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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives  but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
BBC History UK

The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink

It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. “You’re the chairman of a fertiliser firm,” the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. “How deep is the mess you’re in?” Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, it’s worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses – not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?

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7 mins  |
September 2024
"We Need a Meaningful Story for the New Generation - Our Composite Union"- There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we'll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed.
BBC History UK

"We Need a Meaningful Story for the New Generation - Our Composite Union"- There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we'll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed.

What a summer it’s been so far, with an astonishing election result. There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we’ll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed. The new prime minister’s dad was a toolmaker, his mum a nurse; the cabinet is majority comprehensive-educated, with more alumni of Parrs Wood High School than of Eton. Among commentators – not just on the left – there’s been a growing feeling that 14 years of Tory rule, compounded by Brexit, have undermined what the great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah: group feeling – the glue that makes societies work. And watching TV on election night, I found myself wondering whether, like sediment settling in a glass, the time has finally arrived for a new national narrative

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3 mins  |
September 2024
Parthian Chicken - Eleanor Barnett recreates an ancient Roman dish that borrowed flavours from a rival neighbouring empire in the Middle East
BBC History UK

Parthian Chicken - Eleanor Barnett recreates an ancient Roman dish that borrowed flavours from a rival neighbouring empire in the Middle East

According to ancient Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, Apicius was “the most gluttonous gorger of all spendthrifts”. The cookbook attributed to him, known simply as Apicius or as De Re Coquinaria (On the Art of Cooking), is one of the oldest collections of recipes surviving from antiquity. Its author may have been Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet of the first century AD who reputedly travelled all the way from Campania to Libya on the hunt for the largest, juiciest prawns.

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3 mins  |
September 2024
 Eastern Promises- Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China
BBC History UK

Eastern Promises- Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China

Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China sometimes successfully, but often disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the troubled but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms

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10+ mins  |
September 2024
The King They Couldn't Kill -Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
BBC History UK

The King They Couldn't Kill -Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power

Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king.

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10+ mins  |
September 2024
The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis
BBC History UK

The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis

Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies weren’t in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well – always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadn’t moved for weeks.

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10+ mins  |
September 2024
"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18″
BBC History UK

"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18″

ALICE LOXTON talks to Danny Bird about her book on 18 individuals who left an indelible mark on British history before they were out of their teens

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10+ mins  |
September 2024
A Pole apart
BBC History UK

A Pole apart

ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries

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4 mins  |
September 2024
Medieval England's p olitical miracle
BBC History UK

Medieval England's p olitical miracle

From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state

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9 mins  |
September 2024
THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS
BBC History UK

THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS

Æthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?

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10 mins  |
September 2024
Succession 1603 - From Tudors to Stuarts - The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change
BBC History UK

Succession 1603 - From Tudors to Stuarts - The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change

The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, writes Susan Doran, it wasn't long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects

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10 mins  |
July 2024
Five things you (probably) didn't know about...Roman Britain
BBC History UK

Five things you (probably) didn't know about...Roman Britain

Rob Collins shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation

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4 mins  |
July 2024
"It had been a tiny triumph, but it had been a British triumph"
BBC History UK

"It had been a tiny triumph, but it had been a British triumph"

MAX HASTINGS talks to Rob Attar about a daring airborne raid that provided a much-needed boost to Britain's morale in the darkest days of the Second World War

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10+ mins  |
July 2024
Dancing with the Devil
BBC History UK

Dancing with the Devil

ROGER MOORHOUSE is impressed by a book that traces the fortunes of the diplomats charged with managing the west's wartime alliance with Josef Stalin

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4 mins  |
July 2024
Victorian cucumber ice cream
BBC History UK

Victorian cucumber ice cream

ELEANOR BARNETT samples the delights of an unusual and refreshing version of one of the world's favourite summer treats

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2 mins  |
July 2024
Anne Boleyn, ‘princess' of France
BBC History UK

Anne Boleyn, ‘princess' of France

JOANNE PAUL is impressed by an account of how the Tudor queen's continental connections shaped her meteoric rise and dramatic fall

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4 mins  |
July 2024
War and pieces
BBC History UK

War and pieces

Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business

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7 mins  |
July 2024
Gulbadan Begum The Mughal Jane Austen
BBC History UK

Gulbadan Begum The Mughal Jane Austen

Gulbadan Begum was meant to live a quiet life in the confines of a Mughal harem. Instead she made her mark on history twice: first, embarking on a pioneering pilgrimage to Islam’s holy cities; second, writing a remarkable history of her dynasty. RUBY LAL tells her story

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5 mins  |
July 2024
Horror in France
BBC History UK

Horror in France

On the morning of 10 June 1944, the residents of Oradour-sur-Glane were going about their lives as normally as was possible in occupied France: cooking, washing, shopping, playing. Little did they know that they were about to become the victims of one of the most infamous massacres of the Second World War.

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10 mins  |
July 2024
"IT'S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THESE WORLD-CHANGING ANCIENT EVENTS"
BBC History UK

"IT'S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THESE WORLD-CHANGING ANCIENT EVENTS"

Daisy Dunn tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the deeds of the extraordinary female figures who shaped them

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10 mins  |
July 2024
Britain's war on the slave ships
BBC History UK

Britain's war on the slave ships

In the early 19th century, a Royal Navy squadron was sent to west Africa to hunt down ships carrying enslaved people to the Americas. The operation was hailed as an act of \"pure unselfish philanthropy\". Yet, writes Mary Wills, the reality was far more tangled

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8 mins  |
July 2024
The Aztecs at war
BBC History UK

The Aztecs at war

RHIANNON DAVIES discovers why war was so important to the Mesoamerican people - and why they believed a badly cooked meal could prevent a soldier from shooting straight

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1 min  |
March 2024
Towering achievement
BBC History UK

Towering achievement

NATHEN AMIN explores a 13th-century stronghold that was built to subdue independent-minded Welsh people, yet has since become a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds

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2 mins  |
March 2024
Eighteenth-century mushroom ketchup
BBC History UK

Eighteenth-century mushroom ketchup

ELEANOR BARNETT shares her instructions for making a flavourful sauce with roots in south-east Asia

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3 mins  |
March 2024
Goodbye to the gilded age
BBC History UK

Goodbye to the gilded age

JOHN JACOB WOOLF is won over by an exploration of the Edwardian era, which looks beyond the golden-era cliché to find a nation beset by a sense of unease

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2 mins  |
March 2024
The power of the few
BBC History UK

The power of the few

Subhadra Das's first book catches two particular waves in current publishing.

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2 mins  |
March 2024
The 'badass' icon
BBC History UK

The 'badass' icon

One of the problems with biography, if an author is not careful, is that it can quickly become hagiography.

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1 min  |
March 2024
Ghosts of Germany's past
BBC History UK

Ghosts of Germany's past

KATJA HOYER is impressed by a study of a nation's attempts to grapple with the crimes it perpetrated during the Second World War

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2 mins  |
March 2024
A window onto England's soul
BBC History UK

A window onto England's soul

SARAH FOOT has high praise for a book that traces the evolution of English Christianity over the course of 1400 years, through the lives of its greatest thinkers

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4 mins  |
March 2024
"There was a general perception that Queen Victoria's mourning was neither normal nor acceptable”
BBC History UK

"There was a general perception that Queen Victoria's mourning was neither normal nor acceptable”

JUDITH FLANDERS talks to Rebecca Franks about her new book, which delves into the customs surrounding dying, death and mourning in Victorian Britain

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10 mins  |
March 2024

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