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News stories from the HistoryExtra podcast
Published: December 9, 2025 at 12:21 PM
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Showing 1 to 24 of 58 results
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Alexander the Great's empire crumbled into chaos after his death. How did it fall apart so quickly?
He survived battlefield wounds and conquered an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to India. So when Alexander the Great finally died, why was there no plan for succession?
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Far from the glitz and glamour of popular period dramas, new research shows travelling by horse-drawn carriage was often a thoroughly uncomfortable affair
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He made a fortune from Britain’s slave trade. But did he regret it?
Edward Colston gave millions in today's money to schools, almshouses and charitable causes, carefully crafting an image of himself as a Christian benefactor. But his wealth was bound up with the trafficking of enslaved Africans. Could he ever see that contradiction?
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Alexander the Great died aged just 32 – but where had he been planning to conquer next?
When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, he was preparing ships, armies and supply networks for a new phase of expansion.
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New research suggests a radical religious proposal, stifled by the premature death of Edward VI, could have fundamentally changed how witches were treated in England
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The most important document in Tudor history? How a forgotten text triggered a royal crisis
When the dying teenage king Edward VI rewrote the royal succession in his own hand, he tried to overturn his father's wishes, disinherit both Mary and Elizabeth, and place his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey on the throne. The document was illegal – but it triggered one of the greatest succession crises in English history
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Could Tudor sleep tips fix your insomnia? Here’s what they got right (and wrong)
What did the people of the early modern period, including the Tudors, believe about sleep?
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In the first half of the 19th century, England’s population doubled. With many families struggling to survive, the picture had to change – and the solution came in an innovative treatment of one material: rubber. But as the question of ‘respectable’ reproduction emerged, Ruth Goodman explains how the invention also widened an already broad class divide
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From health to wealth, here are the strange secrets medieval toilets reveal about life in the Middle Ages
From lost silver coins to fossilised faeces, medieval cesspits have become some of the richest archives of everyday life in the Middle Ages
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Was this the moment Henry VIII became a tyrant?
Before he was the monarch with six wives – two of whom he had beheaded – Henry VIII was a Tudor adonis: attractive and active. What happened?
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Are the secrets of the Middle Ages' most mysterious manuscript hiding in plain sight?
This manuscript’s contents are a centuries-old mystery that still eludes scholars today. But is it really as cryptic as it seems, or are its answers hiding in plain sight?
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Meet the embattled French WW2 leader who withstood the Nazis – and Winston Churchill
In June 1940, as France collapsed and Britain faced the prospect of resisting the Nazis alone, Winston Churchill searched for a French leader willing to keep fighting
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This ordinary ancient Roman object is still used today – and it has barely changed
From dealing with nits to learning the three Rs, ancient Roman childhood bore some striking similarities to the modern experience
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The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
With conflicting advice and endless new trends, it can feel hard to keep up with the modern health and wellness space. But ideas about how to live a healthy life are nothing new. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks had their own list of requirements
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Step inside Hitler's U-boats to witness the nightmarish reality of life on board
Hitler’s U-boats were a feared component of his naval strategy during the Second World War. But what was life aboard these weaponised submersibles actually like?
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In the aftermath of WW2, why did FDR’s Latin American experiment end in abject failure?
Before the Cold War hardened into coups and counterinsurgency, the United States backed reformist governments across Latin America. The abrupt reversal of policy after 1945 wasn’t inevitable, but it reshaped the politics of the northern and southern American continents for generations
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The simple secret that kept the ordinary Tudor diet surprisingly healthy
For most people in Tudor England, an ordinary diet was more structured – and often more varied – than we might expect
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Quality or quantity? With WW2 tanks, there was a surprising winner
Amid the industrial warfare of the Second World War, battlefield performance depended on precise logistics and the ability to absorb catastrophic losses. How did America, Germany and the Soviet Union approach this problem?
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Meet the “grossly underappreciated” Roman emperor who became the enemy of the ancient world
Ancient Rome’s reputation for bad emperors partly rests on hostile sources written after the fact – and Domitian may be the clearest case of how politics shaped historical memory
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How England’s first king used an unexpected weapon to defeat the Vikings
When England’s first true king confronted Viking power in the north, one of his most effective weapons became his manipulation of loyalty
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Long before Cleopatra, another female pharaoh redefined ancient Egyptian power
More than a millennium before Cleopatra, the female ruler Hatshepsut blazed a trail for powerful women in the ancient civilisation
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2,200 years ago Rome got caught in the Thucydides Trap. The result transformed the ancient world
Before the Punic Wars, as Rome and Carthage edged towards conflict in the third century BC, the balance of power in the Mediterranean favoured the Carthaginians. But it was the upstart Romans who would be victorious
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In 1848, the US ended a war with its neighbour and took its land. What happened next?
A peace treaty ended the Mexican–American War in February 1848 and officially left California as new American territory. Unbeknownst to any of the negotiators, gold had been discovered in California just nine days before the treaty was signed
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Did the ancient Egyptians really love cats? The dark truth might break your heart
Cats might have been sacred in ancient Egypt, but they were far from cherished pets. Discover why our assumptions about their treatment draw far more on modern sensibilities than historical reality
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