History Extra podcast

Tessa Dunlop explores the lives of the last surviving women who served in Britain’s armed forces during the Second World War

Malcolm Gaskill speaks about a little-known 1651 witchcraft case from Springfield, Massachusetts.

Edmond Smith reveals how a tightly-woven merchant community helped bring about the globalisation of England between 1550 and 1650.

Murray Pittock answers listener questions on the Jacobites, and their attempts to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne

On several occasions from the 14th to 16th centuries, hundreds of people in central Europe began moving their bodies in a strange uncontrollable fashion – often for days on end. What was behind this unusual behaviour? In the final episode of this serie…

Fifty years ago, in September 1971, Lin Biao boarded a flight out of the country, only to crash in the Mongolian desert shortly afterwards. Was this the result of an aborted coup on Lin’s part? And where exactly was his plane heading? In the latest in …

Thanks largely to Homer’s Iliad, the Trojan War is one of the most famous events in Greek mythology. But how much – if any – of the legend is actually true? In the latest in our series on history’s biggest conundrums, the author and classicist Daisy Du…

The Ninth Legion of the Roman army was last recorded in York in around AD 107. After that it simply vanished from history. To this day no-one knows what caused the destruction of this elite army unit, although many theories have been put forward.

In December 1926, crime writer Agatha Christie left her home and vanished without a trace. When she was discovered 11 days later, Christie claimed to have no memory of what had happened. As part of our series on history’s greatest mysteries, Dominic Sa…

Anna Whitelock looks back on some key moments that made the historical headlines in 2021