Should period dramas reflect modern sensibilities?

THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS

Kelly Clancy “We can learn a lot about

THREE THINGS I’VE LEARNED THIS MONTH

1. Back down to Earth I was interested

WELCOME JULY 2024

The transatlantic slave trade is one of the

ANNIVERSARIES

21 JULY AD 365 Alexandria is hit by a

Nicolas Kinloch (1954–2024)

Nicolas Kinloch was a historian, teacher, traveller and

The moral of this Shakespearean tale? Always trust your primary sources!

THE SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION

We mustn’t overlook the toll of surfacing traumatic histories

HIDDEN HISTORIES

Pet protectors

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Q&A

A selection of historical conundrums answered by experts

DID YOU KNOW…?

Fuel fraud In early 1940, a conman persuaded

…it’s raining cats and dogs?

As is well-known, it never rains cats and

BOOKS

THE AMERICAS “Sacrifice was just one, much misunderstood,

“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

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

Analysing Anne

Deputy editor Matt Elton picks three episodes of the HistoryExtra podcast that profile Boleyn

An Aztec history of the Aztecs

CAROLINE DODDS PENNOCK is won over by a guide to Aztec mythology dominated by dramatic Indigenous descriptions of their world

What can 1984 teach 2024?

ROBIN BUNCE praises a book that explores George Orwell’s writings on every thing from race to censorship – and asks, what can we learn from him today?

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

Empire of the son

Conn Iggulden discusses Nero, the first novel in his new series that dramatises the life of the infamous Roman emperor

ENCOUNTERS

COOKBOOK Victorian cucumber ice cream TRAVEL Tokyo,

“We’ve come to see George Orwell as this prophet of dystopia, but that’s only one side”

HELEN LEWIS tells us about her new radio series, co-hosted with Ian Hislop, on the 20th-century novelists Franz Kafka and George Orwell

Victorian cucumber ice cream

RECIPE

Tokyo in five places

From fishing village to imperial capital, Japan’s biggest city has been repeatedly reimagined. CHRISTOPHER HARDING picks his must-visit sights

PRIZE CROSSWORD

Across 6 Ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer who

NEXT MONTH

Crusader criminals Steve Tibble describes how the medieval

MY HISTORY HERO

Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle chooses

“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

TITANIC STRUGGLE A timeline of the Greco-Persian Wars

• c545 BC The city-states of the Greek

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 play time has often been a serious business

The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre

Little did they know that they were about to become the victims of one of the most infamous massacres of the Second World War.

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.

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

FROM HELL TO FREEDOM?

The capture of a slave ship was the first step of a journey that rarely took enslaved people back to their homelands

FIVE THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT…

Rob Collins, who is teaching our new HistoryExtra Academy course, shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation

Succession 1603

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

KING JAMES’S UPS AND DOWNS

Whose fortunes surged – and whose took a nosedive – in the new Stuart regime?

Signature VOYAGES

Advertisement

Advertisement

ancestry

Warnerhotels

warnerhotels.co.uk/history

London Review OF BOOKS

lrb.me/join

BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE

OURMEDIA SHOP

OURMEDIASHOP.COM/SFHA24

History Extra PODCAST

historyextra.com

PODCAST

Petersommer

www.petersommer.com