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.

WELCOME FEBRUARY 2025

THREE THINGS I'VE LEARNED THIS MONTH

THIS ISSUE'S CONTRIBUTORS

ANNIVERSARIES • DANNY BIRD highlights events that took place in February in history

What is the greatest historical film? • Sword-and-sandals epic, gritty war drama or muddy medieval caper? We asked historians to nominate the best historical movies and our website users to vote for their favourites on the list. These are the results…

“It's interesting that Spielberg's film is the one that has come to be seen as the big, serious take on the Holocaust” • What did experts make of the results from our greatest historical films poll? ROGER LUCKHURST and ALEX VON TUNZELMANN spoke to Kev Lochun about their thoughts on the winner – and what's missing from the list

MICHAEL WOOD ON… • THE MAGIC OF FILMING IN HISTORIC LOCATIONS

HIDDEN HISTORIES • KAVITA PURI on the end of the Assad regime in Syria

Waste not, want not

BBC History Magazine

“I FELT VERY ALONE IN A WORLD GONE HORRIBLY MAD” • It was a moment of possibilities, dislocation – and dread. Dan Todman tells the story of the 1.5 million urban Britons evacuated to the countryside at the start of the Second World War

EVACUATION NATIONS • Mass relocations of people from their homes were undertaken in countries across Europe and Asia

England's forgotten hero • When the Hundred Years’ War was reaching a climax, one man was fighting tenaciously to secure the English claim to the French crown. So why, asks Joanna Arman, is Henry V's formidable brother, John, Duke of Bedford, not better known?

THE DYNAMIC DUKE • John of Bedford's remarkable life

How empire ruptured rural Britain • We know that enslaved Africans and their descendants suffered in the distant colonies of empire. But, as Corinne Fowler explains, the colonial system also had dire impacts on people in the countryside of the ‘motherland’

THIS MONTH'S TOP PODCAST PICKS

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

HENRY III AND THE MAGNA CARTA THAT MATTERED • King John's sealing of a charter at Runnymede in 1215 is one of the most feted moments of the Middle Ages. Yet, writes David Carpenter, it was the charter issued by his son 10 years later that became fundamental to England's history

Fingers, frogs and fairies • Fortune telling was all the rage in the 16th and 17th centuries, and practitioners would stop at nothing to tap in to the supernatural. Martha McGill tells a story of Highland seers, tarot cards and encounters with the spirit world

How Africa changed the world • Slavery, exploitation and racism. These tragedies have long dominated histories of Africa. But there's another way to tell this story. And it's one that puts Africans right at the centre of their continent's extraordinarily rich and vibrant past

BOOKS

“The idea that there's a widespread movement to learn from history or to understand it meaningfully is false” • LAURENCE REES explains to Danny Bird how studying the history of the Nazi regime yields warnings – but that frighteningly few people are interested in learning from the past

A kaleidoscopic universe • TAMAR HERZOG...