Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i History Extra

“Place names are signposts to the past. And how revealing they are” I WAS RECENTLY BACK IN DEVON. LONG AGO, ON childhood holidays from the industrial north, this seemed to me the ‘real’ England. Still today, a rusting cast-iron signpost peeping through the foliage in a sunken lane gives me an inexplicable thrill. It's the idea that the deep past might still be touched, just around the corner. Place names are signposts to the past. Chulmleigh, Woolfardisworthy, Nymet Rowland… what names! And how revealing they are. Take Ipplepen, a village with Roman and Iron Age roots in the hills near Torquay. A recent dig here turned up a small post-Roman cemetery, in use till the eighth century, and a Roman butchers shop, with coins and broken amphorae that once held…

The dashing favourite When Elizabeth took the throne there was some support for the queen to marry an Englishman. But while most looked to the peers of the realm, it was Robert Dudley who had caught both her eye and her heart. Indeed, she once commented that “she thought she could find no person with better qualities”. Dudley was made Master of the Horse shortly after Elizabeth's accession to the throne, a position that allowed him frequent access to his queen. After Dudley's wife, Amy, died in September 1560 it appeared that Elizabeth might marry her dashing favourite. However, the suspicious circumstances of Amy's death made the marriage impossible. While their chance was lost, the two would remain close friends until Leicester's death in 1588. The controversial Catholic After closing…

In the 1870s, John Ruskin began to suffer from a depression that became an enveloping darkness. He had established himself as the leading British art critic with his writings on Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice. Then, in 1877, he encountered a work – James Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket – that, with its blackness and chaotic forms, embodied his worst fears. His review of Whistler's paintings shown at the Grosvenor Gallery was short but brutal. Ruskin singled out the Nocturne, a picture of fireworks above a London pleasure garden, for particular criticism. He wrote that he never expected “to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face”, and suggested that Whistler was a trickster trying to…

This provocative book challenges established interpretations, conceptualisations and evaluations surrounding the birth of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. It is also hugely enjoyable, full of vignettes illustrating the messiness of the allegiances and loyalties – religious, linguistic, social – that shaped the Greek Revolution. That uprising began in 1821 as an armed struggle of a small group of revolutionaries in the Peloponnese against the Ottoman empire. Kotsonis shows that many of these revolutionaries were bandits and mercenaries who owed allegiance to the highest bidder. Through the activities of the European-educated Greek diaspora – integrated in the markets and courts of Europe, and implicated in international secret societies, conspiracies and mass mobilisations – these bandits and mercenaries would align themselves with the idea of the Orthodox Greek nation and its…

The Who's 1973 rock opera Quadrophenia could have been written with a film adaptation in mind. This duly arrived in 1979, with Phil Daniels playing scooterriding Jimmy in a movie that's become a cult classic. This summer, Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet, featuring orchestral music scored by Pete Townshend's wife, Rachel Fuller, has its official debut at Sadler's Wells. But why does Quadrophenia have such resonance? Rock critic Alexis Petridis investigates in Archive on Four: We Were the Mods (BBC Radio 4, Saturday 21 June). Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf continues to exert a malign influence, but should access to the book be restricted? Or would we be wise to study the text, better to understand the power of conspiracy theories and the resurgence of the far right? These are questions that…

A long with its ponies, perhaps the most iconic features on Dartmoor are its tors – eye-catching granite outcrops whose fantastical shapes have inspired evocative names such as Vixen, Bowerman's Nose, Branscombe's Loaf and Honeybag. Arguably the most famous, though, is Haytor, on the eastern fringes of Dartmoor National Park. Its vast twin rumps can be seen piercing the skyline from miles around. Scramble to the top and you can drink in views stretching west across central Dartmoor and east as far as the Teign Estuary. It's a treat for day-trippers, photographers and rock climbers alike. Haytor was even used as a location for the 1953 film Knights of the Round Table, for which a castle was built between its two granite peaks. Haytor once formed a single lump of…

Across 6 Bull 7 Nefertiti 9 Brezhnev 11 Talent 12 Jenner 14 Richmond 16 St Alban 18 Donitz 21 Intifada 23 The Raj 25 Ninja 26 Stannary 28 Whitehall 29 Blum Down 1 Ebor 2 Blazon 3 Reivers 4 Celtic 5 Ptolemy I 8 Ton 10 Nerva 13 Eaton 15 Nazca 17 Leibnitz 19 Ostia 20 Vassall 22 Apache 24 Ennals 25 Noh 27 Rump Four winners of Mythica: R Smith, Middlesbrough; Richard Perry, London; Didier Clairet, Leeds; Philip Carroll, Reigate CROSSWORD COMPETITION TERMS & CONDITIONS ● The crossword competition is open to all residents of the UK (& Channel Islands), aged 18 or over, except Immediate Media Company London Limited employees or contractors, and anyone connected with the competition or their direct family members. By entering, participants agree to…

1. Gnome insurance I know that many gardeners treasure their gnomes, but I was surprised to discover that Britain's oldest individual, Lampy, was insured for a cool £1m in 1997 (Q&A, page 36). 2. Death on the farm Our feature on Tudor accidental deaths reveals the hazards in so many areas of daily life. One shocking example is that 24 people were killed in the act of sheep shearing in the month of June (page 51). 3. Military age gap In Victoria Taylor's piece on the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, I was interested to learn that German airmen were on average six years older than their British counterparts during that fateful summer (page 22).…

“You can book a one-on-one encounter with an Egyptian shoe” MUSEUMS ARE MAGICAL PLACES. THEY ARE the keepers of so many histories and stories from near and far. However, there's a large part of every museum that most people never see. Behind the scenes lies another world: one of conservation, upkeep, research and the moving around of collections, perhaps for an exhibition or to loan to another museum. But what if you could walk around those areas in which objects are stored and restored? What if you could hold the object that you wanted to study or observe up close? That's now possible in the new V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. This huge space spanning four levels is home to some 250,000 objects…

New frontiers Anna Whitelock recently spoke to us about her new book (reviewed left), discussing how Britain strode into a new century under the banner of the Stuart dynasty. She also explained how this sea change in the country's political life coincided with an era of burgeoning maritime exploration, commerce and migration. historyextra.com/james-vi-pod Merchant class In the century following the accession of Elizabeth I, English trade boomed as merchants sought out ventures across the known world. In this episode, Edmond Smith discussed how this mercantile spirit transformed Britain into the centre of a vast globalised trading network stretching from Virginia to India and Arkhangelsk to Benin. historyextra.com/merchants-pod Rounded figure Of all of the names associated with this era, few resonate more strongly than Francis Drake. In this episode from our…

One of the great questions for European historians after the Second World War was: who in Germany had supported the Nazis – and why? A similar process of soul-searching took place among historians of Japan, trying to understand how a country so full of modernising promise in the late 19th century entered what came to be called the “dark valley” of authoritarianism and militarism. It was popular for a while to blame a state-imposed system of absolute loyalty to a mystical emperor, reaching its zenith in the 1930s and early 1940s. Japan's Modern Myths broke new ground in painting a much broader and more disturbing picture. Carol Gluck deployed an enormous array of sources – from newspapers to popular songs – to show that the state never enjoyed complete sway…

The title of Laura Spinney's lively, well-illustrated book refers to Proto-Indo-European (PIE). This was the lost mother language behind hundreds spoken all the way from India to Ireland, the few surviving exceptions including Basque, Finnish, Hungarian, Georgian and Tamil. Spinney notes that “almost every second person on Earth speaks Indo-European”. One wonders how many English speakers are aware of this, or ever pause to wonder why basic words for father and mother, or one to ten, are so similar in so many languages. Linguists have done a magnificent job in reconstructing PIE, with the results of their work sometimes confirmed by subsequent discoveries such as Hittite and Mycenaean Greek. Deciding where and when PIE was first spoken is trickier, and depends on existence of shared words for fauna, flora and…

Sir Keir Starmer “We are an incredible country and there is much to celebrate – whether it's our remarkable achievements in the Second World War or other big moments in our history.” The prime minister discusses the importance of marking anniversaries in our interview on page 14 Helen Carr “It's how medieval people understood life: one moment you're at the top of the Wheel of Fortune and the next, you're crushed beneath it.” Helen discusses the conflicts and calamities that shaped English society in the 14th century on page 68 Jon Winder “After 15 years spent installing and refurbishing playgrounds, I was fascinated by their history. It's been such a privilege to scour the archives to find traces of lost playgrounds and childhoods.” Jon looks back at the history of…

I was interested to learn from David Musgrove's online HistoryExtra article that the Bayeux Tapestry may come to England. As a boy of 11, I was inspired by learning about the tapestry at school to sew my own little tapestry to celebrate my mother's birthday and VE Day, which were just a matter of weeks apart in 1945. As you can hopefully see from the image [below], my VE Day tapestry was captioned “In memo[ry] of war, victory and peace”, and was dedicated to my mother, affectionately known as ‘Moose’. My tapestry features anti-aircraft fire, a union flag, a red trolley-bus in Woodford, where my aunt and grandpa lived, and a nod to both Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, where I grew up, and Buckinghamshire, where I was evacuated to during the…

On 17 August 1579, a ship sailed up the Thames and dropped anchor in Greenwich. Moments later a duke emerged, dressed in the finest clothes that money could buy, and conversing with his entourage in French. The prince's nationality might have provoked the suspicion – if not the outright hostility – of many residents of Tudor London. Yet this Frenchman was about to be welcomed into the heart of Richmond Palace. There he would be entertained lavishly, wined and dined at parties and balls. And all with good reason. For this Frenchman was being lined up to marry Queen Elizabeth I. Over the centuries, Elizabeth's romantic travails have become one of the great soap operas of English history. When Elizabeth ascended the English throne in 1558 as a 25-year-old, it…

“Flemming tried to follow white passengers through the front exit. The furious bus driver stood in her way” On November 2005, thousands of Omourners crowded into the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit to attend the funeral of black American civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Former US president Bill Clinton led the tributes before a congregation that held hands and sang the protest anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’. The story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama is familiar yet sometimes misunderstood. Her arrest for refusing to surrender a bus seat in December 1955 followed not the spontaneous action of an apolitical seamstress but a calculated decision by a lifelong activist who, along with other members of the black community, had put increasing pressure on white city leaders to…

Emily Briffett: Why does the 14th century, which is often dubbed ‘calamitous’, have such a bad reputation? Helen Carr: Some pretty bad things happened during the 14th century – including the greatest human catastrophe, the Black Death. There was also a period of famine in northern and central Europe, as well as major wars and two regicides in England. The ‘calamitous’ label comes from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978), a book by historian Barbara Tuchman. But it was a century jam-packed full of calamity, so I think it's a reasonable reputation. Your book begins with the death of Edward I in 1307. How did Edward II step up when he inherited the throne? Filling the shoes of his father was a monumental job for Edward II. Edward…

In the early hours of 6 June 1944, 35,000 British soldiers – most new to combat – played a critical role on D-Day. During that key battle fought by the western Allies, they landed at Sword, easternmost of the five Normandy landing beaches, and in the adjoining airborne perimeter. It is a story Max Hastings has told before, in Overlord (1984), but never in such enthralling detail, nor with such granular attention to the ‘little people’ who fought and died that day. These were chiefly members of the novice 6th Airborne and 3rd Infantry Divisions, stiffened by Commandos whose own battlefield experience was limited to coastal raiding. Eager to do their bit – particularly the Paras and Glider troops – they were “precipitated direct from Britain, where they had spent…

It is a wonderful time to be writing early modern English theatre history. The discipline's early 20th-century foundations have been remapped and reimagined recently by Martin Wiggins's British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue, the Lost Plays Database, the work underpinning The New Oxford Shakespeare, Laurie Johnson's books on overlooked playhouses and companies, and Callan Davies's What Is a Playhouse? Now, in his new book, Daniel Swift demonstrates how this research enables us to tell new stories about the period. The Dream Factory focuses on the London playhouse called the Theatre, and Shakespeare's working life there. Though his book ends with the dismantling of that venue to be repurposed as the Globe, Swift largely avoids seeing the Theatre and the earlier Shakespeare in terms of what they would later become. Instead, we…

Across 1 The militia attack on working-class protesters in Manchester in August 1819 is known as the ____ Massacre (8) 5 For example, the military group that seized power in Argentina in March 1976 (5) 9 Grand duchess under whose reign Luxembourg evolved into a modern state (9) 10 Anglo-Indian term applied for a time to an East India Company employee returning home with great wealth (5) 11 First name of the British nurse executed by Germany for ‘war treason’ in 1915 (5) 12 Fifth-century leader of the Britons at the time of the arrival of Hengist and Horsa (9) 13 Former term for a British soldier, before khaki uniform was introduced in the 19th century (7) 15 Nation that incurred sanctions in April 1992 for refusing to extradite suspected…

IN PROFILE Billie Holiday, born into poverty in Philadelphia as Eleanora Fagan, was an American jazz and swing singer. In 1939, she recorded the famous protest song ‘Strange Fruit’, lamenting black lynchings. In 1999, Time magazine named the song – also performed by luminaries ranging from Nina Simone to Jeff Buckley – as ‘Best Song of the Century’. After becoming dependent on drugs and alcohol, her health deteriorated. She died from pulmonary oedema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver aged just 44. “After performing ‘Strange Fruit’, she was persecuted by the FBI for the rest of her life. The Bureau even tried to arrest her on her deathbed” When did you first hear about Holiday? I was studying to be a radiographer in my twenties when a…