Table of contents for March 2023 in History Extra

A survivor. If there’s one thing Katherine Parr is known for above all else, it’s the fact that she outlived her capricious husband Henry VIII, ending the popular ditty on an upbeat note. But there is far more to her story than that. As Lauren Mackay details in our cover feature, Katherine was also an author, a scholar, a religious reformer and an influential stepmother to three future monarchs. Meanwhile, her marital history was nearly as dramatic as Henry’s, with the king being the third of four husbands. It all makes for a fascinating life story, which you can read on page 20. And, if you’d like to explore the drama of the six wives in greater depth, then do look out for our new podcast series, coming soon. Sadly,…

Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 whose history series include Three Pounds in My Pocket. She is also the author of Partition Voices: Untold British Stories (Bloomsbury, 2019) " At their best, podcasts can shine a light on overlooked histories " RECENTLY, I APPEARED ON THE EMPIRE PODCAST with Anita Anand and William Dalrymple to discuss the history of the British empire. We were talking about the partition of India when it emerged that it had affected all three of our families in different ways. It was a hugely emotional recording, and tears were shed. The response from the audience was explosive, too, as people shared their own personal stories on social media, or expressed how little they knew of this recent history. Empire began…

It wasn’t just Henry VIII who profited from marriage to Katherine Parr, but also his children. Katherine provided a period of stability for the royal offspring: Mary, Elizabeth and Edward. Strengthening the bond between Henry and his children was important to her, as her copious correspondence with them proves. Katherine felt for Mary and Elizabeth in particular, both of whom had been declared illegitimate, and she played a pivotal role in Henry’s decision to restore his daughters to the succession. In Henry’s children, Katherine faced three very distinctive personalities shaped by their respective upbringings. Katherine met each on their own terms, an influential presence in their lives, helping to mould the monarchs they would become… Fighting Mary's corner Henry’s decision to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon upended the…

Bloody business An American doctor once claimed that he had invented a contraption that could diagnose illnesses from a single drop of the patient's blood or even just from a handwriting sample. Albert Abrams's Dynomizer was, he said, a miracle machineand, in the 1920s, many people believed him. However, his claims were undermined when a sceptical physician revealed that a drop of supposedly human blood which, according to the Dynomizer, showed signs of malaria and cancer, in fact came from a rooster. Making a splash The 1900 Olympic Games in Paris included a swimming obstacle race in which competitors had to climb up and down a pole in the water, clamber over a row of boats, swim under another row and then head for the finish line. The event was…

Your main character, Rafael Pinto, fights to survive when war breaks out. How did you reconstruct a soldier's life at that time? I didn't reconstruct itI imagined it, based on the experiences of other people. Which is to say, I read books. There is, of course, a lot written about trench warfare, but I was particularly interested in the experience of Bosnians in the Austro-Hungarian army on the eastern front. My main source for that was a memoir by an officer in a Bosnian unit that fought in Serbia, Galicia [a region straddling the current Polish-Ukrainian border] and Italy. Revolution also features, with Pinto later encountering Bolsheviks. How did you research this aspect? Books again. I read Troublous Times (1931), a memoir by Captain AH Brun, a Dane who was…

Medieval Europe can feel like a distant world, with little relevance to the present day. In The Making of Europe, Robert Bartlett demonstrates that little could be further from the truth. It was in the Middle Ages that Europe was created as a cultural entity. And it was in these years that many of the traditional characteristics of the continent first came to the fore, including widespread obedience to the Latin (Catholic) church in Rome, and ideals of chivalry and courtly culture. Bartlett’s story is, fundamentally, one of how political domination drove change. The rise of the modern nation state has done much to obscure the impact of these processes, which saw Francophone aristocrats settle much of Britain and Ireland, and Germanophone elites established across large swathes of Poland, Bohemia,…

If ever I were looking for a historical detective with whom to team up, Kate Strasdin would be top of my list. In 2016, she was given a treasure found by a friend of a friend on a Camden market stall in the 1960s. It was a book - "a ledger of sorts" - created by one woman, Anne Sykes, over her lifetime. The book contained scraps of clothes worn by Anne and others – friends, family and servants. The first items were collected in 1838: a rectangle of white checked muslin worn by Anne on her wedding day that year, along with a sample from the cream satin waistcoat donned by her husband, Adam. Over the ensuing years, new additions mark the arrival of aniline dyes, sewing machines and…

TASTE Pudding pie A 17th-century ballad teasingly describes the "Old Pudding-Pye Woman", a familiar sight traipsing London's streets and peddling her wares - though their quality was highly dubious. Whether or not this reputation was deserved, her spiced currant-and-custard tarts were among the capital's historic street foods. The city's hawkers sold an astonishing range of snacks, from sheep heads to asparagus and oysters. As a street recipe does not survive, this one is based partly on instructions from the early 17th-century cookbook writer Gervase Markham. Difficulty: 7/10 Time: 2 hours 45 minutes INGREDIENTS 1 pack pre-made shortcrust pastry, chilled 600ml double cream 8 egg yolks 100g caster sugar 1 tbsp ground mixed spice 150g currants 1 tbsp demerara sugar METHOD 1. Grease a 20cm non-stick tart tin. Roll out the…

MY HISTORY HERO Broadcaster and author Iain Dale chooses IN PROFILE Ronald Reagan, Republican politician and actor, was the 40th president of the US (1981-89) who earlier served two terms as governor of California (1967-75). A radio sports announcer turned Hollywood star, as Republican leader he pursued neoliberal economic policies dubbed "Reaganomics", and oversaw the arms build-up credited with helping to end the Cold War and hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union. "He and Gorbachev hit it off immediately when they met. I don’t think the Cold War would have ended when it did otherwise" When did you first hear about Reagan? When I was 14, and he ran against Gerald Ford [the incumbent US president] in 1976 in a bid to secure the Republican presidential nomination - and nearly beat…

Nandini Das "The English and the larger European geopolitical field did not really feature in the Mughals' world view. The great Islamic empires - the Ottomans and the Safavids - were the ones the Mughals focused on." Nandini chronicles the plight of the disastrous first English embassy in India on page 66 Bob Nicholson "Queen Victoria sat on the throne for nearly 64 years, but it could all have been so different. Seven different men attacked her during her reign and could have brought the Victorian age to a premature end." Bob profiles seven would-be assassins who plotted to murder Queen Victoria on page 35 Lydia Zeldenrust "My current research looks at the continental connections of early English printing. One point of fascination is the role of immigrant printers at…

Rhiannon Davies: As you write in your book, when England sent its first ambassador to India in 1615, it wasn't a huge success. So why did you choose to focus on it in Courting India? Nandini Das: When we think about England’s connection with India, we often imagine it as a pre-planned, pre-meditated project. But in this very, very early stage, it was marked by uncertainty. That’s the most exciting thing – that sense of risk and unpredictability. This was a moment when England was by no means the huge British empire that it would come to be. What would you say England's position on the world stage was at this time? I think it’s a question of rejigging our mental map. When we think about the world players of…

In 2010, television documentary producer Martin Davidson wrote a moving and insightful book about his German grandfather, an early convert to Nazism. How, he asked, had this seemingly intelligent man fallen so completely under Hitler’s spell? Now, a decade later, Davidson has returned with the same passionate curiosity to examine Nazi Germany as a whole, and the single force that defined it: antisemitism. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hitler made a series of increasingly wild claims about Jews. He blamed them for both the imaginary “stab in the back” that lost Germany the First World War, and the Treaty of Versailles that humiliated the country afterwards. He accused them, somewhat illogically, of being both communists and plutocrats, making them responsible for both the Russian Revolution and the Wall Street crash.…

“The British empire was not from its inception a coherent project, methodologically developed out of some original plan.” The first chapter of Nigel Biggar’s near-500-page “moral reckoning” with empire begins with this eminently reasonable claim. The Oxford professor emeritus of moral theology presents himself as a clear-eyed outsider who has “stumble[d], blindly, into the Imperial History Wars”, to provide complexity and nuance to an otherwise overly politicised field. But all is not what it appears to be. Biggar presents his arguments as a challenge to a vast group of historical scholars he describes as “anti-imperialist”, and who see empire as a “unitary… colonial project” whose “persistent violence” was “oppressive and exploitative”. Some historians do hold the views Biggar criticises – Caroline Elkins in her Legacy of Violence, for example. But…

Across 1 Sluys 4 Pasteur 9 Carr 10 Pontefract 11 Emily Hobhouse 12 Walesa 14 Antonine 16 Heydrich 19 Pocket 21 Janina Ramirez 23 Plantation 24 Inch 25 Marwitz 26 Suarez Down 1 Space race 2 Ukraine 3 Sepoy 5 Amenhotep 6 Tarquin 7 Uncle 8 Angola 13 Aliens Act 15 Nietzsche 17 Dan Snow 18 Hardie 20 Corsica 21 Julia 22 Minos Five winners of Astonish Me! R Thwaite, Greater Manchester; A Smith, Essex; P Burton, Oxfordshire; M Dunse, Dunfermline; R Hancock, Weymouth…

Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. He has presented numerous BBC series, and is the author of several books including The Story of China (Simon & Schuster, 2021). His Twitter handle is @mayavision " He was a true heir to the great writers on the English countryside " “HAPPY IS THE WRITER WHOSE PARISH IS HIS universe,” wrote Ronald Blythe. In this column I’ve often spoken about the value of local history, of seeing things from the countryside not the city and taking the village as the focus. I was reminded of that with the sad news of Blythe’s death in January. He was 100 years old. Born in 1922 in the First World War’s aftermath, he was a true heir to the great…

New views on the six wives Our new podcast series, featuring expert takes on all six of Henry's wives, is launching on our website on 4 March. historyextra.com/six-wives-series During late summer 1544, Katherine Parr, sixth and final wife of Henry VIII, wrote a letter to her husband. Imbued with passion, love and a profound sense of duty, each line of Katherine’s missive is a testament to her devotion to the king. “Thus love maketh me in all things to set apart mine own convenience and pleasure, and to embrace most joyfully his will and pleasure whom I love,” Katherine declared. “God, the knower of secrets, can judge these words not to be written only with ink, but most truly impressed on the heart.” Henry received the letter while laying siege…

When William Caxton began translating and printing works in English, he had to settle on a form of English his readers would understand. This was no easy task, for medieval English was by no means fixed. Instead, it consisted of a collection of often wildly varying regional dialects. Caxton wrote about the difficulties of choosing the right language in several of his books. In the Recuyell, Caxton reveals uncertainty about his own Kentish English, since “I no doubt spoke an English more broad and rude than anywhere else in England”. Caxton spent many years on the continent, where he learned both Dutch and French. This impacted the vocabulary and spelling of his translations, and goes some way in explaining the strange spelling conventions of English today. Caxton received regular complaints…

When awarded penalties during a number of South African tour matches in 1907, members of the Corinthians football club, composed of English gentleman amateurs, purposely kicked the ball behind the goal. This act was an exaggerated public expression of a code of honourable and fair play for which the team had become widely known. However, it didn’t please the South African football authorities, who considered it a lack of respect for local referees. Neither was it a practice the Corinthians repeated in important matches back in England, where winning rather than fair play was their main concern. It is this relationship between the discourse of fair play and its practical manifestations that lies at the heart of Jonathan Duke-Evans’ meticulous and thoroughly entertaining new book. Using examples sourced from as…

At the end of each episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, castaways choose a book to accompany them in their isolation, being reminded that they will automatically be given a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible. But which translation would that be? If we assume that the text had been deposited on the island by the Gideon Society, it would have been the King James (or Authorised) Version, first published in 1611. This remained the primary translation of scripture throughout the English-speaking world until the late 19th century, acquiring a quasi-canonical standing as “the” Bible against which any subsequent translations would inevitably be measured. However, John Barton’s study of biblical translation is not a history of that enterprise. Although he sketches the…

Director LOUISE LOCKWOOD (left) tells us about her new television series charting the colourful life and times of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo The image of Frida Kahlo [1907-54] is everywhere in popular culture, but she remains somehow elusive. Is there a sense of someone who hid in plain sight even as she curated her own image? Her father [Guillermo Kahlo, 1871-1941] was a photographer, so she learned how to sit in front of the camera very early she knew how to present herself. She was a wonderful subject. Having said that, normally when you make documentaries there’s a point where you go: “Oh, I can see them now,” but that never really happened with Frida. I think we have got a handle on her, but it’s more through an…

At home with the Romans How did the smell of a Roman home change between the seasons? Why were ancient toilets placed right next door to the kitchen? And what would the perfect seating plan for a dinner party look like? Dr Hannah Platts joined us on the podcast to take listeners on a multi-sensory tour of the Roman home, revealing how domestic architecture shaped the social dynamics of the ancient people who lived there. historyextra.com/roman-home-pod Rights and roles "A highly valued trait of being a Roman was being fearless. Women could be fearless in different ways to men, but their fearlessness was still recognised and celebrated." Dr Kate Cooper appeared on the podcast as part of our "Everything you wanted to know" series to tell us more about Roman…