History Extra podcast
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History Extra podcast
The HistoryExtra podcast brings you gripping stories from the past and fascinating historical conversations with the world's leading historical experts. HistoryExtra is a free history podcast, with episodes released six times a week. Subscribe now for the real stories behind your favourite films,...
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How to survive a day in the 14th century
What threats might you have faced on a daily basis in England in the 1300s? In this episode, Ian Mortimer guides Charlotte Vosper through a day in the...
Bess of Hardwick: life of the week
Bess of Hardwick fell out spectacularly with Mary, Queen of Scots and was dumped in the Tower of London by Elizabeth I. Yet nothing could get in the w...
Alliance and acrimony: a history of Jewish-Muslim relations
From Islam’s emergence in the early medieval period, Muslims have been deeply connected with the followers of another faith: Judaism. In conversation...
Who wrote the Odyssey?
The Odyssey is one of the most celebrated stories ever told, recounting the tale of Greek hero Odysseus’s 10-year journey home from the Trojan War. It...
1966: The World Cup that changed a nation
The England men’s football team has missed out on the opportunity to replicate the nation’s much-heralded victory back in the 1966 World Cup, still on...
How Rome really conquered Britain
What if the Roman invasion and occupation of Britain was more complicated than we might think? Ferdinand Addis reveals how it really happened. Speakin...
Edward Colston: life of the week
Edward Colston was a philanthropist and slave trader in the 17th and 18th centuries. He is infamous today for the fact that a statue of him was pulled...
Was Elizabeth Báthory really a serial killer?
Elizabeth Báthory is history's most prolific female serial killer and took pleasure in bathing in the blood of virgins... or so the story goes. In thi...
What did the American Revolution really achieve?
How revolutionary was the American Revolution, and how far do 18th-century arguments about liberty and property still shape US politics today? In the...
The captain's wife who took command
In the middle of the 19th century, the world's fastest ships raced across oceans carrying cargo, and the fortunes of ambitious young sea captains. In...
What could you eat in Georgian London?
Much of what was eaten by inhabitants of Georgian London is, perhaps surprisingly, familiar to us today. In this episode, Peter Ross takes Lauren Good...
Pablo Picasso: life of the week
From his birth in 1881 to his death in 1973, Pablo Picasso lived a life as revolutionary as his art. A child prodigy who transformed modern art, his s...
When football became a weapon of the Cold War
The Cold War cast a shadow over all aspects of life – including the world's favourite sport. All sides of the ideological divide used football to scor...
How Britain lost America
After declaring independence, the United States still had to survive a brutal conflict. In the third episode of HistoryExtra's four-part series on the...
A history of the US in 100 unexpected objects
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Americans are taking a fresh look at their nation's past. But wha...
An A-Z history of the English alphabet
Which letter of the English alphabet did Benjamin Franklin think we'd be better off without? Why must the letter U (almost) always follow the letter Q...
Abigail Adams: life of the week
As the wife of a founding figure in early American history, Abigail Adams was able to push beyond the restrictions of many of her sex in the 18th cent...
The astonishing laws of medieval Wales
From divorce settlements and cattle disputes to surprisingly modern ideas about gender and compensation, the laws of Hywel Dda shed unique light on ho...
Inside the Declaration of Independence
It’s 250 years since the Declaration of Independence brought a new nation into formal existence. But what did it actually say – and who did it leave o...
Cannibalism, heartbreak and Madame Guillotine: George Forster's extraordinary life
He sailed to Antarctica with Captain Cook, rubbed shoulders with Benjamin Franklin and helped found a revolutionary republic. It’s little wonder, then...
Charlotte Brontë's life through clothes
We might picture Charlotte Brontë's life as an isolated one, separated from much of the world and its fashions as she whiled away the hours in her fat...
Emma Goldman: life of the week
Anarchist, feminist, revolutionary: 19th-century activist and writer Emma Goldman emigrated from the Russian empire to the United States as a teenager...
Stealing the V2 rocket: Britain’s secret WW2 intelligence coup
In 1944, as Allied troops pushed across Europe after D-Day, the Allies faced a terrifying new threat: Hitler’s V2 weapons, striking without warning at...
The road to the American Revolutionary War
The United States often presents its birth as a straightforward struggle for liberty – but reality was far more messy. In this first episode of Histor...
The protestant missionaries that didn't change the world
Why did Protestant missionaries travel the globe across the course of centuries, only to convert remarkably few people? Alec Ryrie – author of new boo...
Strangers and aliens in Tudor England
Many histories of the 16th century tell stories of monarchs and courtiers – but there is, of course, much more to the century than that. Speaking to C...
Alexander the Great: life of the week
Stretching from Greece to India, Alexander the Great’s empire was one of the largest in human history, and he’d conquered it all by the time he was 30...
What myths do we tell about royal women?
Have royal women's stories been misconstrued? Speaking to Charlotte Vosper, Kate Williams argues that many of them have been, tracing the lives of a w...
Cleopatra’s death – and cultural afterlife
The final chapter of Cleopatra’s life is shrouded in mystery. Did she really take her own life? Was an asp involved? And why don’t we know where her t...
Masters of disinformation: how British spies played dirty in the Cold War
They 'haunted' an Indonesian general with a talking ghost and planted fake hippies in a Bulgarian youth festival. But did they change the course of th...
Churchill's toughest decision
In the summer of 1940, the Royal Navy attacked a French fleet moored off the coast of north Africa, killing almost 1,300 sailors. Winston Churchill de...
Henry Paget: life of the week
Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, lived a life of extravagance, luxury and theatre – and for this, he was the subject of much intrigue in the lat...
The hidden history of female sexual pleasure
How did women in the past experience sex and pleasure? Kate Lister reveals that this is a rather complicated question. Instead of simply lying back an...
Why Cleopatra was more than a bewitching beauty
We often think of Cleopatra as using her feminine wiles to secure, and maintain, power. But was that really the case? And what other skills and qualit...
Better than Bridgerton: the real Georgian masquerade
Is there a real historical phenomenon behind Bridgerton’s masked ball? And what would it really have been like? In this episode, Meghan Kobza takes us...
Weimar's descent from democracy to barbarism
Weimar is a small German city. Yet it looms large in European history. In the 1920s, it was synonymous with liberalism, internationalism and the fine...
Alan Turing: life of the week
Alan Turing is one of the most celebrated of all British scientists. His work in cracking Nazi codes at Bletchley Park, and his role in the evolution...
The self-made Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe is synonymous with glamour, beauty and stardom – but scratching the surface of her public image reveals another story. Author and profe...
Cleopatra’s bloody rise to power
From formidable overseas leaders to vicious internecine conflict, Cleopatra’s rise to the top was bloody and brutal. So what personal qualities did sh...
Gullible Georgians: hoaxes in the Enlightenment period
The 18th century was an age of industrialisation, scientific exploration and ‘progress’, but what happened when those rational foundations were shaken...