HistoryExtra

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: life of the week

2025-12-16T09:44:52.000Z

Mozart is celebrated for his musical genius – but how did he rise to such enduring fame? What inspired him, and who was the man beyond the concert halls and compositions? Ahead of new TV drama Amadeus launching on Sky Atlantic in the UK on 21 December, Hannah Templeton tells Lauren Good about the composer's life, his experiences as a child prodigy on European tours, and the mystery surrounding his death.

Becoming Jane Austen

2025-12-15T14:16:20.000Z

What inspired the daughter of a rural reverend to write about eligible bachelors and drunken misadventure? In this first episode of our four-part series on Jane Austen's life and work, Dr Lizzie Rogers and Lauren Good step back into the influential Regency novelist’s formative years, and explore her earliest writings that show how she began to find her voice.

Want to go further into the world of Jane Austen and her literary creations? HistoryExtra's Lauren Good rounds up some essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra and BBC History Magazine archive to deepen your understanding of Austen's life, her work and the Regency era in which she wrote. Go beyond the podcast.

Beyond the podcast: Jane Austen

2025-11-24T15:52:15.000Z

Jane Austen’s novels have captivated readers for more than two centuries. Their blend of romance, social insight and wit has inspired countless adaptations – from classic films to more modern reinterpretations. But who was the woman behind these beloved stories, and how did she come to write them?

In a new four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, launching weekly from 14 December 2025, I’m joined by Dr Lizzie Rogers, a leading expert on Austen. Together, we trace Austen’s journey from her formative years to her remarkable literary legacy, uncovering what her life looked like beyond the pages of her novels.

Below, you’ll find a selection of supplementary material to deepen your understanding of Austen’s world and the Regency era she wrote in. You can explore insights from Lizzie herself, discover the historical influences that shaped Austen’s work and even delve into the theories surrounding her death.

Giuseppe Garibaldi: life of the week

2025-11-13T10:56:40.000Z

He led one of history's most celebrated guerrilla campaigns, showed remarkable political acumen, and drove aristocratic English women wild. Is it any wonder that Giuseppe Garibaldi is one of the towering figures of Europe's 19th century? Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, David Laven relays the thrills and spills of the great romantic hero of the campaign for Italian unification.

Your history guide to Frogmore Cottage: who has lived there before?

2025-10-27T12:25:59.000Z

Where is Frogmore Cottage?

Frogmore Cottage, set in the grounds of Frogmore House, is part of the Frogmore estate in Windsor, Berkshire. Frogmore is situated around half a mile south of Windsor Castle, within Home Park (the private estate of the castle). It’s close to the river Thames and built upon historically wet marsh ground, which led to the estate’s name; the low-lying plot attracts a high number of frogs from the nearby riverbank.

Today the cottage, nestled in a quiet corner of the estate grounds, is a private residence, and served as the British home of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, from 2019 when it was gifted to them by the late Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Harry and Meghan were requested to vacate their British base in March 2023, as they took an official step back from participation in royal duties.

It is owned by the Crown Estate, though there are no current residents based at the house, royal or otherwise.

It was reported in October 2025 that Prince Andrew, younger brother to King Charles III, is considering Frogmore as his residence after leaving Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

Read more | Why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived?

Can people visit Frogmore Cottage?

The cottage is not open to the public, though Frogmore House and estate can be visited on a number of charity days held each year.

When and why was Frogmore Cottage built?

The cottage has served as a royal refuge since it was built in 1801. It was commissioned by Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, who bought the Frogmore estate as a country retreat for herself and her unmarried daughters in 1792.

Her husband, often referred as ‘Mad King George’, ruled Great Britain and Ireland from 1760–1820 and suffered from an illness (sometimes attributed as porphyria, a rare hereditary disease) that prompted episodes of eccentric behaviour.

Historian Sean Lang explains how the king once ordered his carriage to stop in Windsor Great Park while he popped out to have a chat with an oak tree, apparently under the impression it was the King of Prussia.

The royal couple had 15 children over the course of their marriage, and historian Helen Rappaport has suggested that Frogmore Cottage was designed to provide respite for the king’s family.

“The king had episodes of frenzy. He was most likely very hard to live with and [Queen Charlotte] presumably utilised Frogmore Cottage as a retreat.”

Who else has lived in Frogmore Cottage?

Another famous resident of the cottage on the estate was Abdul Karim, an Indian Muslim clerk who became a close confidant and teacher to Queen Victoria.

Karim was sent to England to wait at the queen’s table during the 1887 golden jubilee celebrations when the 68-year-old monarch wanted servants who reminded her of her status as Empress of India.

She was taken by the handsome young man and Karim quickly rose within Victoria’s affections, as well as in status to the title of ‘Munshi’ (teacher or clerk), teaching the queen Hindustani and advising on all matters concerning India.

The relationship between queen and clerk, recently explored in a book by historian Shrabani Basu and dramatised in the film Victoria and Abdul, is just one story of a steady stream of Indian migrants coming to Britain during the 19th century. As Basu told History Extra, “[it’s] fascinating that a young Indian Muslim man was at the centre of the royal court at a time when the British empire was at its height. It is a part of history that the royal family tried to destroy after Queen Victoria’s death.”

Karim lived in Frogmore cottage with his family, and refurbished the property in 1893. The queen visited him at the house “each second day”, explains Basu. Yet following the queen’s death in 1901, Karim was forced to return to India by Victoria’s son and successor, Edward VII, who had “abhorred” his mother’s companion.

Read more | Queen Victoria's Indian confidant: an interview with Shrabani Basu

A home to royal refugees?

In the early 20th century, the cottage also hosted royal refugees from Russia. Following the killing of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in July 1918, who were shot by their Bolshevik guards, some relatives of the tsar fled the country. One such royal group was offered sanctuary in Frogmore Cottage by King George V, and included the king's cousin Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna.

The royal refugees' financial situation meant the cottage soon fell into disrepair, and when King Edward VIII offered Xenia and her family Wilderness House (in the grounds of Hampton Court to the south-west of London), the family left Frogmore.

What else can be found on the Frogmore estate?

Frogmore House itself dates from 1680–84, built by an architect of Charles II for the king’s nephew. It was later the home of Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, for more than 20 years from 1840, and artworks by both the duchess and Queen Victoria are on display in the house.

A teahouse built for Queen Victoria also remains on the estate, alongside a 18th-century summerhouse in the form of a Gothic ruin designed by English architect James Wyatt.

The estate has long been a bolthole for the royal family. King George VI and his wife Elizabeth spent part of their honeymoon at Frogmore in 1923, and it’s reportedly where the late Queen Elizabeth II walked her beloved corgis. The house hosted the wedding reception of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018, as well as that of the Queen’s eldest grandchild, Peter Phillips, and Autumn Kelly in 2008.

Read more | Retiring royals: 9 rulers and royals who stepped down through history

The Frogmore estate is also the site of the Frogmore Mausoleum, the burial place of Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. The mausoleum, not open to the public during tours of the estate, is currently undergoing restoration works to protect against ongoing damp problems due to its riverside location.

The site on the west side of the gardens at Frogmore House was chosen by the queen just four days after Albert’s death at the age of 42 in 1861, and construction began three months later. Following her death at Osborne on the Isle of Wight and a state funeral, Queen Victoria was buried at Frogmore on 4 February 1901. King Edward VII and his grandson, the six-year-old future Edward VIII, knelt as the queen was slowly lowered in to the crypt to be laid to rest beside her beloved husband.

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She held wealth, power and prestige: so why did this Georgian aristocrat fake her daughter’s death?

2025-10-15T10:48:10.000Z

It was spring of 1796 when Elizabeth Vassall, a young English aristocrat of immense fortune travelling in Italy, shared grim news. She had lost her daughter Harriet to a sudden illness, and a small makeshift coffin was discreetly delivered to the British consul for burial. The grieving mother continued her journey.

Except Harriet wasn’t dead. Elizabeth had painted red spots on her daughter’s skin with watercolours to mimic infection, then said her daughter had died. Harriet was then smuggled the child out of Italy disguised as a boy.

It was one of the most audacious deceptions of the Georgian era. But it wasn’t just an eccentric prank. Elizabeth’s desperate act was the direct result of the legal and social realities of Georgian England: a society of glittering aristocratic wealth and entrenched inequality, where even the richest women were hemmed in by patriarchal laws that stripped them of rights over their own children.

Elizabeth Vassall’s unhappy marriage

Incredibly, Elizabeth Vassell really did fake her daughter’s death.

“We’ve got a handwritten account of it by her, and she talks about it in her diaries,” explains historian Miranda Kaufmann, author of Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance, and Slavery in the Caribbean, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.

Born in 1771 as Elizabeth Vassall, she was heiress to vast Jamaican plantations worked by enslaved Africans. That wealth made her a highly desirable match for English aristocrats seeking both money and connections.

She married Sir Godfrey Webster, an older baronet, but their union quickly soured. “She calls him her ‘tormentor’, and they have this awful relationship,” says Kaufmann.

Read more | 8 scandals that shocked Georgian Britain

But Sir Godfrey still tolerated her appetite for travel, facilitating – and mostly joining – her trips abroad. It was while she was on one of those trips, in Italy, that she encountered Henry Fox, Lord Holland, who would become a prominent Whig politician.

They fell in love, and Elizabeth became pregnant by him. But Sir Godfrey had returned to England more a year earlier, meaning it was impossible that he might be the father of Elizabeth’s future child – who would be born in November 1796.

So divorce from Sir Godfrey – though expensive and scandalous – was now unavoidable; and it would mean that Elizabeth would lose Harriet.

Custody as property

In Georgian Britain, the greatest danger Elizabeth faced wasn’t social disgrace but the law of custody.

“A shocking thing that we don’t always realise is that in this period, after a divorce, the father automatically got custody of the children,” Kaufmann explains. “After all, they were his property.”

Although Harriet wasn’t Sir Godfrey’s biological daughter (she was the product of another affair) she was recognised as his daughter, and he treated her as such. And, under English law, children belonged to the father in the same way that wives’ property was absorbed into their husband’s estate. Mothers had no legal rights over custody or even access.

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For Elizabeth, this meant Harriet, the child she most cherished, would automatically be taken by Sir Godfrey upon their inevitable divorce.

It was this legal reality that drove her to extremes. To keep her daughter, she had to erase her: at least in the eyes of the world.

Painting illness and staging death

Elizabeth’s plan was carefully crafted. “She gets out her watercolour paints and paints red spots on Harriet’s arms and legs, tells everybody that she must have some sort of infectious disease, and sends the servants away,” says Kaufmann.

Fear of disease was ever-present in the 18th century. Smallpox was a constant killer, and rumours of infection prompted immediate flight. Her claim that Harriet had died of a contagious illness was perfectly conceivable and went unchallenged.

Read more | A survivor's guide to Georgian marriage

“Then, she gets out her guitar case, which was oblong shaped, and fills it full of stones, clothing and a wax mask, and sends it to the British consul to be buried because she’s pretending it contains the body of her dead daughter,” Kaufmann continues.

It was an audacious act of deception, and she pulled it off. Harriet was listed as buried, and Elizabeth, now ‘bereaved’, was free to carry her real child away, knowing that Sir Godfrey wouldn’t be able to claim her.

Smuggling Harriet home

The next step was to spirit Harriet out of Italy. “Then, she smuggles Harriet via Hamburg, dressed as a boy, back to England,” Kaufmann explains.

But this was far from a victimless act. Elizabeth and her husband’s relationship might have been a loveless one, but Sir Godfrey was distraught by the news of the death of his daughter. “She manages this deception, and her husband Sir Godfrey is left miserable. He has many flaws, but does seem to genuinely love his daughter and mourned her for a long time.”

Elizabeth’s act had preserved her relationship with Harriet, but only by subjecting both father and child to an extraordinary act of subterfuge.

Scandal and confession

For a time, Elizabeth’s plan succeeded.

As predicted, she divorced Sir Godfrey upon her return to England and the reveal of her pregnancy, married Lord Holland, and established herself as Lady Holland, presiding over one of London’s most fashionable Whig salons. But the secrecy couldn’t last forever.

“When Elizabeth is Lady Holland and her new husband goes into politics, she realised she has to come clean because this would ruin his political career if it comes out inadvertently,” says Kaufmann.

“She had to come clean, and give Harriet back to Sir Godfrey. And she was distraught.”

The revelation caused predictable uproar. Gossip, the lifeblood of Georgian high society, spread like wildfire – carried in letters and repeated in newspapers and pamphlets.

Lord Holland himself was tainted by association, with many assuming he must have colluded in the deception.

Wealth, slavery and patriarchy

Elizabeth’s story is one that neatly exposes the social complexities and contradictions of Georgian England.

On the one hand, she was a woman of immense privilege: her fortune, derived from Caribbean slavery, made her one of the richest heiresses of her generation. She commanded social attention, travelled freely across the continent and later became an influential political hostess.

Read more | How well do you know the Georgian period?

But on the other hand, she was hemmed in by a legal system that denied her agency over her own life. She struggled to control her property within marriage; and she couldn’t claim custody over her daughter.

Even the wealth generated from enslaved labour – which fuelled the consumer culture of Georgian Britain, from sugar to fine clothes – couldn’t shield her from the patriarchal foundations of English law. In Georgian society, female power was always conditional, and even the richest women could be reduced to desperation when the law refused to recognise them as full guardians of their families.

Miranda Kaufmann was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.

How enslaved people fought for freedom across the Atlantic

2025-10-15T13:52:06.000Z

From armed uprisings in the Caribbean to the hidden power of ritual, song and solidarity, the story of enslaved people’s resistance is far richer and more radical than has often been told. In this episode, Sudhir Hazareesingh speaks to Danny Bird about his new book Daring to be Free, which draws on fragmentary archives and oral traditions to highlight the forgotten people who resisted their enslavers, explores the global reverberations of the Haitian Revolution, and reveals the central role of women in shaping struggles for freedom.

Sudhir Hazareesingh is the author of Daring to be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World (Allen Lane, 2025).

Buy it now from Amazon

Queer life in Georgian Britain

2025-10-06T09:53:32.000Z

There were many ways queer people in the Georgian era fought against social and legal restrictions to express their desire and convey their love for one another, from molly houses and marriages to adult adoption,. Speaking to Isabel King, Anthony Delaney discusses his new book Queer Georgians.

Anthony Delaney is the author of Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers (Transworld Publishers, 2025).

Buy it now from Waterstones

Haiti's first and only king

2025-09-22T11:04:51.000Z

Born to an enslaved mother in the British Caribbean in the tumultuous, brutal world of the late 18th century, Henry Christoph's role in the Haitian Revolution saw him rise to prominence – and was just one chapter in a remarkable trajectory that eventually led to him becoming the only monarch of the Kingdom of Haiti. Speaking to Matt Elton, Marlene L Daut discusses her Cundill Prize-nominated book, The First and Last King of Haiti, which tells this story.

Find out more about the Cundill History Prize

Marlene L Daut is the author of The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christoph (Yale University Press, 2025).

Buy it now from Amazon

Is this the secret to understanding US foreign policy? How a powerful doctrine from 1823 reshaped America

2025-08-29T13:27:16.000Z

In December 1823, US President James Monroe delivered his annual State of the Union address. Tucked away in the long speech were two simple but far-reaching ideas that would continue to resonate for centuries.

First, he declared that the Americas were “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by any European powers.” In other words, the New World was closed to new imperial claims.

Second, he warned that attempts by Europe to extend its “system” into the western hemisphere would be viewed as “dangerous to our peace and safety.” He added that it was “impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent, without endangering our peace and happiness.” This suggested that, with the American Revolution still lingering in the memory, the United States reserved the right to respond if its interests were threatened.

This formed the basis of what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. It wasn’t written as a detailed strategy, yet it has evolved into one of the most enduring – and divisive – foundations of US foreign policy.

“It’s hard to talk about the Monroe Doctrine because, as Woodrow Wilson put it in 1919: every time I tried to define the Monroe Doctrine, it escapes definition,” explains historian Greg Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.

An anti-colonial gesture with hidden teeth

When Monroe spoke, the Americas were in upheaval. To the south and across the lower hemisphere, Spanish colonies from Mexico to Argentina were breaking away from their former rulers. At the same time, European powers debated whether to help Spain reconquer its former territories.

The United States, itself only a few decades old, wanted to signal its place in this shifting order. Monroe declared that the western hemisphere was to be protected from European expansion.

Read more | George Washington: the life of a war hero, founding father and first US president

“It was positioning the United States for the inevitable independence of Spanish America from Spain. And one of the things that it did [was announce] that it would not permit the recolonisation of the new world by the old world,” Grandin explains.

Latin American leaders welcomed the statement. “They cheered it, they thought this is an affirmation of what we’ve been talking about,” he adds.

But hidden elsewhere in Monroe’s message was a different principle.

“The Monroe Doctrine also says that the United States has a right to intervene as it deems necessary, if its interests are threatened,” explains Grandin.

That tension – between solidarity with independence movements, and an assertion of US authority and power – has for generations shaped how the doctrine was read.

From protector to policeman

Over the 19th century, the interventionist side of the Monroe Doctrine grew stronger. Instead of simply rejecting European interference, the US began to cast itself as an enforcer of order across the hemisphere.

The clearest example came in 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt issued his famous Roosevelt Corollary. He argued that the US had a duty to step in if Latin American governments failed to maintain stability or honour debts.

Read more | 6 shocking presidential scandals that rocked the White House

“One of the most famous examples is Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. He imagined the world as a giant police station with the United States, basically the headquarters,” Grandin says.

This outlook fuelled decades of gunboat diplomacy. Into the following century, US Marines landed in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, sometimes occupying countries for years. For many Latin Americans, the Monroe Doctrine no longer looked like a shield against Europe, but a sword wielded by those in Washington DC.

Wilson’s impossible balancing act

In the early 20th century, US President Woodrow Wilson tried to restore the Doctrine’s original anti-colonial spirit. He linked it to his broader vision of Pan-Americanism, a cooperative community of equal nations, and later to the ideals of the League of Nations.

“He often invoked the Monroe Doctrine in its more idealistic form. He said: this is what we want, we want an anti-colonial world of equal nations,” Grandin explains.

Yet Wilson’s actions often told another story. The president ordered interventions in Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic – even as he spoke of non-intervention. When negotiating the League’s Covenant, he ensured that nothing would compromise America’s special role in the western hemisphere.

To ensure this, Grandin says, Wilson “had a statement inserted in the Covenant… that the League of Nations would not invalidate the Monroe Doctrine.”

Even Wilson, advocate of self-determination abroad, refused to give up unilateral authority close to home.

The Cold War: communism as ‘foreign’

The Monroe Doctrine gained new life during the Cold War. As left-wing and revolutionary movements spread through Latin America, Washington DC invoked the doctrine to portray communism as an alien ideology, incompatible with (and a direct threat to) the foundations of the New World.

This framing cast communism not as a local movement but as a foreign contagion imported from Moscow or Beijing. During the fight against it, Grandin explains that thousands were killed because of US action “in countries like Guatemala and El Salvador and Nicaragua, and Argentina and Chile.”

Read more | The 5 most notorious presidents in US history

“Even if we’re talking about indigenous peasants in Guatemala or copper miners in Chile… communism itself was seen as a foreign ideology and Monroe Doctrine was invoked as a way to justify putting it down.”

The result was decades of US support for coups, dictatorships and covert operations – from the CIA-backed coup in Guatemala in 1954 to backing Pinochet’s regime in Chile. Each time, the Monroe Doctrine was cited as justification.

More than 200 years on, the Monroe Doctrine can still be seen as a tenet within American foreign policy. President Ronald Reagan cited it in the 1980s during interventions in Central America. More recently, US officials have used Monroeist language when addressing crises in Cuba and Venezuela.

Was the doctrine about protecting American freedom against Europe? Or was it always about extending power by quelling threats to the American status quo?

Either way, what originated as a short passage in President Monroe’s 1823 speech soon became a framework for preserving and expanding American power that has been redefined and repurposed across centuries.

Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution

Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story.

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Greg Grandin was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.