BBC History UK
WHO WAS GREATEST THE US PRESIDENT?
With Donald Trump set to be inaugurated as the 47th president, we asked seven historians to nominate their choice for the most accomplished American leader
10+ min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
A modern icon
IVWWAN MORGAN lauds an insightful and clear-eyed examination of a leader blessed with charisma and quality but also marred by personal flaws
2 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
Unravelling the enigma
JOSEPH ELLIS is impressed by a detailed, colourful and insightful biography of George Villiers, a Stuart royal favourite who made powerful enemies
4 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
A HILL TO DIE ON
In early 1944, the Allied advance in Italy was brought to a halt at a rocky outcrop called Monte Cassino. And at the heart of the bloodbath that followed, writes James Holland, was flawed leadership
10+ min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
Medieval sambocade
ELEANOR BARNETT recreates an early cheesecake - a dish with surprisingly long roots stretching back well over two millennia
3 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
Greek drama
LLOYD LLEWELLYN-JONES is swept along by an engaging exploration of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt in the final centuries before Rome conquered this ancient land
2 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
Shipwrecks on Scilly
Beneath the clear waters of the Isles of Scilly lurk treacherous rocks on which more than 1,000 ships have foundered. CLARE HARGREAVES discovers their stories
2 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
Land of make believe?
Marco Polo's adventures in Asia earned him everlasting fame. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar
9 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
How to build a radical
How to build a radical 6 8 The experiences that shaped Guy Fawkes and his gunpowder plot co-conspirators into violent extremists seem all too familiar today. Lucy Worsley tells a story of religious clashes, state-sanctioned torture and comrades-in-arms willing to die for the cause
8 min |
January 2025
BBC History UK
"We Need a Meaningful Story for the New Generation - Our Composite Union"- There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we'll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed.
What a summer it’s been so far, with an astonishing election result. There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we’ll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed. The new prime minister’s dad was a toolmaker, his mum a nurse; the cabinet is majority comprehensive-educated, with more alumni of Parrs Wood High School than of Eton. Among commentators – not just on the left – there’s been a growing feeling that 14 years of Tory rule, compounded by Brexit, have undermined what the great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah: group feeling – the glue that makes societies work. And watching TV on election night, I found myself wondering whether, like sediment settling in a glass, the time has finally arrived for a new national narrative
3 min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
Eastern Promises- Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China
Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China sometimes successfully, but often disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the troubled but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms
10+ min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
The King They Couldn't Kill -Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king.
10+ min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis
Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies weren’t in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well – always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadn’t moved for weeks.
10+ min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. “You’re the chairman of a fertiliser firm,” the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. “How deep is the mess you’re in?” Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, it’s worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses – not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?
7 min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
A Pole apart
ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries
4 min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS
Æthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?
10 min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
Medieval England's p olitical miracle
From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
9 min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18″
ALICE LOXTON talks to Danny Bird about her book on 18 individuals who left an indelible mark on British history before they were out of their teens
10+ min |
September 2024
BBC History UK
Five things you (probably) didn't know about...Roman Britain
Rob Collins shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation
4 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Succession 1603 - From Tudors to Stuarts - The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change
The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, writes Susan Doran, it wasn't long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects
10 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Anne Boleyn, ‘princess' of France
JOANNE PAUL is impressed by an account of how the Tudor queen's continental connections shaped her meteoric rise and dramatic fall
4 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Victorian cucumber ice cream
ELEANOR BARNETT samples the delights of an unusual and refreshing version of one of the world's favourite summer treats
2 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Gulbadan Begum The Mughal Jane Austen
Gulbadan Begum was meant to live a quiet life in the confines of a Mughal harem. Instead she made her mark on history twice: first, embarking on a pioneering pilgrimage to Islam’s holy cities; second, writing a remarkable history of her dynasty. RUBY LAL tells her story
5 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
"IT'S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THESE WORLD-CHANGING ANCIENT EVENTS"
Daisy Dunn tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the deeds of the extraordinary female figures who shaped them
10 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Horror in France
On the morning of 10 June 1944, the residents of Oradour-sur-Glane were going about their lives as normally as was possible in occupied France: cooking, washing, shopping, playing. Little did they know that they were about to become the victims of one of the most infamous massacres of the Second World War.
10 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Dancing with the Devil
ROGER MOORHOUSE is impressed by a book that traces the fortunes of the diplomats charged with managing the west's wartime alliance with Josef Stalin
4 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
Britain's war on the slave ships
In the early 19th century, a Royal Navy squadron was sent to west Africa to hunt down ships carrying enslaved people to the Americas. The operation was hailed as an act of \"pure unselfish philanthropy\". Yet, writes Mary Wills, the reality was far more tangled
8 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
War and pieces
Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business
7 min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
"It had been a tiny triumph, but it had been a British triumph"
MAX HASTINGS talks to Rob Attar about a daring airborne raid that provided a much-needed boost to Britain's morale in the darkest days of the Second World War
10+ min |
July 2024
BBC History UK
"From Africa to the Indian subcontinent, imperialism has left a trail of damage"
MICHAEL WOOD ON...THE BANGLADESH LIBERATION WAR
3 min |