome's emperors on page 29 Beaty Rubens “While researching the listeners' experience, I was delighted to discover that cartoons, in their sheer number, sly humour and graphic skill, provide an instant counter-narrative to official histories.” Beaty reveals how the new technology of radio was received in 1920s Britain on page 55 Phil Tinline “People often compare Donald Trump with Ronald Reagan – yet Reagan's ‘Morning in America' pitch to voters seems impossibly warm and cheerful next to the polarisation of today.” Phil examines whether the 1980s really made America great again on page 38…

19TH CENTURY Elephant expedition In the late 1870s, King Leopold of Belgium commissioned an extraordinary expedition to introduce four Asian elephants to the African interior. Sophy Roberts examines the elephants' journey, and what it reveals about tensions in the Congo at the time. ANGLO-SAXON Crowning glory When Eadwig became king of England in AD 955, he celebrated in an unusual fashion. According to later sources, the monarch left his coronation feast for a sex romp with his wife… and her mother. But, as Katherine Weikert asks in this episode, can the story possibly be true? ANCIENT ROME Roman rogues' gallery How cruel was Caligula? How depraved was Tiberius? And how monstrous was Nero? Tom Holland reveals how the dark reputations of these emperors owe a great deal to the Roman writer Suetonius and…

Royal headache Some of the Windsors – the Hohenzollerns' British relatives – also courted the Nazis. Following his abdication as Edward VIII in 1936, the Duke of Windsor's links to Hitler's regime raised eyebrows as war with Germany loomed. Alexander Larman reveals how the duke's brother, George VI (pictured), battled to preserve the royal family's reputation. historyextra.com/george-vi-pod Innocent bystanders? In the aftermath of the Second World War, many Germans stuck to the claim that they had been entirely unaware of what had happened to their Jewish neighbours. In a 2023 episode, Mary Fulbrook explodes the myth of the ‘innocent bystander' and reveals how public conformity and complicity were crucial in enabling the Nazis to commit their terrible crimes. historyextra.com/bystander-pod Popular resistance While the Nazis held power, many Germans who never…

Before The Subversive Stitch was published, embroidery was rarely the subject of historical study. Still loyal to a Victorian idea of embroidery as feminine, domestic and frivolous, historians dismissed needlework. Yet embroidery had been central to religious and political life in medieval Europe. Our knowledge of the events of 1066, for instance, primarily comes from the Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidery around 70 metres long. The needle was just as important as the pen. As ideas of ideal femininity and a woman's role in society evolved through early modern and Victorian Europe, they became interlinked with needlework. Women who stitched were seen as quiet, controlled and obedient. Yet embroidery, as Rozsika Parker shows, was more subversive than submissive. Women have embroidered to resist and rebel, and to have a voice where…

Looming above Bath's Georgian grandeur soars a slender structure topped by a gilded cupola. Though it glimmers like a candle on the skyline, the compelling story of this 47-metre-tall neoclassical monument has a dark heart. Lansdown Tower, as it was called when built in 1826–27, was the brainchild of William Beckford. Born in 1760, scion of a family grown enormously rich from Jamaican sugar plantations, he was dubbed “England's wealthiest son” by Lord Byron. Like many privileged youths, he undertook a Grand Tour in Europe, collecting art, literature and learning; at just 21, he wrote the Gothic novel Vathek. But in 1784, Beckford was forced into exile after his abusive relationship with a young male acquaintance, William Courtenay, was exposed. Back in Britain in 1796, he funded construction of a…

The shot heard round the world George Goodwin describes the propaganda battle that accompanied the start of the American Revolutionary War Surprising pirates Sophie Nibbs reveals some unusual facts about these seafaring criminals The quest for Richard III Turi King explains her role in identifying the remains of the last Yorkist king A tyrannical monarch? Jonathan Healey takes a fresh look at Charles I on the 400th anniversary of the start of his reign April issue on sale 20 March 2025 Josephine Baker's century Anna Maria Barry shows how the trailblazing entertainer was involved in many seismic historical events No escape for Dr Crippen Hallie Rubenhold revisits one of the Edwardian era's most sensational murders – and the hunt for the killer…