Produced by the editorial team behind BBC History Magazine and historyextra.com, History Extra was first launched in 2007 as a monthly podcast. As its popularity has increased, History Extra now comes out six-seven times a week and attracts 3.5-4 million listens a month.
History Extra features interviews with historians, authors and broadcasters on a range of historical topics, from Ancient Egypt, the Vikings and medieval history, to the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars and even the events of the 21st century.
Recent highlight includes interviews with historians Lucy Worsley, Jerry Brotton and Shrabani Basu, while their latest series, ‘Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry’ takes an in-depth look at the 70-metre-long embroidery and what it can tell us about 1066 and the Norman Conquest.
Dave Musgrove, Content Director for BBC History Magazine and HistoryExtra, says: “We started the award-winning HistoryExtra podcast back in 2007, and 14 years later we’re still going strong, with a huge back catalogue of nearly 1000 interviews with brilliant historians covering historical topics ancient to modern, talking about kings and queens, wars and crusades, revolutions and protests, stories of everyday life, tales of adventure and exploration, great historical mysteries, and much more. Our approach is to let the experts talk while we listen, and that seems to be what our many hundreds of thousands of listeners want as well. We have big plans for more series, new ideas and new formats, so I’m confident we’ll be podcasting for a long while to come too.”
Previous guests on the podcast have included world-renowned historians Mary Beard, Tracey Borman, Simon Schama, Dan Snow, David Olusoga and Niall Ferguson, as well as broadcasters David Attenborough, Michael Palin and Jenni Murray. The most popular ever episodes are ‘A Year in Medieval England’, an ‘Ancient Rome’ special, and ‘The Amazing History of Egypt’.
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