With politics on my mind, I remembered a recipe, ‘To make a Westminster-Fool’, that I once stumbled upon in Hannah Glasse's bestselling 18th-century book The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. A fool is, of course, a silly person or an idiot. But a

Robert the Bruce's grandfather had gone on crusade with Prince Edward of England in 1270, and the king's desire to go himself seems entirely genuine. But by the time he signed a treaty ending the war with the English in 1328, he was too sick. He had

“This month's issue is published on the same day as the UK general election and by the time many of you are reading this the result may already be known. Elections are historic moments and their outcomes have often represented or reflected significan

In 1923, the New World Gas Cooker with a Regulo Thermostat made its debut. The appliance revolutionised cooking, as its temperature could be controlled by a dial. The percentage of homes supplied with electricity when the National Grid was completed

In the summer of 1184, German king Henry VI convoked a Hoftag (informal assembly) at Erfurt, capital of Thuringia, in what's now central Germany. This gathering aimed to bring to an end the bitter conflict between Conrad of Wittelsbach, archbishop of

“Part of the story of Roman roads is as a space for dreaming and imagining. Writer after writer has used the metaphor of treading in the dust of the ancients, and walking in their footsteps allows us to imbibe Roman culture in a way that reading a bo

Michael Wood cites Shakespeare's “lack of education” (July) as a reason some people give for doubting that he wrote his plays – but many people achieve great things through self-education, which often does not show up in their academic record. Shakes

Forged in the Cold War era, the early space race revealed as much about 20th-century tensions as it did about our enduring urge to explore. In this 2021 instalment of the podcast's long-running Everything You Wanted to Know series, historian Tom Elli

Listen ad-free at historyextra.com/podcast or with ads wherever you get your podcasts Was it really possible to get a fair trial in Victorian Britain? That's just one of the questions tackled by Drew Gray in a detailed exploration of 19th-century cri

The Y-shaped plume that was strewn across the sky as the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated just 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1986 is an image burned into our collective memories. It's so well known that even the casual space enthusiast

EDITORIAL Editor Rob Attar [email protected] Deputy editor Matt Elton [email protected] Senior production editor Spencer Mizen Production editor Jon Bauckham Staffwriter Danny Bird Picture editor Samantha Nott samnott@historyextra

The Paris edition of the New York Herald was outspoken, to say the least, in its criticism of the organisation of the tug of war competition in the 1900 Olympics, citing it as “an object lesson in how not to do a thing”. The event should have been a

We need to pay more attention to what we don't know. That is the message of writer, podcaster and former MP Rory Stewart in his new six-part series The Long History of Ignorance: From Confucius to QAnon (BBC Radio 4, Thursday 11 July). Stewart's cent

Spanish Conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés capture the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), toppling the Mesoamerican empire after weeks of intense fighting – a turning point in the Spanish colonisation of the Americas. An uprising o