March 2021

BBC History Magazine

The UK's best selling History magazine

BBC History Magazine1 min read
Welcome
“I’m writing this a few weeks into 2021, and so far the dramatic news agenda of 2020 shows little sign of abating. Here in the UK we’re in lockdown – although there are grounds for hope with the vaccination programme well under way. Meanwhile, soon a
BBC History Magazine1 min read
This Issue’s Contributors
I began writing my book much before the recent Black Lives Matter protests, and so it’s been quite surreal to see my niche interest become a massive concern. Sathnam considers how the legacy of imperialism still pervades modern society on page 78 Wha
BBC History Magazine1 min readTelecommunications
More From Us
The website of BBC History Magazine is filled with exciting content on British and world history. For more information on the content in this issue, go to historyextra.com/march2021 Download episodes for free from iTunes and other providers, or via h
BBC History Magazine1 min read
This Month In History
Rendered at life size using dark red pigment, and featuring two handprints above its hairy back, this depiction of a wild “warty pig” dates from at least 45,500 years ago – making it the world’s oldest known animal cave painting. The picture was foun
BBC History Magazine2 min read
The Write Profile
One of the very few benefits of returning to lockdown living, for some of us, is having the time to read – and Twitter is always a reliable source of book recommendations. Helen McCarthy (@HistorianHelen) asked for nominations of “the best historical
BBC History Magazine1 min readPolitics
New Law Will Protect Statues From “Mobs”
Statues of historical figures in England are set to be given greater legal protection from being removed or altered, the government has announced. The new safeguards mean that statues can only be removed in exceptional circumstances, with a policy of
BBC History Magazine2 min read
History In The News
A leading UK university has issued a public apology for its historical role in the eugenics movement, which advocated the “improvement” of human genetics via such discredited practices as “selective breeding”. The University College London (UCL) stat
BBC History Magazine6 min readAmerican Government
A New Low For US Democracy?
When extremists violently invaded the US Capitol in January, they chanted “1776”, claiming the mantle of the year when Congress declared American independence. Revolutionary symbols abound in America’s rightwing circles, from the Gadsden flag depicti
BBC History Magazine3 min read
Michael Wood On...
It’s time for a book clear out. I’ve been avoiding this moment for some years, but (and I’m sure many readers feel the same) our house is sagging under a lifetime’s accumulation of history books, especially from second-hand bookshops. Arlington and L
BBC History Magazine2 min readInternational Relations
Why We Should Remember...
One hundred years ago, on 17–18 March 1921, Red Army troops crossed the frozen Gulf of Finland to crush the Kronstadt mutiny – the Russian Revolution’s last major event. Pitched battles ensued in which thousands died, ending in the mutineers’ bloody
BBC History Magazine5 min read
Anniversaries
The ruthless Roman general ravages the Greek city Of all the great characters in Roman history, Lucius Cornelius Sulla ranks as one of the most ruthless. A brilliant general and cunning politician, he rose to fame in his campaigns against Rome’s enem
BBC History Magazine1 min read
A Royal Sum
How Thomas Becket Rose from the Dead (January) gives interesting details of the aftermath of the saint’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral, and notes that, on 21 May 1172, Henry II admitted he was to blame and that part of his penance would include dona
BBC History Magazine4 min read
Letters
In January’s Letters, Marek Pruszewicz refers to Britain as having an “obsession” with the Second World War, and implies that the British have a deep national conviction that Britain has always been a “good” country. I think he is entirely wrong in t
BBC History Magazine1 min read
BBC History Magazine
Editor Rob Attar robertattar@historyextra.com Deputy editor Matt Elton mattelton@historyextra.com Production editor Spencer Mizen Books and podcast editor Ellie Cawthorne Subeditor Rhiannon Davies Picture editor Samantha Nott samnott@historyextra.com
BBC History Magazine10 min readInternational Relations
How The West Was Won
The western front occupies a fixed and unchanging position in our memory of the First World War. It is synonymous with trenches and bloody, futile combat; a place of barbed wire and poison gas, of massed artillery batteries and machine-guns, mud and
BBC History Magazine3 min read
Q&A
What’s the earliest mention of a named pet or domestic animal? People have kept domestic animal companions for thousands of years. In northern Israel, for instance, archaeologists unearthed the remains of a puppy cradled by a human being, some 12,000
BBC History Magazine1 min read
Did You Know…?
The legendary Apache leader Geronimo (shown right), and five other Native American chiefs, rode on horseback down Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC in the 1905 inauguration parade for President Theodore Roosevelt. Once a much-feared guerrilla warrio
BBC History Magazine9 min read
The Kingqueendom Of Jerusalem
On 2 October 1187, Jerusalem – the holy city held by Christians for four generations, and the prize of the First Crusade – fell to the Sultan Saladin after a short siege. The Christians were outnumbered ten to one, but the city held out long enough f
BBC History Magazine2 min read
Blinded By Love
Jerusalem’s queens didn’t always make the correct choices. For instance, Sibylla – who was crowned queen of Jerusalem in 1186, a year before the city fell to Sultan Saladin – sparked fury among the region’s barons on the day of her coronation. As soo
BBC History Magazine11 min read
The Lost Figure Of The Bayeux Tapestry
It’s 70 metres long, tells a tale that stretches over land and sea, covers a crucial piece of history, and has a wide cast of characters. Yet the Bayeux Tapestry does not relate the whole story of the Norman Conquest of 1066. It vividly records the h
BBC History Magazine9 min readPsychology
Why History Must Take A Stance
In 2013, as preparations to commemorate the First World War centenary picked up pace, Max Hastings trained his sights on the UK government. The popular historian chastised politicians for their reticence on “the virtue of Britain’s cause, or the blam
BBC History Magazine8 min read
Vikings Under The Microscope
The chemical signatures of bones and teeth suggest that Viking settlements were a melting pot of ethnicities We have always known that travel and exploration was a key feature of the Viking Age, with the Vikings reaching as far as North America in th
BBC History Magazine2 min read
When Tudor Was A Name Of Shame
Harri Fychan ap Harri Brenin ab Edmwnt ab Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? But that’s exactly how King Henry VIII could have referred to himself if he was taking into account his Welsh ancestry – and it’s a name that his g
BBC History Magazine9 min read
The Rise Of The Tudors
It’s one of English history’s great turning points. When Henry VII defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth, he not only wrested the crown from a ruling king but – in the eyes of several historians – he brought down the curtain on an entire era
BBC History Magazine8 min read
Rewriting Her World
In November 1846, the celebrated poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote home about her new life in Pisa to her old friend Julia Martin in Herefordshire: “Everyday I am out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls,.. & when I am tired
BBC History Magazine10 min readEthnic Studies
“It Was Painful To Realise How My Education Had Colonised Me”
Ellie Cawthorne: Your new book explores how modern Britain is still shaped by its imperial history. Where can we still see the influence of empire today? Sathnam Sanghera: It’s absolutely everywhere. There are millions of expressions of it. You can f
BBC History Magazine4 min read
Family Drama
On 12 August 1529 the Holy Roman Emperor (as well as Archduke of Austria, King of Spain and Lord of the Netherlands) Charles V, placed his booted feet on Italian soil for the first time in his almost 30 years. He had inherited the Kingdoms of Naples,
BBC History Magazine1 min read
Authors On The Podcast
“When I embarked on my book It Takes Two, I didn’t want to write just about cloying romantic couples. Obviously great love stories are part of it, but it’s much more about the nature of partnership and collaboration, and what it is about the nature o
BBC History Magazine5 min readMedical
Blighted By Disease
In the wake of the SARS and MERS outbreaks earlier this century, as well as the dangers of new strains of influenza, the Ebola epidemic, and popular concerns with threats to the viability of antibiotics, there was already a strong audience for popula
BBC History Magazine1 min read
The Classic Book
Everyone should read this book, even if they are not particularly interested in history or indeed the countryside. This is one of those eye opening, revelatory books that overturns myths and centuries of received literary wisdom. It was, and still is
BBC History Magazine2 min read
Troubled Legacy
As part of its campaigns in 2015, the activist collective Rhodes Must Fall Oxford, which works to address the legacies of colonialism at the University of Oxford, called the Pitt Rivers Museum “one of the most violent spaces in Oxford”. The Brutish M
BBC History Magazine2 min read
Crying For Change
Where does this new instalment of your series take the story? The story starts in Languedoc in 1572, with the Joubert family discussing whether or not they should attend the royal wedding between the Huguenot Henry of Navarre and the Catholic Marguer
BBC History Magazine2 min readPolitics
Bringer Of Death
The decisive role of the individual in making history is an unfashionable concept for many modern historians, but Professor Frank McDonough is not among them. For, as he argues in this second volume of his vast history of the rise and fall of the Thi
BBC History Magazine3 min read
Also On The Bookshelf
Green Unpleasant Land by Corinne Fowler (Peepal Tree Press, 324 pages, £19.99) The countryside has long been thought of as a bastion of Britishness, a rural idyll steeped in a nostalgic pastoral past. But Corinne Fowler offers a different perspective
BBC History Magazine4 min read
Encounters
Insects outnumber humans by hundreds of million to one, yet many of us, wary of creatures that can seem so alien and are associated with disease, prefer not to think too much about them. It’s a shame, because – as a new weekday show presented by the
BBC History Magazine2 min read
History On The Airwaves
You’re Dead To Me aims to reach an audience that may not necessarily be interested in history. How do you approach this? The idea of the show is to broaden the appeal of history to those who have felt that the subject is dry, difficult, intimidating,
BBC History Magazine2 min read
History Cookbook
The name of this Canadian dessert translates literally as “unemployed man’s pudding”, and it’s thought to have been created during the Great Depression. Although its original iteration, made of sugar and water, would have been rather more humble, thi
BBC History Magazine4 min read
Prize Crossword
7 City state destroyed in 146 BC by Roman general Lucius Mummius in the process of defeating the Achaean League (7) 8 The ____ Diamond, named in honour of the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne (7) 9 English railway pioneer,
BBC History Magazine1 min read
More From Us
Following Golda Rosheuvel’s star turn as the queen consort in Netflix drama Bridgerton, Catherine Curzon explores the life of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz who arrived in Britain as a teenager to marry King George III. historyextra.com/quee
BBC History Magazine1 min read
Next Month
April issue on sale 18 March 2021 On the 300th anniversary of Robert Walpole taking office, historians nominate Britain’s greatest PMs Alan Lester explains how a small group of British officials sought to administer a sprawling, global empire Joyce T
BBC History Magazine2 min read
My History Hero
Stephen Hawking was a British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, best known for his book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988), which has sold more than 10 million copies. In 1963 the Cambridge academic was diagnosed wi

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