BBC History Magazine

BBC History Magazine aims to shed new light on the past to help you make more sense of the world today. Fascinating stories from contributors are the leading experts in their fields, so whether they're exploring Ancient Egypt, Tudor England or the Second World War, you'll be reading the latest, most thought-provoking historical research. BBC History Magazine brings history to life with informative, lively and entertaining features written by the world's leading historians and journalists and is a captivating read for anyone who's interested in the past.

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THIS MONTH IN HISTORY • NEWS COMMENT ANNIVERSARIES HIDDEN HISTORIES

Plot twists • Yet another TV drama about the Tudor dynasty led Twitter users to ask: which other historical stories should be adapted for the small screen? ANNA WHITELOCK went channel surfing

Latvia man “may be first plague victim”

HISTORY IN THE NEWS • A selection of the stories hitting the history headlines

MICHAEL WOOD ON… • THE RETURN OF HISTORY FESTIVALS

ANNIVERSARIES • DOMINIC SANDBROOK highlights events that took place in September in history

WHY WE SHOULD REMEMBER... • The pioneering use of ether, which made pain-free operations a reality

HIDDEN HISTORIES • EMMA DABIRI explores lesser-known stories from our past

LETTERS

BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE

How gruelling was the workhouse? • Peter Higginbotham argues that the Victorian institutions weren’t necessarily the grim hell-holes portrayed by Charles Dickens

SONGS, SEMOLINA AND SANTA CLAUS • Two previous inmates reflected on their time in the workhouse as children

How the far right hijacked the ancient world • Classical Greece and Rome have long been co-opted into the politics of race hate. Historians cannot be in denial about this

UN MASKED • A mysterious figure who languished in French prisons and was forbidden from divulging his crime, the man in the iron mask is one of history’s great legends. But who was he? Josephine Wilkinson believes that she has uncovered his identity

MISTAKEN IDENTITY • Josephine Wilkinson explains why three other candidates who were put forward couldn’t have been the man in the iron mask

Q&A • A selection of historical conundrums answered by experts

Super-sized Georgians • From cutting caricatures of high-profile women to affectionate depictions of Britain’s “heaviest man”, Freya Gowrley considers why 18th-century satirists were so fixated with fatness

Holocaust in the Middle East • By 1942, the tentacles of the Holocaust had spread from Europe across north Africa into the Middle East. Gershom Gorenberg explores the largely forgotten brutalisation of Jewish populations from Morocco to Iraq in the Second World War

When the devil stalked Salem • Why were 19 people hanged for practising dark magic in 17th-century New England? Ellie Cawthorne, presenter of a new HistoryExtra podcast series on the events of 1692-93, examines six causes of the Salem witch trials

THE MAN WHO INVENTED SCOTLAND? • On the 250th anniversary of Walter Scott’s birth, Annika Bautz argues that Scotland’s image in the eyes of the world is partly the product of this brilliant author’s pen

SCOTT’S MASTERPIECES • The three novels that did most to catapult the author, and his nation, into the literary firmament

“Debates about statues are often posed in simplistic primary colours” • ALEX VON TUNZELMANN speaks to Matt Elton about her new book, Fallen Idols, which explores the stories behind some of history’s most controversial statues – and the reasons that people have wanted to bring them down

Desert flower • JOYCE TYLDESLEY enjoys a wide-ranging,...