BBC History Magazine

“Elizabeth I did not have the happiest childhood. Before she was three years old her father executed her mother, and she was subsequently neglected by that father and imprisoned by her half-sister. When she finally ascended the throne, how would she make sense of all this? Would she seek to honour Henry VIII, or try to rehabilitate Anne Boleyn? In our cover feature, on page 20, Tracy Borman considers how the queen navigated this dilemma. Also this month, we’re reflecting on two anniversaries in which Britain played a key role. On page 28, Robin Ashcroft revisits the expedition that ascended Mount Everest 70 years ago. And on page 46, Matthew Hughes looks back on the British mandate of Palestine, which concluded 75 years ago, coinciding with the foundation of the State…

Jonathan Kennedy “Pandemics have killed millions of people and brought empires crashing down - but they have also created the space for new societies and innovative ideas to emerge and thrive.è Jonathan charts six moments when disease transformed society on page 40 Joanna Arman “I wanted to find out who Margaret of Anjou actually was: to peel away the centuries of propaganda, myths and rumours. Above all, I wanted to see if I could find Margaret’s authentic voice - not just what others said about her.” Joanna profiles one of the most formidable women of the Wars of the Roses on page 56 David Carpenter “That Henry III survived, and was not deposed, I think was because of his huge prestige as a major Christian king. Ultimately you couldn’t describe Henry as a great king or even…

30 JUNE 1860 Great minds clash during Oxford’s ‘Great Debate’ Church spars with science over Darwin’s evolutionary idea A hubbub of anticipation swelled in Oxford’s Radcliffe Library, packed with almost 500 people on 30 June 1860. The 30th annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was being held here to celebrate the opening of the University Museum (now Oxford’s Natural History Museum). This would be no dry conference, though; instead, discussions rapidly gravitated towards On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin’s book - published just seven months earlier - proposing the idea that organisms evolve over time through a process of natural selection. It was a controversial concept - not least with the church. As the debate heated up, two intellectual heavyweights faced off: Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford,…

One of the fiercest historical controversies in recent years exploded last summer, sparked by an essay entitled ‘Is History History?’. Written by James H Sweet, then president of the influential American Historical Association, it was printed in that organisation’s magazine in August 2022. The global social media backlash was overwhelming. Angry readers branded his article “crap”, “smug condescension”, even “white supremacist”. Scholars around the world weighed in, along with media commentators. An opinion piece in The New York Times called it “one of the confusing messes that pop up from time to time in the highest reaches of academia”, while The Washington Post mocked “academia’s most recent pratfall”. In his piece, Sweet, professor of African history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, criticised a shift toward ‘presentism’ - the study…

King Charles supports study on royal slavery links Buckingham Palace has confirmed that it is co-operating with independent academic research exploring the relationship between the British monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is an issue the king takes “profoundly seriously”, says the Palace. PhD historian Camilla de Koning of the University of Manchester is carrying out the study, co-sponsored by Historic Royal Palaces, which will examine material held in the Royal Archives and the Royal Collection. Benin bronzes found to be made from German metal Scientists have traced metal used to make Benin bronzes to the German Rhineland. These artworks were created from the 13th century by the Edo people of the Kingdom of Benin, in what’s now Nigeria, with melteddown brass manilla bracelets used as…

“ Shakespeare’s plays are still powerful statements on the human condition ” THIS YEAR IS THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF the publication of Shakespeare’s complete works, known as the First Folio. It was in November 1623, in William Jaggard’s printing house at the “sign of the Half-Eagle and Key” in Aldersgate, that the last pages of the whopping 900-page book came off the press. The whole print run (unbound) was then taken to the bookshops in St Paul’s churchyard. The book was finally on sale. Publication was announced to the world next spring at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The collection featured 36 plays - half of which we would never know were it not for the Folio, including The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. Without them, how would we see him…