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Danny Bird
I’m Danny, a Content Producer on HistoryExtra magazine. Working with leading historians, I commission, research, write and edit features that answer the questions readers are genuinely curious about, and I’m always looking for engaging ways to help readers keep pace with the latest expert insights and discoveries from the history they’re interested in. As well as writing, I’m a host on the HistoryExtra podcast, where you’ll find me speaking with historians about some of my favourite historical topics; namely modern Soviet/Russian and Spanish history! I joined the team in 2022, working initially as staff writer on BBC History Revealed, before moving to BBC History Magazine, which has since become HistoryExtra. I’ve been fascinated with the past since childhood and obtained a History BA (Hons) at the University of Sheffield, where I developed a special interest in the Spanish Civil War and the Paris Commune. I then gained my History MA from University College London, studying at its School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), where I researched the early Soviet state’s fixation with the Paris Commune. Prior to joining HistoryExtra, I was a civil servant and a freelance writer for Time and History Today magazine, writing on everything from the story behind Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica, to the historical role of revolutions.
Why decimation was the most unfair punishment in the Roman Army
George Orwell: life of the week. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Why did the Soviet Union adopt the hammer and sickle, and how did it become a symbol of communist revolution?
Josef Stalin: the paranoid dictator who forged the Soviet Union into a superpower
Æthelstan and the foundation of England: your guide to the 'first king of the English'
The Phrygian cap: how did an item of ancient headgear become a symbol of liberty?
Q&AWhere does the term ‘fifth column’ come from?
How Galileo Galilei took on the church and changed the universe
Galileo: life of the week. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
Q&AThe Grand Tour: a rite of passage for Europe’s elite
The Roswell incident: Did the US Government cover up an alien crash in 1947? The real history that challenges the conspiracy
The incredible real history of A Gentleman in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the real history that debunks one of history’s darkest conspiracies
The EU: from Maastricht to Brexit. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.
The Bisley Boy: was Queen Elizabeth I replaced by a man? The real history that debunks the conspiracy
Did the US know that Pearl Harbor would be attacked? The real history that debunks the conspiracy
ConspiracyDo the Knights Templar still exist today?
ConspiracyWho killed JFK?
The death of Lenin, a century on: the long afterlife of Russia’s pre-emiment revolutionary
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