HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2026-10-21T12:17:16.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00Bollocks, bastards and broad arses: the filthy medieval names that expose the real story of 1066https://www.historyextra.com/membership/1066-bayeux-tapestry-names-of-norman-conquest/2026-10-21T12:17:16.000ZThe Bayeux Tapestry (at the time of writing wowing visitors to the British Museum) is thronged with characters – warriors, of course, but also monarchs, dukes and bishops, plus countless unnamed figures. This famous embroidery helps us think about the people caught up in the events depicted – and examining their names opens a window onto a world in which English, Scandinavian and Norman cultures met, melded and clashed, how conquest and colonisation influenced lives, and how colourful nicknames can preserve glimpses of the way medieval people saw one another at all levels of society.
Ælfgif... who?
The Bayeux Tapestry features only 15 names – and, typically for this period of history, those of women are largely excluded. Curiously, the only woman actually named in the embroidery can’t be identified – a mysterious figure labelled ÆLFGYVA, or Ælfgifu. She is pictured in an interaction with “a certain cleric”, an encounter that may have been innocent – though the depiction of a naked man in the border below her suggests that it may not have been, and could be a reference to a scandalous liaison of some kind.
The fact that we don’t know who this Ælfgifu was can be explained partly by the fact that hers was such a common name in 11th-century England. There had already been three queens named Ælfgifu by the turn of that century, the consorts of Edmund I (ruled 939–46), Eadwig ‘All-Fair’ (r955–59) and Æthelred the Unready (r978–1013 & 1014–16). When Æthelred married the illustrious Emma of Normandy, the great-aunt of William the Conqueror, she was given a new English name. You’ve guessed it: Ælfgifu.
After Æthelred’s death, Emma (or Ælfgifu) effortlessly switched sides, marrying England’s new Danish king Cnut in 1017. In doing so, she replaced Cnut’s previous wife, another Ælfgifu. To add to the general sense of confusion, the Anglo-Saxon Earl Harold Godwinson had a sister called Ælfgifu. Any of these women could be the ÆLFGYVA named in the Bayeux Tapestry – the chances are that we’ll never know for certain – but the use of her name suggests that the story surrounding her was common knowledge at the time, even if it’s no longer familiar to us today.
The mystery of Edith Swanneck
Another question mark lingers over Harold’s ‘unofficial’ wife, Edith Swanneshals (‘Swanneck’) who, we are told, identified the dead English king’s body on the battlefield at Hastings. However, her identity is still disputed. She is often assumed to be the woman recorded in Domesday Book as Edeva Pulchra (‘The Fair’), partly based on the assumption that this epithet, like ‘swan-neck’, referred to beauty, as well as the fact that the woman in William’s survey was listed as being incredibly rich. But this identification is by no means certain.
Again, the confusion is partly down to the prevalence and ambiguity of monikers. By the 11th century, a number of distinct names had come to sound similar: Eadgyth (Edith), Eadgifu (Edeva), Ealdgyth (Aldith) and Ealdgifu (Aldeva). Even then, some of these might well have caused confusion, particularly amongst Norman scribes recording unfamiliar English names. And later writers have tended to merge all of these into one modern name, ‘Edith’.
This similarity still causes problems today. In the 2025 BBC drama King and Conqueror, three Ediths were renamed to avoid confusing viewers. Edith Swanneck kept her forename but Harold’s sister, Edith of Wessex, was renamed Gunhild, and his official wife, Edith of Mercia, became Margaret. The irony is that not all three of these shared that name in the first place: Edith Swanneck was probably Eadgifu (Edeva), while Edith of Mercia was called Ealdgyth (Aldith). Edith of Wessex was definitely known as Eadgyth (Edith), but even she may have been known by a different name – Gytha – before she married Edward the Confessor.
A tale of two Harolds
Hastings was the last of three major battles that decided the fate of England in 1066. While William was readying his troops to cross the Channel, England was already under attack from the Norwegian king, Harald Hardrada (‘Hard Ruler’). The fact that two rival kings bore essentially the same name tells us a lot.
The Viking raids that began in the eighth century may have been dramatic, but it was the long-term influence of interaction and intermarriage of English natives and Scandinavian settlers that had the greatest impact on the land, its language and its names. Scandinavian names became widely used across England ¬– not only by Viking newcomers but also by English people.
This only increased after Cnut conquered England in 1016. His right-hand man here was Earl Godwine, father of the man who became King Harold II (who was quite literally ‘Godwin’s son’), whose family is a great example of Anglo-Scandinavian integration. Godwine and his Danish wife, Gytha, gave their children a mix of Scandinavian names – including Harold, Sweyn, Gunhild and Tostig – and English, including Wulfnoth, Ælfgar and Eadgifu.
In practice, many of these names may not have been considered ‘Scandinavian’ by the people who used them – they were deemed just as English as any other. But one thing we do know is that 1066 marked an abrupt shift in the political and cultural world that England inhabited, as its influences shifted from the North Sea to the English Channel.
Tostig no more
This is epitomised by the fate of the name of another of Godwine’s sons, Tostig. Harold’s brother infamously betrayed Harold by supporting Harald Hardrada in 1066, so played a key role in the end of Anglo-Scandinavian England. His name seems to have been one of those Scandinavian names that had become popular in the 11th century – perhaps partly because of his own fame.
After the conquest, once-popular Anglo-Scandinavian names were quickly discarded in favour of those brought to England by its new Norman overlords. We have a first-hand account of this process in action through the story of a boy named Tostig in the early 12th century. We are told that his childhood friends teased him so remorselessly that he took it upon himself to change his unfashionable name, insisting on being called William instead.
Most people didn’t change their own names, but the speed of the shift more widely was dramatic, with parents swapping English names for Norman ones. William became rapidly popular, thanks to the influence of the hundreds of Williams who came to England after the Conquest. There were almost as many Richards and Roberts, as well as a large number of Walters and Ralphs (and a surprising scattering of Wazos and Bosos).
William the Bastard
The most famous of the new Williams was, of course, the one we know as ‘the Conqueror’, duke of Normandy and king of England. But William wasn’t known by this byname during his lifetime, as far as we can tell. Rather, he was dubbed by contemporaries as William ‘the Bastard’ (through the Latin terms bastardus and nothus).
This wasn’t a judgement on his character but reflected his illegitimacy. Although many noblemen had unofficial partners before taking an official bride, the fact that William was illegitimate clearly mattered, judging by the wide use of this nickname and the fact that his mother, Herleva, was never named as such until after his death.
By the time of the Conquest, the practice of using additional bynames to add detail to the lives and identities of individuals was becoming more common on both sides of the Channel. As William’s nickname shows, these were usually not chosen by the bearers themselves but instead offer us a glimpse into the judgment of other people.
Black beards, barrel cats and broad arses
Bynames were often merely bland descriptors referring to visual characteristics – Burewold Crul (‘Curly’) and Brunstan Blachebiert (‘Blackbeard’), for example. Or they might refer to the occupation of the bearer, such as those of Bernard Faber (‘the Smith’) and William Bruwere (‘the Brewer’). But there were a lot of names that were much more evocative, some of which were mildly insulting – perhaps partly humorous descriptions of someone’s physical appearance, social status or personality traits.
- Read more | The Anglo-Saxons’ last stand
The meanings of some of these names were obvious, but for others we have to read between the lines. Alestan Braders (‘Broad Arse’), Willelm Pinguis (‘the Fat’) and the man just known as Porcel (‘Little Pig’), are likely to have been overweight. Alric Penipurs (‘Pennypurse’) was almost certainly tight with his money. Lewin Gulee (‘Big Mouthful’) probably had a foul mouth. And we can assume that Lefstan Bittecat (‘Barrel Cat’) liked a drink. But how Edwin Wridel came to be known as ‘the Wriggler’ remains a mystery.
A load of Ballocs
The creation and use of derogatory nicknames might have been done in good humour, or could have served a community-building function. However, some of the names from 11th-century England sound downright offensive to modern ears.
In Winchester around 1050, we know of at least three men whose names referred to testicles. There was an Alfred Taddeballoc (‘Toad-bollock’), a Lefwin Balloe (‘Bollock’), and one man known simply by the name Balloc (‘Bollock’). Even if the sexually explicit nature of these names was not as taboo in medieval England as it is today, the use of these names must have still been unpleasant for the people who had to live with them.
This must certainly have been true in the case of Godwinus Clawcunte (‘Scratch-c*nt’), whose name conjures up an image of a man with some sort of unfortunate groin-related ailment.
An artificial divide
The names of English people in the 11th century can tell us a huge amount about their world and how it was changing. Some of this was, undoubtedly, a result of the Norman conquest, but other aspects of its transformation likely reflected longer-term shifts within English society. In fact, names might be linked to the apparent divide evident between the world that came before 1066 and the one that came after.
Names that were popular in England a century after the Conquest could equally be plucked from any census over the past 900 years: William and Richard, Alice and Matilda. They are recognisably English, recognisably modern. In contrast, the Æthelwulfs and Ælfgifus of pre-Conquest England seem alien and unfamiliar. They create an air of fantastical detachment – more like characters from Game of Thrones than the direct ancestors of modern Englishmen and women. And they can create a false sense that the people of England in 1066 were far more different from those that followed them than they really were.
For more detail on the Bayeux Tapestry, you access our HistoryExtra Academy series on the subject: a six-part video lecture series, in which the majesty and mystery of the Tapestry is explored in full.
]]>How Alfred the Great saved the Anglo-Saxons from the Vikingshttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-alfred-great-saved-anglo-saxons-from-vikings-podcast/2026-10-21T10:00:08.000ZAs the Viking Great Heathen Army advanced to the borders of Wessex, the conquest of Anglo-Saxon England appeared all but complete.
In the third episode of this four-part series on the Viking invasion of Anglo-Saxon England in the latter half of the ninth century, James Osborne is joined by historian Dr Eleanor Barraclough to examine how Alfred the Great rose from the cusp of defeat, to a stunning military victory at the battle of Edington.
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Want to know more about the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings? James Osborne rounds up essential reading from the HistoryExtra archive that explores this pivotal moment in Viking and Anglo-Saxon history – including insights into Viking culture, the everyday experience of Anglo-Saxon communities, Alfred’s use of religion and learning as tools of political renewal, and the long legacy of the Danelaw on English identity and culture. Go beyond the podcast
]]>This Viking warlord had a magical banner that promised victory. But it had a secret cursehttps://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/viking-warlord-sigurd-the-stout-raven-banner/2026-10-20T14:59:20.000ZFacing a Scottish army he believed outnumbered his own seven to one, the Viking warlord Sigurd the Stout went to his mother for help. According to Orkneyinga Saga, she had little sympathy – if any – for his concerns.
“She basically says, ‘Well, if I thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket,’” Viking Age scholar Judith Jesch explains on the HistoryExtra podcast.
Despite her misgivings about her son’s courage, his mother had, however, made something for him: a banner bearing a raven, so skilfully worked that the bird seemed to fly when the cloth whipped in the wind. She promised that it would bring him victory, with one condition.
“She says, ‘This banner will help you win the battle, but whoever carries the banner will die.’”
Three standard-bearers were killed in the fighting that followed. “You'd think they would have heard that it was a bad idea to carry this banner,” Jesch says. “But Sigurd does eventually win the battle.”
Fighting for power in Scotland
Sigurd ruled Orkney in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. From the islands off Scotland’s northern coast, the Norse earls could reach allies and enemies across Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland. They also sought territory closer to home, across the Pentland Firth in Caithness.
The saga names Sigurd’s Scottish opponent as Earl Finnleik and places their battle at a site generally identified as Skitten, near Wick. Control of this part of the mainland was a recurring concern for Orkney’s rulers.
This account of the battle was written long after the fighting. Orkneyinga Saga, a history of the islands’ earls, is generally thought to have first taken shape around 1200, some two centuries after Sigurd’s lifetime. Its writers drew on earlier traditions, and the text underwent further revision.
We cannot recover a conversation between Sigurd and his mother from this scene, or establish what happened at Skitten through its account of an enchanted banner. We can, though, see what interested the storytellers who wrote this legend.
A taunting mother
“Her response to him is goading,” Jesch explains. “And this is a motif we find a lot in Icelandic sagas.”
In saga feuds, a killing or an insult could affect the standing of an entire family. Relatives had a stake in whether a man sought compensation, took revenge or did nothing, even if they would never fight themselves.
“It's often thought of as a very masculine world,” says Jesch. “It's the men going out and killing each other, basically. But as the sagas make clear, women also play a part in this process because they're part of the family group.”
That involvement often means “urging, encouraging the menfolk to go out” and commit violence, she explains, whether to avenge a wrong or for another purpose.
Sigurd’s mother uses the same pressure against her son. Her wool-basket remark paints a picture of an earl anxious about the odds as a child who still needs protecting – it’s emasculating. If he wants to be taken seriously, she implies, he must accept the possibility of death.
Such scenes tell us about the expectations of saga writers and their audiences. The woman who shames a reluctant man into fighting is a recurring literary figure – beyond this saga, too; think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
But in this story, the notion of women encouraging men to commit violence is only one of several motifs.
“It's the combination of women giving advice, women with magical powers, and women goading men to go out and kill. These are three motifs that are entwined in this episode.”
Weaving the fate of warriors
Women who foresee events or practise magic appear elsewhere in Norse literature, among them the seeresses known as ‘völur’. The banner belongs to another strand of Norse storytelling, in which textile work gives women control over the fate of warriors. A poem preserved in Njál’s Saga describes valkyries, the supernatural figures associated with choosing the battlefield dead, weaving a fabric of war from human entrails and severed heads.
The raven, too, was familiar in accounts of battle. It fed on the corpses left after fighting and was associated with Odin, whose ravens Huginn and Muninn brought him knowledge of the world. On Sigurd’s banner, the bird is an appropriate emblem for a victory that will leave its bearers dead.
There is evidence for Vikings entering battles with raven standards outside the sagas. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the capture of a Viking war banner with the black bird in Devon in 878 – during the Viking attacks on Alfred the Great’s Wessex.
The death of Earl Sigurd
Sigurd died in 1014 at Clontarf, near Dublin, fighting in the coalition opposed to the Irish ruler Brian Boru. His allies included the rulers of Dublin and Leinster. With Irish and Norse interests entangled on the battlefield, the conflict neatly demonstrates how interlinked the Norse and broader Gaelic worlds had become.
- Read more | The history of Dublin: from Viking stronghold to international success story
His death is recorded beyond the Icelandic saga tradition. The Annals of Ulster name the earl of Orkney among the dead. And in Njál’s Saga, the raven banner returns to account for his end. Once again, its bearers are killed. This time, the surviving men refuse to take it. Sigurd takes the banner himself. As per his mother’s magic, he dies.
Judith Jesch was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>Was the story of Jesus inspired by Emperor Augustus? The clever trick early Christians used to convert ancient Romehttps://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/was-the-story-of-jesus-based-on-emperor-augustus/2026-10-16T15:00:46.000ZIt’s an ancient story. A child is set to become a king. But when those in power learn of his coming, they attempt to orchestrate his death. The child escapes, his future greatness apparently beyond the reach of those who would rather see him dead.
This is a narrative arc that, of course, harkens to Herod’s attempt to kill the infant Jesus. But it’s also the origin story of Rome’s first – and arguably greatest – emperor: Augustus.
For classicist Tim Whitmarsh, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, this resemblance is resonant enough that it could be deemed intentional. If the early Christians could present Jesus as a figure comparable to Augustus, would that help them to explain why the religious figurehead was worth replacing the old Roman gods with? It’s an argument that relates specifically to how Jesus was described and understood, rather than comparing the two men’s life biographies.
“Augustus and Jesus are clearly very different figures in terms of their backgrounds and in terms of the message that they're projecting,” he says. “But I think the way in which Jesus was, if you like, ‘packaged’ in the first century was designed to gel with elements of Roman propaganda around the figure of Augustus himself.
A new order rooted in the past
Augustus was born in Rome in 63 BC, roughly six decades before Jesus. Originally named Gaius Octavius, he rose to power during the civil wars that followed Julius Caesar’s assassination. In 27 BC, he received the title Augustus, marking the conventional beginning of his reign as Rome’s first emperor. He ruled until AD 14.
In the context of the traditions and norms of the Roman Republic, this was a move that required some PR. Romans associated kingship with tyranny, and their Republic had traditionally distributed authority among magistrates and the Senate. Augustus concentrated power in his own hands while presenting himself as the restorer of established institutions.
“Augustus creates this paradoxical relationship with the past, whereby the Roman Republic is both fulfilled in the figure of Augustus, who's returning to the Republic, but also in a sense radically changed by it,” Whitmarsh explains.
“So you've got this sense of simultaneously re-rooting the Roman Empire in tradition but also transforming it.”
The Christian claim about Jesus had a comparable structure. His followers understood him through Jewish scripture and expectations, while proclaiming that his life, death and resurrection had brought something new: an expansion on the past, while still seeking to derive validation from it. Both the Roman Empire and the new Christian religion rooted themselves in one transformative individual who sought legitimacy, in some regard, from an older, respected past.
- Read more | “The Roman empire cannot have been governed by a series of psychopaths. It would not have survived”: Mary Beard on Roman Emperors
Birth stories with striking parallels
This narrative work begins with the birth stories. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written in the first century AD, describe Jesus’s beginnings through divine announcements and a prophetic fulfilment of his future significance.
“There are surprisingly similar stories told about Augustus,” says Whitmarsh.
In his Life of Augustus, the Roman biographer Suetonius reports on a portent that announced that a king would be born for the Roman people. The alarmed Senate decreed that no male child born that year should be allowed to live. However, senators with pregnant wives prevented the decree from being formally registered: each hoped that the predicted ruler might be his own son.
- Read more | A history of the Bible: who wrote it and when?
Now think back to the stories of the Bible. In Matthew’s account, Herod, Rome’s client king in Judaea, learns that a child has been born who is described as king of the Jews. He orders the killing of boys aged two and under in Bethlehem and its surroundings. Jesus survives because Joseph, warned in a dream, takes him and Mary to Egypt.
“[Augustus’s birth story] is so eerily close to the story in Matthew of the Massacre of the Innocents that it seems to me unlikely that the Massacre of the Innocents was not, in a sense, reflecting on that.”
The imperial language of “good news”
Another link between the two figures’ narratives is an inscription linking Augustus’s birthday to the beginning of the year.
In 9 BC, the Roman governor of Asia, Paullus Fabius Maximus, proposed a calendar reform adopted by the province’s Greek cities. Asia here means the Roman province in western modern-day Turkey.
Under the arrangement, the year would begin on 23 September, Augustus’s birthday. Copies of the relevant texts survive from several places, most famously Priene. They show how provincial institutions incorporated loyalty to the Roman emperor into the organisation of everyday life as a symbol and method of devotion.
The accompanying praise presented Augustus as a saviour who had ended war and brought order. His birthday marked the beginning of benefits for the world, expressed through the Greek word euangelia: “good news”.
“This euangelia is taken up by Christians to mark the Gospel.”
Mark begins his account by announcing the “good news” of Jesus Christ. Paul’s earlier letters also use this language.
Jewish culture also plays an interconnected role here. In Jewish scripture, Isaiah describes the announcement of good news concerning God’s deliverance of his people. Greek versions of those scriptures gave early Christians a vocabulary through which to express their hopes.
Early Christians seem to have been drawing from the Jewish roots of their religion, while also referencing the history of Roman imperial rule. These dual origins shouldn’t be surprising – Christianity explicitly emerged from Jewish life within a Roman imperial world.
So for Whitmarsh, the evidence suggests that the early Christians were consciously adapting Jesus’s story to align with familiar archetypes of authority, even if the details of their claims differed profoundly from those made for Augustus.
- Read more | From secret cults to Christianity, how did ancient Roman religion change so dramatically?
“We're not being told that Jesus is Augustus,” he says, “but they're using the same language and the same tropes, if you like, to establish Jesus as a radically new figure who also roots us in the past.”
Tim Whitmarsh was speaking to Spencer Mizen on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>Alexander the Great's empire crumbled into chaos after his death. How did it fall apart so quickly?https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/alexander-the-great-came-close-to-death-no-succession-plan/2026-10-14T15:49:25.000ZAlexander the Great had repeatedly given his companions reason to fear for his life. He fought at the front of his army, exposing himself to deadly danger. On campaign in what is now Pakistan in 326 BC, an arrow penetrated his chest. He survived.
But in June 323 BC, at the age of 32, his luck finally ended. Alexander died in Babylon, in modern Iraq, after an ambiguous illness that ancient accounts describe as involving a worsening fever. His death plunged his empire into a succession crisis.
“Alexander made no plan to die so young, which seems absurd because he'd come so close to death so many times,” says Edmund Richardson, professor of classics at Durham University and author of Alexander: God, King, Man.
“He'd been stabbed, shot, walloped with rocks, knocked unconscious, had a lung collapse. He'd come close to death an absurd amount of times. But he makes no plan. He names no heir.”
Alexander had created the most impressive empire the world had seen to date but couldn’t secure agreement on who could inherit his authority. So, what happened next?
The rise of Alexander the Great
Alexander became king of Macedon, a kingdom north of the Greek city-states, in 336 BC. Two years later, he crossed into Asia to attack the Persian empire. His campaigns brought Egypt, the Persian heartlands and territories reaching into the Indian subcontinent under his rule. Alexander took over much of Persia’s existing system of provinces, governed by officials known as satraps. But keeping those territories together depended heavily on his personal authority, backed by military success.
“Really almost immediately after his death, his generals, his commanders, start to try to claim power for themselves,” Richardson explains, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “Ambitious provincial governors try to set up little empires of their own.”
Ancient accounts suggest Alexander passed his signet ring, a symbol of royal authority, to his senior commander Perdiccas. But even if this gesture really happened, it certainly didn’t settle who should become king or how the other commanders should be governed. There was no arrangement that everyone recognised as binding. So the immediate problem was finding a royal successor.
Looking to his family, Alexander’s wife Roxane was pregnant when he died. Her child might provide a direct heir, but nobody yet knew whether it would be a boy. Meanwhile, another candidate was already available: Alexander’s adult half-brother Arrhidaeus. Ancient writers describe him as having an intellectual impairment. He possessed the royal ancestry that mattered to Macedonian soldiers but wasn’t deemed able to exercise independent authority.
Alexander’s army fractured along these faultlines. Infantrymen supported Arrhidaeus, while leading officers favoured waiting for Roxane’s child. The eventual compromise produced two kings: Arrhidaeus, who took the royal name Philip III, and, following his birth, Alexander’s son Alexander IV. Perdiccas served as the leading figure in the government acting on their behalf.
But the limitations of this settlement were fundamental.
Could this arrangement hold together?
“This is a deliberately weak setup. Both of those kings are meant to be figureheads, are meant to allow Alexander's generals, his closest friends, the people who'd served with him, to claim power for themselves.”
In fact, Richardson says, “no one who actually takes the throne, or even acts as Alexander's regent, has the power to hold it all together.”
The empire didn’t immediately dissolve into separate kingdoms. Commanders could still claim to serve the royal family while pursuing increasingly independent policies. Some also sought to preserve the empire under their own leadership. One such governor was Ptolemy, a longstanding companion of Alexander who received Egypt in the settlement after his death. Egypt offered considerable wealth and a strong territorial base.
Ptolemy then acquired an ace card that his rivals couldn’t reproduce: Alexander himself.
Alexander the Great’s body
“The plan is to bury Alexnader in Macedon, but Alexander's hearse and the body are hijacked midway along the route by Ptolemy, one of Alexander's childhood friends and then governor of Egypt,” says Richardson.
Ptolemy secured the body and brought it to Egypt, frustrating Perdiccas. The remains were initially buried at Memphis and subsequently housed in Alexandria. The dead king remained a source of prestige and authority, and possession of his remains allowed Ptolemy to associate himself with Alexander’s memory and present himself as its custodian. It also demonstrated the limits of the regent’s power. Perdiccas could claim authority over Alexander’s empire, but wasn’t even able to determine where its founder would be buried.
The seizure formed part of a broader confrontation between the two men. Perdiccas invaded Egypt, attempting to bring Ptolemy under control. His campaign ended disastrously, and cost him his reputation and status. In 321 or 320 BC, officers in his own army murdered him.
On the other hand, Ptolemy had survived the challenge, and within decades became an independent monarch. “After that, the empire fragments,” Richardson says. “It's everyone for themselves.”
The process continued through decades of warfare among the successors, as Alexander’s former commanders are known. The two formal kings proved unable to protect even themselves. Philip III was killed in 317 BC. Alexander IV and Roxane were murdered around 310 BC on the orders of Cassander, the commander who had gained control in Macedon.
Even in death, Alexander the Great left behind enduring cities, dynasties and cultural connections that reshaped the lands of his conquests in the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia permanently. But the political unity he had imposed couldn’t continue without him.
Edmund Richardson was speaking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>The rise of Alfred the Greathttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/alfred-vs-vikings-podcast-episode-two/2026-10-14T09:00:11.000ZAs the Viking Great Heathen Army refused to leave Anglo-Saxon England, the pressure mounted on the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to respond, placing the future of the land in the hands of Alfred the Great.
In this second episode of our four-part HistoryExtra podcast series on the Viking invasion of ninth-century England, James Osborne and historian Dr Eleanor Barraclough explore the regions overrun by Viking forces and the rise of Alfred the Great amid the collapse of Anglo-Saxon resistance.
Watch now or listen ad-free below:
View Green Video on the source website
Want to know more about the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings? James Osborne rounds up essential reading from the HistoryExtra archive that explores this pivotal moment in Viking and Anglo-Saxon history – including insights into Viking culture, the everyday experience of Anglo-Saxon communities, Alfred’s use of religion and learning as tools of political renewal, and the long legacy of the Danelaw on English identity and culture. Go beyond the podcast
]]>The Soviets found proof of Hitler's death. So why did they hide it from the world?https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/soviet-proof-of-hitlers-death-hid-it-from-the-world/2026-10-11T13:00:04.000ZIn the ruins of Berlin in May 1945, Soviet investigators recovered dental remains and tracked down two people familiar with Adolf Hitler’s mouth: his dental assistant and the technician who had made his elaborate dental work.
Both quickly recognised what they were shown.
“They are able to not only describe all of the complex dental treatment that Hitler has had over the years, but then, when confronted with the physical remains in front of them, they're said, ‘Yes, straight away, these are Hitler's teeth,’” explains historian Caroline Sharples, author of The Long Death of Adolf Hitler.
But even as Soviet investigators assembled their findings, Moscow publicly encouraged uncertainty about whether Hitler was dead at all. Why would the power that had captured Berlin withhold evidence confirming the Nazi leader’s fate?
The death of Hitler
Hitler died on 30 April 1945 in the Führerbunker, the underground shelter beneath the Reich Chancellery complex in central Berlin, as Soviet troops were closing in. His staff carried his body and that of his wife, Eva Braun, into the garden, doused them with petrol and burned them.
When Soviet forces took the site, its investigation fell partly to SMERSH, the military counterintelligence organisation whose name abbreviated the Russian phrase “Death to spies”.
According to the Soviet account, investigators recovered the charred remains of a man and woman outside the bunker and performed autopsies. The dental identification became the strongest element of that investigation.
“They take them to their field headquarters, they perform an autopsy, they have dental remains extracted, and they immediately hunt down Hitler's former dental nurse and his dental technician,” says Sharples speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
The witnesses were Käthe Heusermann and Fritz Echtmann. Their knowledge of Hitler’s distinctive bridges and other dental work gave investigators crucial evidence that was much more tangible than a subjective resemblance between a burned corpse and a photograph.
But evidence gathered inside the intelligence organisation did not automatically become information available to allies, or even to other Soviet officials.
As Sharples explains, “the Soviets have this evidence, but the public line is always, ‘No. We haven't found anything.’”
In practice, Soviet statements fluctuated. Reports suggesting that a body had been identified were followed by denials. On 9 June, Marshal Georgy Zhukov publicly said there was no identified corpse and raised the possibility that Hitler had escaped. Soviet suggestions that he might be in Spain prompted an official Spanish denial.
Why ambiguity about Hitler’s death was useful
For the Soviets, this intentional uncertainty was politically useful. Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union had fought a common enemy, but following crucial developments at the Yalta conference, their alliance was already strained over the direction of Europe’s postwar future. Suggestions that Hitler remained at large could cast suspicion on other countries and sustain the argument that the Nazi threat required continued vigilance. Historians have therefore interpreted Stalin’s handling of the evidence partly as an attempt to strengthen his position in the postwar settlement.
For Western investigators, the immediate consequence was that they had to reconstruct Hitler’s death without access to the strongest physical evidence. In June 1945, witnesses in British and American custody began describing the burning of the bodies. They included Hitler’s chauffeur, Erich Kempka, who had supplied the petrol.
“They're interrogated separately, and then in late June they're both paraded before the press,” says Sharples of Kempka and a guard who had observed the burning.
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“They tell their stories, and this is the first real testimonial evidence that we have from people who are able to say, “yes, he's dead. Yes, we saw his body destroyed.””
But without the dental records for corroboration, these eyewitness statements weren’t enough to silence every objection. Had Hitler’s staff agreed on a cover story? Could witnesses distinguish what they had seen from what others had told them?
British Military Intelligence commissioned the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to investigate. He sought witnesses, compared their accounts and reconstructed events inside the bunker. On 1 November 1945, he presented his conclusion in Berlin: Hitler had killed himself.
“This isn't necessarily the whole truth by any means,” Sharples observes. “This is what has been unfolding publicly.”
Behind the scenes, Soviet inquiries continued. In May 1946, investigators from the internal-security apparatus associated with the NKVD (the Soviet Union’s secret police organisation) returned to the bunker site, after further questioning witnesses in custody. They recovered skull fragments from the Chancellery garden where Hitler’s corpse was burned. One fragment appeared to contain a bullet hole. “Again, this evidence isn’t shared [with other countries],” Sharples says.
The truth emerges
During the 1950s, that secrecy became harder to maintain. Germans returning from Soviet captivity included members of Hitler’s household who had witnessed the aftermath of his death.
“They have been his valet or his close advisers,” says Sharples. “They have been the people who were instructed to carry out that cremation of his corpse. So they have handled his body, let alone just seen it.”
German legal proceedings gathered testimony, including from these people, to establish Hitler’s death formally. The Berchtesgaden court’s investigation culminated in a declaration of death in 1956. Accounts of the dental identification also started to emerge, revealing that Soviet investigators had possessed evidence unavailable to their Western counterparts.
Then, in 1968, Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski published The Death of Adolf Hitler, including an autopsy report and previously withheld material.
“It is very much a propaganda text in its tone,” Sharples says. “Much of the book is a celebratory account of the Soviet war effort, and then Hitler's autopsy report is in this collection.”
The publication acknowledged the recovery and examination of remains. But its insistence on cyanide poisoning also challenged the Western account centred on a gunshot.
For Sharples, this interpretation carried an ideological purpose. Soviet narratives presented poison as a supposedly weak, feminine means of death, denying Hitler the image of a soldier dying by his pistol. Those were propagandists’ gendered assumptions, not forensic distinctions.
Western scepticism consequently concerned both the findings and their presentation. Evidence released selectively, inside an overtly political account, was difficult to assess separately from the motives of those releasing it.
Caroline Sharples was speaking to Charlotte Vosper on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>Ancient Rome's founding fathers: the extraordinary stories of the city's first kingshttps://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/ancient-romes-founding-fathers-the-extraordinary-stories-of-the-citys-first-kings/2026-10-09T13:15:37.000ZAccording to the ancient Roman tradition, the city of Rome began with a king who was raised by a wolf after being abandoned by the gods. This line of monarchs would end with a ruler remembered chiefly for his arrogance and abuse of power.
Between Romulus – the first mythical king – and Tarquinius Superbus – the last – stood five other kings, each associated with a particular contribution to Roman life. Together, their reigns explained how a settlement beside the River Tiber acquired the institutions of a state that would grow to become the mighty Roman Republic.
But were these men historical figures, or characters created to account for developments whose origins had been forgotten?
Ancient historian Christopher Smith, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, that binary is too restrictive.
“Is it a myth? Is it a legend? Or is it some sort of reflection of reality which isn't correct, but is telling us some quite important truths?”
The problem of the missing centuries
The traditional chronology places Rome’s foundation in 753 BC, in central Italy, long before its armies controlled the Mediterranean.
“In the Roman account, the first king is in the middle of the 8th century BC – that's Romulus – and the last king is expelled from Rome in 509 BC,” Smith explains.
But there is a huge distance between those supposed events and the historians who described them.
“The first Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, does not write until 200 BC. And I've just been talking about the period from 750 to 500 BC. So, there's a gap.”
Writing around the end of the third century BC, Pictor looked back roughly three centuries to the monarchy’s traditional end, and more than five to its beginning. And to further complicate the picture, his history survives only in fragments and references by later authors.
Smith contrasts this with Greek historians who could investigate events within living memory. Thucydides, for example, participated in the fifth-century BC war between Athens and Sparta that became the subject of his work.
- Read more | 2,200 years ago Rome got caught in the Thucydides Trap. The result transformed the ancient world
Roman accounts of the kings had no comparable proximity. The fullest surviving narratives, including Livy’s history, were written later still. Nevertheless, the royal sequence has a recognisable structure.
The first three Roman kings?
“Romulus is number one,” Smith says. “He has a miraculous birth, gets rid of his twin, takes over, and he founds a lot of the military and political apparatus of Rome.”
In the familiar legend, Romulus and Remus are abandoned twins who survive through the intervention of a she-wolf, who they suckle from. Their eventual dispute leaves Remus dead and Romulus the founder of the new city. The story associates Rome’s beginnings with both political creation and violence. But a functioning community requires more than a founder and an army.
“So the next king, Numa Pompilius, comes in and he teaches the Romans about religion,” Smith explains. “So you've got statecraft with Romulus. You've then got religion with Numa Pompilius.”
Religion here meant public responsibilities as well as personal belief: priesthoods, ceremonies and the correct relationship between the community and its gods.
- Read more | Ancient Roman culture would be baffling to modern eyes – and their toilet habits prove it
The third king, Tullus Hostilius, shifts attention back towards conflict.
“Tullus Hostilius is predominantly associated with military activity and the conquest of territory.”
Read in sequence, these reigns give separate – but, crucially, intertwined – identities to processes that any growing city might experience: establishing authority, organising worship and extending control over its neighbours. Whether those processes actually belonged to three identifiable rulers – or whether those rulers are symbolic personifications of those processes – is another question.
Outsiders and a changing city
The fourth king, Ancus Marcius, combines qualities assigned to his predecessors.
“He's quite pious, he looks after military affairs. He's quite sane and stable,” Smith says.
Then the narrative introduces an outsider: Tarquinius Priscus, also called Tarquin the Elder.
“He comes from Etruria, north of the Tiber River. He's a new person to arrive, and he is a builder. There's an awful lot of building work that happens under his reign.”
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Etruria lay principally in what is now Tuscany, Umbria and northern Lazio. Its cities belonged to a prosperous society with extensive Mediterranean connections, skilled craftspeople and monumental religious buildings. Rome developed alongside this influential neighbour.
Tarquin’s foreign origin therefore raises useful historical questions. Could the story reflect the movement of powerful families between cities, or Rome’s absorption of outside skills and leadership? Either way, Tarquin’s role in this mythology presents the city’s development as something involving newcomers, rather than an entirely self-contained achievement.
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Reform followed by tyranny
Servius Tullius, the sixth king “seems another kind of intruder into the story,” Smith explains. “He's not related to anybody, but he turns out to be one of the most inventive kings.”
The tradition credits him with reorganising the population and its civic obligations.
“So he resets the constitution. Allegedly, he does a whole load of founding [of institutions]. He reorganises the city.” The constitution, here, refers to arrangements governing political participation and public duties, rather than a single written document. Reforms attributed to Servius connected wealth, military service and citizens’ place within the state.
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The final king provides the narrative’s reversal. Tarquinius Superbus removes Servius and takes power, before being expelled himself.
“Clue's in the name: ‘Superbus’, meaning proud,” Smith observes.
His overthrow explains the emergence of the republic: government through public offices rather than kingship. The sequence thus accounts for both the creation of royal authority and the justification for ending it. But how much of this story is actually true?
What the buildings can tell us
Archaeology offers an independent way to examine the setting of these stories.
On Rome’s Capitoline Hill, substantial foundations survive from the sixth-century BC Temple of Jupiter, a sanctuary also dedicated to Juno and Minerva. Roman tradition associated its construction with the Tarquins. A project of this size required resources, labour and coordination. It supports the picture of an early Rome capable of major collective building.
But it doesn’t independently verify who commissioned it. That is where Smith locates the “middle ground” between fact and mythology.
Even if these traditions didn’t stem from individual kings, we can still infer some things about the societies that produced them. Their stories may combine inherited memories, explanations of existing institutions and later judgements about good and bad government.
“What’s exciting about the Roman king narrative,” Smith concludes, “is that it distils an awful lot that's going on in an archaic society into a narrative form.” And that narrative form is “a really important way in which the Romans told a story: their origin, their expansion, and how power worked”.
Christopher Smith was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>How the Vikings pushed Anglo-Saxon England to the brinkhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/alfred-vs-vikings-podcast-episode-one/2026-10-07T08:00:16.000ZDuring the latter decades of the ninth century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms faced an existential threat as Viking forces launched an assault on a scale never seen before.
In this opening episode of a four-part series on how the Viking Great Heathen Army pushed Anglo-Saxon England to the brink, James Osborne is joined by Dr Eleanor Barraclough to discuss the coming of the Great Heathen Army and take a closer look at the everyday lives and motivations of the people who would soon lay waste to much of Anglo-Saxon England.
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Want to know more about the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings? James Osborne rounds up essential reading from the HistoryExtra archive that explores this pivotal moment in Viking and Anglo-Saxon history – including insights into Viking culture, the everyday experience of Anglo-Saxon communities, Alfred’s use of religion and learning as tools of political renewal, and the long legacy of the Danelaw on English identity and culture. Go beyond the podcast
]]>This was one of the most brutal battles of WW2 – so why have you never heard of it?https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/battle-of-hill-170-arakan-offensive/2026-10-06T17:01:57.000ZWhen the men of 44 Commando occupied a position called Pinner near Kangaw, in western Burma, they dug in and waited. The knew the opposing Japanese forces were nearby. Why were they not attacking?
“It was almost eerily empty. Tensions were high,” explains historian Lucy Betteridge-Dyson, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
The wait didn’t last too long. After darkness fell, artillery opened fire from the surrounding rice paddies, with shells bursting among the trees above the commandos. “There is a very brief barrage, and then it stops. It stops completely.”
But that brief silence was only a prelude to further conflict, and infantry attacks quickly followed, bringing Japanese soldiers into the defenders’ trenches. Pinner was one position in a wider struggle around Kangaw in January 1945, remembered chiefly for its climax on nearby Hill 170. The stakes extended beyond these small patches of high ground: control of them could determine whether Japanese troops retained a crucial route of withdrawal.
That night’s fighting at Pinner was an early phase of the Kangaw operation, distinct from the major assault on Hill 170 a week later.
The Burma campaign
Three years earlier, it had been the British and their allies who were retreating.
Japan invaded Burma, now Myanmar, in January 1942. Burma stood between Japanese forces advancing through south-east Asia and British India. Its loss would expose India’s eastern approaches and disrupt the overland supply route to China, which was also fighting Japan.
The ensuing Allied retreat covered roughly 1,000 miles. British, Indian and Chinese troops withdrew under conditions of exhaustion, disease and collapsing communications. Rangoon, Burma’s principal port, fell in March.
“[The Allied forces] were completely kicked out of Burma, back to the borders with British India,” says Betteridge-Dyson. This retreat was followed by a prolonged process of “getting to grips with this new enemy, the Imperial Japanese Army”.
That required understanding the landscape as well as Japanese tactics. Because Burma, she explains, “isn't just jungle”.
“It's mountains, it's open plains, and you've got to deal with the climate. So you've got to deal with malaria, you've got to deal with the heat, the monsoons.”
By 1944, improved training, supply arrangements and leadership were changing Allied prospects. General William Slim, commanding the Fourteenth Army, and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme Allied commander in South East Asia, helped rebuild confidence. The victories at Imphal and Kohima that year defeated Japan’s offensive into India and demonstrated that its armies could be beaten.
Previously, Betteridge-Dyson explains, rumours had presented Japanese soldiers as “these supermen, these terrifying jungle fighters”. Now the men increasingly believed: “We can win this.”
The next challenge was to turn that confidence into an advance.
The Arakan offensive
On Burma’s western coast lay Arakan, separated from the country’s central plains by the Arakan Yoma mountains. The limited routes across this barrier made roads and passes particularly valuable. Capturing coastal airfields would also support operations inland.
Here, Lieutenant General Philip Christison’s XV Indian Corps conducted an offensive involving British commandos, Indian formations and other Allied troops. Waterways offered a means of bypassing difficult ground and threatening Japanese positions from unexpected directions.
“This was done basically in a series of amphibious landings,” explains Betteridge-Dyson.
Kangaw was so significant because of its road. Japanese forces used it for communications, supplies and withdrawal towards a mountain crossing.
“Because there were so few lateral road links, it was a big fight between the Japanese and the British as to who was going to control these,” she says. “They were very, very important.”
On 22 January 1945, 3 Commando Brigade landed south of Kangaw. These specialist assault troops included both army and Royal Marine commandos. Mangrove creeks and rice paddies complicated movement, while Japanese-held high ground stood between the landing area and the road. No 1 Commando secured Hill 170; 44 Commando occupied Pinner the following day.
“The chaps came ashore. This audacious landing caught the Japanese entirely by surprise,” says Betteridge-Dyson.
The following bombardment brought incredible danger from above. Shells exploding in branches produced “tree bursts”, scattering metal fragments and splintered wood over positions that offered better protection against blasts at ground level.
And the pauses between barrages were deliberate.
“They're trying to unnerve the commandos,” Betteridge-Dyson explains. “They're trying to get them to break their position. They're trying to get them to reveal themselves.”
Close-combat warfare
Eventually, the Japanese infantry climbed towards the defenders.
“It gets down to really nitty-gritty hand-to-hand fighting. You've got suicidal attacks from the Japanese. They're coming in with grenades on sticks and throwing themselves into the frontline trenches.”
The commandos organised their positions for defence in every direction. Tin cans provided improvised warning devices; heavily armed men covered the corners of their defensive perimeter. Remaining in position, and resisting the impulse to fire at every sound, was essential.
Firsthand accounts describe Japanese “jitter parties”: men attempting to unsettle defenders and draw fire that would disclose their positions.
“They're calling out to the commandos, ‘We know where you are. Come out.’”
Betteridge-Dyson also describes accounts of attackers wearing captured green berets to provoke the commandos. Such incidents added an emotional strain to the practical difficulty of distinguishing an approaching enemy from movement in the darkness.
“And they did amazingly manage to do so,” she says of the men holding their fire. “They waited.”
The assault on Hill 170
The wider battle continued, and Indian infantry and tanks reinforced the landing, and the struggle to dominate the road intensified. On 31 January, Japanese troops launched a major assault against Hill 170. Losing the hill would threaten the Allied foothold behind the troops operating towards Kangaw.
At its northern end, Lieutenant George Knowland of No 1 Commando commanded a platoon of 24 men. His Victoria Cross citation records repeated attacks, mounting casualties and his efforts to keep the position fighting.
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When a Bren gun crew was wounded, Knowland took over the weapon. Later he used a light mortar, then a rifle and a submachine gun as attackers closed in. He was mortally wounded. His platoon continued resisting; its stand lasted 12 hours before relief. Knowland was 22.
Other commandos and Indian troops helped sustain the defence. “By the evening of 31 January, the assault had been defeated, and the surviving Japanese attackers were withdrawing.” Their attempt to dislodge the commandos had failed.
Hill 170 formed part of a much larger offensive, dependent on infantry, artillery, naval transport, aircraft and supply services working together. But the contrast with the 1942 retreat was substantial. Allied troops were now landing behind Japanese positions, threatening their communications and holding their ground through determined counterattacks.
The fighting around Kangaw showed what years of adaptation to the Asian landscapes of war had achieved, and how much was still demanded of the men in the trenches.
Lucy Betteridge-Dyson was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
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