History Extra

When he died in July 796, King Offa of Mercia had ruled his lands since 757, close to four decades. At a time when Anglo-Saxon England was divided into petty kingdoms and sub-kingdoms, all vying for advantage and supremacy, this was a reign of such extraordinary longevit...

Have royal women's stories been misconstrued? Speaking to Charlotte Vosper, Kate Williams argues that many of them have been, tracing the lives of a whole host of queens – from Hatshepsut to Queen Victoria – to explore how and why these women have so often been viewed through a particular lens.

If you’d like to hear more from Kate Williams about the real lives of royal...

During the final decades of the 19th century, the United States experienced a transformation of epic proportion. It was a period dubbed the Gilded Age, a term borrowed from a satirical novel by Mark Twain that captured a ...

Celebrity crush culture didn’t begin with modern boy bands; it emerged wherever people could see, gossip about, and project desire onto public figures.

From handsome but chaotic Athenian generals and scandal-prone poets to 19th-century ‘rock stars’ and silver-screen rebels, the idea of the male heartthrob has deep historical roots.

Hilary Mitchell explores how fam...

Though debates relating to sexuality, gender identity and the limits of tolerance continue to rage, contemporary Britain seems a broadly accepting place. In historical terms, LGBTQ people are legally safer and freer in the UK than ever before. For most of the period from 1533, when the first civil sodomy law was passed, until the second half of the 20th century, same-sex acts...