The excesses of Henry VIII conjure images of lavish feasts: whole-roasted pigs, venison pies, exquisite fruit jellies and fine wines imported from the continent.

It’s an image of luxury – but one almost entirely disconnected from the reality experienced by most people living in Tudor England.

While Henry VIII and…

As much as the Second World War was determined by soldiers exchanging gunfire on the ground, it was also a war of logistics.

Tanks were a weapon that demonstrated that fact clearly. Their battlefield effectiveness was in no doubt as weapons of destruction – but the same effectiveness depended on…

Underrated Ways to Change the World is one of my most-read posts of all time, I think because people see the state of the world and they’re like, “Oh no, someone should do something about this!” and then they’re like “But what should I do about…

Some works of fiction feel startlingly close to reality. Perhaps surprisingly, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – HBO’s latest Game of Thrones spin-off series – might be one such example.

“I was astonished. I had never seen anything like it,” says Dr Hugh Doherty, the show’s historical consultant, in…

What do gluttonous kings, scheming aristocrats and outrageous wigs all have in common? They were all fair game for Georgian satire. In this six-part video series, Alice Loxton takes us inside the world of the Georgians, an age of Empire, elegance and and excess, seen through the biting wit of…

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A few months ago, I got to interview a bunch of bloggers at a writing retreat. I discovered that they all had one thing in common: each one was in possession of a secret.

I don’t mean that they, like, murdered their boyfriend and got…

He is one of the greatest writers of all time, and our longing to know as much as we can about him continues.

We know that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to John and Mary Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and that he was their first child to survive past…

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 ranks among the most audacious acts of treason in British history – a dramatic attempt by a small group of disaffected Catholics to blow up King James I and parliament, not long after the new Stuart regime took the throne.

In this four-part HistoryExtra podcast…

In February 1848, after almost two years of conflict, Mexico signed a peace treaty that formally ended a war with the United States which it no longer had any chance of winning. But the peace treaty didn’t only mark an end to the war. It saw the formal loss of…

A prophetess who warned Oliver Cromwell against killing the king. A Yorkshire maidservant who gained an audience with the Ottoman Sultan. The religious tumult of the 17th century gave ordinary women opportunities to have their voices heard more than ever before. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Dr Naomi Baker looks at…