HistoryExtra podcast

How Ghosts makes history funny – without getting it wrong

How do you make history hilarious without mangling the facts? As Ghosts: The Possession of Button House arrives on the big screen, co-creator, writer and actor Laurence R

America's anti-Chinese laws: a forgotten history

From the middle of the 19th century, Chinese people in the United States found themselves increasingly policed, as legislation was introduced that contained and controlle

An African king in the Roman empire

He was barely a toddler when he was paraded as a captive in a Roman triumph in 46 BC, but young North African prince Juba went on to marry a daughter of Antony and Cleopa

Everyday life in a slave trading town

In 1665 the Portuguese Inquisition arrested Crispina Peres, a powerful slave trader in the west African port of Cacheu. The records of her case provide a remarkable windo

From plague 'searchers' to strawberry birthmarks: a history of women's bodies

What was 'nidgeting'? How did women know they were pregnant before modern tests? And what did people in the past believe a mother’s imagination could do to her unborn chi

The country house at war

It might be assumed that the owners of Britain's country houses weren't hugely affected by the Second World War, and that they continued to live in luxury in their vast e

The pioneering surgeon who stood up to Rasputin

She pioneered lifesaving battlefield surgery, challenged the medical establishment, stood up to Rasputin, and became the world's first female professor of surgery – yet t

The stolen Native Americans who shaped US history

Between 1492 and 1880, as many as 600,000 Native Americas were enslaved in the area that would become the United States. That’s the figure estimated by historian Linford

Being disabled in the medieval era

Prosthetic legs, wheelbarrow wheelchairs and guide… children? Those were just some of the assistive technologies and body augmentations available to our medieval and earl

Vanilla: a far from ordinary history

It's now often used as an adjective for anything standard, plain, and borderline boring – but the history of vanilla is anything but. Eric T Jennings – whose book Vanilla

Ancient explosives and the philosopher's stone: a history of alchemy

Think of alchemy, and you likely imagine bubbling vials of strange potions and molten metals. But how close is this popular perception to the truth? That’s the question b

North Korea's religious dictators

More than three decades after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the USSR, the North Korean regime remains steadfastly in place, defiantly ploughing its own path som

Inside Venice’s Jewish ghetto

In the early 16th century, Venice confined its Jewish population to a restricted quarter on an island in the city. It was the first settlement to bear the name 'ghetto' –

WW2's bloody battle for Arakan

In 1944, the Allies unleashed an offensive in Burma – a brutal campaign spearheaded by 3 Commando Brigade alongside the Indian and West African troops of XV Corps. Agains

The Bayeux Tapestry: secrets of the stitchers

Mia Hansson has spent 10 years making an exact replica of the Bayeux Tapestry. In conversation with Dave Musgrove, she explains what her modern remake experience can teac

How Henry VII seized – and kept – the crown

Henry VII is often remembered as a cold, calculating and penny-pinching monarch whose relentless pursuit of an ever-tightening grip on the throne overshadowed his achieve

The Soviet spy who couldn't love

In 1981, a Soviet spy walked into MI6 HQ in Tehran and offered to defect to Britain – if, in return, Britain could help him improve his performance in bed. In this epis

The slave ship that changed history

In 1781, more than 130 enslaved Africans were deliberately thrown from a ship called the Zorg into the Atlantic. The horrifying story of this slave ship – long mistakenly

Have we overlooked England’s local histories?

What happens to English history when you view it through a local lens, rather than a national one? Did people even notice when the Romans left Britain? Was 1066 really th

The making of the modern Middle East

The Middle East has, for decades, been riven by violent conflict. But what are the roots and ongoing causes of this violence? In this episode, Simon Sebag Montefiore disc