History Extra podcast
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History Extra podcast
The History Extra podcast brings you gripping stories from the past and fascinating historical conversations with the world's leading historical experts. History Extra is a free history podcast, with episodes released six times a week. Subscribe now for the real stories behind your favourite film...
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Prophetesses & she-preachers of the 17th century
A prophetess who warned Oliver Cromwell against killing the king. A Yorkshire maidservant who gained an audience with the Ottoman Sultan. The religiou...
New Year's Eve, newts and Nessie: a history of British folklore
Why should you be careful about who's first through your door on New Year's Day? What led people to believe that newts and earwigs were responsible fo...
Augustus: life of the week
‘Evil genius’ is a phrase that could have been invented to describe Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Augustus butchered his way to power in the ch...
Inside the Viking battle of the genders
What do we know for certain about Old Norse ideas about masculinity and femininity, and can Viking Age mythology provide any answers? In conversation...
A house of one’s own: Jane Austen’s ‘golden years’
It was at Chawton House, a cottage in rural Hampshire, that Jane Austen experienced one of the most fruitful episodes of her writing career. In this t...
Æthelstan: the king who made England
Æthelstan was crowned in Kingston upon Thames 1100 years ago, in AD 925. He went on to extend his authority far beyond his initial powerbase of Wessex...
Did the WW1 Christmas truce really happen?
It’s one of the most romantic images of the First World War: British and German soldiers meeting in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day, 1914, for a sponta...
Father Christmas: life of the week
Father Christmas – or Santa Claus – is one of western culture’s most recognisable figures. But from his mysterious origins to quite how he ended up as...
When was the best time in English history to be alive?
Did you know that Elizabethan Londoners were good kissers? That medieval drinkers used beer to fight off the flames of a raging inferno? And that Jane...
“I am to flirt my last”: Jane Austen’s twenties
We might assume that Jane Austen led a quiet existence, writing dramatic plots instead of experiencing them herself – but that presumption is far from...
The secret propaganda war against the Nazis
In September 1939, an unlikely assortment of journalists, politicians, novelists and spies assembled in a Bedfordshire village and set about waging a...
The many faces of James VI & I
Historian Clare Jackson delves into the life and reputation of James VI & I – a king who, says Jackson, has a legacy that has been much refracted and...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: life of the week
Mozart is celebrated for his musical genius – but how did he rise to such enduring fame? What inspired him, and who was the man beyond the concert hal...
A short history of ghost hunting
A spooky story during the Christmas season has become traditional – and the modern ghost story was invented by the Victorians, who embraced the supern...
Becoming Jane Austen
What inspired the daughter of a rural reverend to write about eligible bachelors and drunken misadventure? In this first episode of our four-part seri...
Ghosts, gods & sea monsters: a supernatural history of the Atlantic
For centuries, sailors crossing the Atlantic believed they were not alone – haunted by ghost ships, watched by mermaids, and stalked by sea monsters....
The summer that changed everything for the Kennedys
Historian Leigh Straw describes one pivotal summer in the life of the Kennedy family. With most of the family in their Cape Cod summer home, the summe...
Margaret Beaufort: life of the week
Born in the tumultuous 15th century, Margaret Beaufort – mother of Henry VII – endured personal tragedy, dynastic danger, and the ever-shifting fortun...
Idi Amin's willing helpers
Idi Amin is 20th-century Africa’s most notorious ruler – a cartoonish tyrant who has been bracketed with the likes of Hitler and Stalin. And it’s true...
“You can’t kill and maim with impunity”: the powerful legacy of Nuremberg
In the 80 years since Nazi leaders stood in the dock, how has the international community sought to deal with war criminals around the globe? For this...
Assassins vs Templars
The Assassins and the Knights Templar are two of history’s most intriguing, enigmatic and legendary groups. While they may seem vastly different on th...
WW2's Tunisian campaign: the Stalingrad of Africa
For the Allies it was an enormous triumph and for Nazi Germany it was another Stalingrad. But 80 years on, the battle for Tunisia is barely mentioned...
Empress Matilda: life of the week
In the tumultuous aftermath of Henry I’s death, England was thrown into one of the most chaotic civil wars in its history – the Anarchy. At the heart...
How warhorses transformed medieval England
William the Conqueror used them to devastating effect in 1066. Robert the Bruce worked out how to neutralise them. And when Richard III was knocked fr...
Did the Nazis get a fair trial?
In October 1946, after a trial lasting almost a year, the Nazi leaders on the dock in Nuremberg received their verdicts. But what did the judges decid...
Forgotten female secret agents of WW2
From sabotage operations to devastating betrayals, stories of the women of Special Operations Executive are some of the most incredible stories of the...
What causes cultures to decline and fall?
The new BBC TV series Civilisations: Rise and Fall charts the decline of some of history's most famous cultures, from the Aztecs to the ancient Egypti...
Christopher Marlowe: life of the week
From his possible espionage work for the Elizabethan state to his open flirtations with atheism and subversive sexual themes, the brief life of playwr...
Uprising: the Civil Wars untangled
On 30 January 1649, Charles I was led on to a freshly erected scaffold outside Whitehall’s Banqueting House in London. Thousands of spectators watched...
The Nazis’ crimes laid bare
When the Nazi leaders went on trial in Nuremberg from November 1945, the true horrors of their regime were exposed to the world. In the second episode...
What does Hitler’s DNA really tell us?
A recent documentary drawing conclusions from new analysis of Adolf Hitler’s DNA has sparked headlines around the world. But how did the programme’s r...
Mutilated corpses and undead mothers-in-law: vampire epidemics through history
Fears of the undead rising from their graves to cause trouble have recurred in societies around the globe throughout the centuries. But why was your m...
The problem with poo: a millennium of manure
When did poo become a problem? Why was manure so important in the medieval economy? And why don't we have vacuum-powered sewers? All these questions –...
James Garfield: life of the week
US president James Garfield's life is often overshadowed by his untimely death in 1881, as the second president to be assassinated in office. However,...
A new history of multicultural Britain
As Britain's influence on the world around it grew throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, so too did the world influence Britain – and a key part of...
What should we do with the Nazis? The road to the Nuremberg Trials
At the end of the Second World War, the victorious Allies had to decide the fates of the surviving leaders of a regime that had initiated the bloodies...
Who stole the Tudor crown?
On her deathbed Elizabeth I named the Scottish James VI as her successor, ensuring a smooth transition from the Tudor to Stuart monarchies. That, at l...
The librarian who stole KGB secrets
When an elderly man with a battered suitcase walked into the British embassy in Vilnius in 1992, few could have guessed what he was about to hand over...
Nellie Bly: life of the week
In the late 19th century, when female reporters were largely confined to newspapers' society pages, Nellie Bly's daring investigations and headline-gr...
The improbable alliance that defeated Hitler
To what extent does the course of history turn on the force of individual personalities? It’s a question that looms large when examining the unlikely...