In episode seven of this new series exploring the sights and stories of Europe’s most beautiful, intriguing and historic cities, travel journalist Paul Bloomfield is joined by historian, author and broadcaster Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a journey around Oslo. Together, they explore the city’s Viking origins, medieval fortifications, modern museums and its scenic hinterland, and meet some of the characters who influenced its evolution. Plus, Eleanor offers up some top advice for history-loving globetrotters.

• Explore the series so far – Listen to all episodes of History’s Greatest Cities

In recent years, discussions about sustainability and how we can create greener, more environmentally conscious urban spaces have been at the forefront of city planning. But to what extent are these considerations new? Author Ben Wilson tells Jon Bauckham about the ways in which societies have tried to bring wildlife into urban spaces, from the gardens of the Aztec empire to the bombsites of postwar Berlin.

Ben Wilson is the author of Urban Jungle: Wilding the City (Vintage, 2023)

• Buy now on Bookshop.org
• Buy now on Amazon

I’m in prison. It’s a crisp, dark night, the stars twinkle above me in the West Country sky and I am standing in the courtyard of HMP Shepton Mallet, formerly the oldest working prison in the UK until it finally closed its doors in 2013. Its most famous former residents were the Kray twins. There’s talk of the prison buildings being redeveloped as apartments, but, until then, Shepton Mallet is open to the public as a macabre tourist attraction.

I’m here in response to an email I received from Paul Toole, the site manager. He told me he had been injured at work and showed me a photograph of a wound on his hand. But what bothered him was that the person he thought was to blame had been dead nearly 80 years, having been executed here in 1942. Yep, that got my attention…

• Read more | Timeline: a history of prisons in Britain

If ghosts do exist, Shepton Mallet feels exactly the sort of place you’d find them. The prison opened in 1625 and over the centuries it developed a reputation as a place of unusually brutal punishment. As Paul leads me by torch light through the dark corridors of A Wing, he tells me how an official investigation was launched back in the 1950s when warders refused to work at night after allegedly spotting a ‘white lady’, rumoured to be the spirit of an 18th-century female inmate who had murdered her fiancé. Her final wish before her execution was to put on her wedding dress.

But this is not the ghost I’m interested in. Paul believes his injury is linked to a more recent part of the prison’s history. During World War II, Shepton Mallet was commandeered as an American military prison and housed more than 700 GIs who had committed crimes on British soil, 18 of whom were executed. Of those hanged or shot, 10 were black and three were Hispanic, at a time when the army was 90 per cent white. The trials often lasted just one day and were conducted in secret using unreliable or biased evidence. It’s hard not to conclude that this was a racially motivated injustice.

One last cigarette

Paul’s torch illuminates our way into ‘the hanging shed’, the room where the GIs met their ends. The air feels thick and oppressive. Then he tells me the story of how, a few weeks before, he decided to tell a tour party he was leading the story of a black GI named Private Lee Davis. Paul was recounting the young man’s final words, when suddenly: “I had a searing pain in my left hand. I looked down and it was red raw.” He shows me his hand, which looks like it bears a cigarette burn.

• Read more | A royal ghost tour: 5 haunted sites around Britain

Paul is convinced there’s a link. He’s been profoundly struck by the stories of the GIs and worries that the tours have somehow reanimated unhappy memories of the room; as if the pain and fear of the GIs has broken through into our present to the extent that Lee Davis’ last cigarette as he stood at the gallows was actually responsible for burning Paul.

So, what do I believe? I’ve heard it said that you die twice: once when you stop breathing and once when people stop saying your name. Undoubtedly these wronged men do live on at Shepton Mallet. Whether you believe that’s as spirits walking the corridors or just in the words of Paul and his fellow guides, I’ll leave you to judge, but it feels important that their stories still haunt us today.

This article was first published in the August 2021 issue of BBC History Revealed 

In episode six of this new series exploring the sights and stories of Europe’s most beautiful, intriguing and historic cities, travel journalist Paul Bloomfield is joined by historian and author Professor Colin Jones for a jaunt around Paris. Together they stroll along boulevards and riverbanks and around the bastions and burial sites of this captivating city, as well as visiting a few places of worship and entertainment along the way. Plus, Colin introduces some of the many characters who influenced Paris over the centuries, and offers some top tips to history-loving travellers.

• Explore the series so far – Listen to all episodes of History’s Greatest Cities

1 April

1610: East India Company sea captain Sir Henry Middleton sails from England with three ships with instructions to establish trading links in India

He was captured by the Turks after landing at Mocha but later escaped after hiding in an empty barrel.

2 April

1977: 21-year-old Charlotte Brew becomes the first woman to ride in the Grand National

Her horse, Barony Fort, refuses four fences from home.

3 April

1860: Pony Express hits the road

The first rider for America’s legendary mail service departed. Advertisements for their riders had requested “Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18,” read one advert. “Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”

4 April

1968: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee

5 April

1906: Restless Vesuvius blows its top, spreading panic and misery

Although the final death toll is uncertain, there is no doubt the eruption of 1906 wrought horrific damage. The explosion was so fierce that the tip of the volcano was reportedly blown clean off, while ash poured down on the neighbouring villages. And in the city of Naples, crowded with tens of thousands of refugees, there was total panic. “The scene was one of misery and terror,” wrote another witness. “Smoke and ashes made breathing difficult. Slight tremblings of the earth were felt, and frequent flashes of lightning cut through the smoke.”

• Read more | Pliny’s Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins

6 April

1199: Richard the Lionheart roars his last

Richard I died of gangrene after chance crossbow shot during castle siege. One version of the legend has it that when Richard’s men dragged the crossbowman before him, he turned out to be a boy called Bertram de Gourdon, who said he wanted revenge for his dead father and brothers. Richard supposedly ordered him set free with 100 shillings. Meanwhile the gangrene did its work. On 6 April, Richard died in the arms of his mother, Eleanor. His heart was buried in Rouen, his entrails in Châlus. His brother John succeeded as king, and after that it was downhill all the way.

7 April

1739: Notorious highwayman Dick Turpin is hanged in York

On the day of his execution, Turpin becomes a celebrity: members of the public visit his cell to speak with him, apparently buying drinks from his gaoler. He hires five professional mourners to follow him to the gallows.

8 April

1318: The Scots capture Berwick-upon-Tweed

Robert the Bruce appeared unstoppable after his decisive Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314. However, he was not personally responsible for Berwick’s capture. Rather, it was spearheaded by a Scottish noble called Sir James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, who led a raiding party over Berwick’s walls on 8 April 1318. Fighting broke out inside the town, but Douglas and his men persevered, stoking anarchy among the townspeople and garrisoned soldiers, and ultimately capturing the town for the Scots.

• On the podcast | Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know

9 April

1838: The new National Gallery building opens to the public in Trafalgar Square

It is designed by Norfolk architect William Wilkins to house the national collection which had previously been on display in a town house in Pall Mall.

10 April

1912: RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton at midday

Her first port of call was Cherbourg where more passengers joined the ship, though 24 disembarked.

• Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?

11 April

1713: The Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession

Britain and her allies achieved their aim of ensuring that the crowns of France and Spain would not be unified. British territorial gains included Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland.

12 April

1606: Britain is united under one flag

On 12 April, then, James issued a proclamation, “declaring what Flags South and North Britons shall bear at Sea”. It was evident, he said, that “some difference has arisen between our Subjects of South and North Britain, Travelling by Sea, about the bearing of their flags”. So “henceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain” should fly from the maintop “the Red Cross, commonly called St George’s Cross, and the White Cross, commonly called St Andrew’s Cross, joined together”.

• Q&A | When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?

The exact original design is now lost, but it was probably very similar to the flag generally flown before 1801, when it was adapted to include the cross of St Patrick. And to settle a hoary old question: was it the union flag, or the union jack? The answer is simple. For the first few years, at least, nobody called it either.

13 April

1204: Crusaders devastate Constantinople

For three days, having scaled the walls and fought their way into the centre, the crusaders ran riot. The altars were shattered, the nuns violated, the townsfolk slaughtered without mercy. Many priceless artworks were destroyed; others were taken, like the bronze horses which stand in Venice today.

“No one was without a share in the grief,” wrote the Byzantine official Nicetas Choniates, recalling the sound of “weeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity… All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime.”
The city – and indeed the empire – never recovered.

14 April

1471: Warwick the Kingmaker is slain in battle

All was chaos, confusion and panic; some men were shouting about treason, others running from the field. The Yorkist reserves piled in; the Lancastrians broke. What followed was a bloody massacre. Waiting with his reserves, peering through the mist, Warwick realised that the game was up. According to the chroniclers, he was trying to get away when the Yorkist soldiers overtook him. There was, of course, no mercy.

15 April

1793: Faced with a shortage of gold coin, the Bank of England issued its first five-pound notes

Their black-on-white design was to remain essentially unchanged until 1957.

16 April

1912: At the age of 37, Michigan-born aviator and writer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the English Channel

She made the flight in just under an hour. However, her achievement received comparatively little attention at the time, being overshadowed by the news of the sinking of Titanic on the previous day. Eleven weeks later, back in America, Quimby was killed when she and her passenger fell from the Bleriot two-seater monoplane she was piloting at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet.

17 April

1961: Bay of Pigs fiasco fails to oust Castro

Rumours of the invasion had already spread to the island from Miami, and the Cuban militia were quickly on the scene. Within hours the invaders had come under heavy fire, two of their ships had been sunk and the sky was thick with fighter planes. Far from storming inland to a huge popular welcome, the exiles were bogged down on the beaches. As Castro’s troops raced to the scene, where was the promised US support?

Within two days it was all over. The Americans managed to rescue a handful of the exiles by sea, but the rest were killed or captured. Kennedy had been humiliated. And Castro? He stayed in power for the next 47 years.

18 April

1949: The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force

Ireland ceases to be a member of the commonwealth and King George VI ceases to act as Irish head of state in international relations.

• On the podcast | The Irish across the globe

19 April

1897: An alien being crash-lands in Texas. Or does it?

When the people of Dallas, Texas opened the local Morning News on 19 April 1897, they were in for a shock. “A Windmill Demolishes it”, read the headline on a story by one SE Haydon. Two days before, at six in the morning, an airship had fallen onto the little town of Aurora. “It sailed over the public square,” Haydon explained, “and when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor’s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion.”

But the real surprise came in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear “that he was not an inhabitant of this world”. Indeed, “Mr TJ Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars”.

20 April

1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their first test of what became known as the pasteurisation process to preserve food

21 April

1934: The Daily Mail ‘proves’ the existence of the Loch Ness Monster with a sensational front page photograph

Although the legend of a monster dates back to the sixth century, the Loch Ness Monster was really an invention of the 1930s, when a series of witnesses claimed to have seen a creature in the loch. So in December 1933, the Mail sent a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to locate the creature. He duly found some huge footprints on the shore. ‘Monster of Loch Ness is Not Legend But a Fact’ screamed the headline. But when the Mail asked experts from the Natural History Museum to examine the prints, they reported that they had probably been created by the foot of a dead hippopotamus that had been converted into an umbrella stand.

22 April

1838: The steamship Sirius arrives in New York after an 18-day journey to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic non-stop

Brunel’s Great Western arrives the next day having beaten Sirius’s crossing time by more than three days.

23 April

1661: The coronation of Charles II took place in Westminster Abbey

Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that despite having arrived seven hours early in order to secure a good spot from which to watch the proceedings, he found to his “very great grief” that he was unable to see the ceremony, could hear little of the music due to the noise, and had to leave early in order to relieve himself. The day ended with a tremendous thunderstorm; contemporaries were divided over whether this was a good or bad omen.

24 April

1558: Mary, Queen of Scots marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris

The pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis’s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.

25 April

404 BC: Athens surrenders to Sparta

According to the biographer Plutarch, Lysander then “sent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships to the sound of the flute, the Spartans’ allies being crowned with garlands, and making merry together”. At long last, it was over.

26 April

1986: Chernobyl reactor explodes

The Chernobyl disaster, which began on 26 April 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history. Even now, its legacy continues to blight Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the fallout. And although the Soviet authorities initially tried to cover it up, the accident dealt a hammer blow to their manicured image of socialist modernity.

27 April

1865: The worst waterway disaster in US history claims 1,700 lives

On a late April day in 1865, the steamship Sultana was puffing up the Mississippi river.

As the overladen vessel juddered out of Vicksburg towards Memphis, Tennessee, it battled strong currents. Seven miles after reaching Memphis, in the middle of the night, three of the ship’s boilers exploded, killing some sleeping soldiers instantly and sending burning debris crashing through the vessel. The mostly wooden Sultana rapidly went up in flames as its screaming passengers leapt from its deck into the chilly river.

Most of the men on board were killed. Of the survivors, one floated on the carcass of a mule while others clung to trees and roots. Several died of hypothermia. The final death toll has been estimated at more than 1,700.

28 April

1192: In spite of his renowned vigour and intelligence, Conrad was murdered just four days after becoming king

It was lunchtime, and Conrad was returning home from the house of his friend Philip, Bishop of Beauvais when he was accosted by two men, who plunged their daggers into his body. Death almost certainly came very swiftly. One of the murderers was killed on the spot; the other, wounded, was put to torture. It turned out that he was a member of the infamous Assassins, a Nizari Shia sect led by the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, who supposedly encouraged them to gear themselves up for murder with copious amounts of hashish.

In reality, many of the lurid stories associated with the Assassins were probably invented. The real author of the plot to kill Conrad was almost certainly somebody much closer to home: Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, when Richard was later imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Conrad’s murder featured heavily on the charge sheet.

29 April

1770: Captain Cook lands in Australia

On Saturday 28 April he spotted “a bay which appeared to be tolerably well sheltered from all winds”, and the following day he made landfall. When he and his men went ashore, they found “several of the natives and a few huts”, but the inhabitants scattered when Cook fired his musket. In woods beyond the beach, he wrote, they came across “small huts made of the bark of trees in one of which were four or five small children with whom we left some strings of beads &c”.

At first, Cook called the bay Stingray Bay, after “the great quantity of these sort of fish” that he and his men had caught there. But when he thought about it, he was equally impressed by the enormous variety of plants that the Endeavour’s naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander had found on land. So when he wrote his journal, he called it Botanist Bay. Then he had another thought, struck a line through the word Botanist, and wrote instead the word ‘Botany’. And that, of course, is the name that has endured.

30 April

1948: The Land Rover is launched at the Amsterdam motor show. Initially designed by the Wilks brothers as a stop-gap measure for the Rover Company – with aluminium bodywork instead of rationed steel – it is an immediate success

In episode five of this new series exploring the sights and stories of Europe’s most beautiful, intriguing and historic cities, travel journalist Paul Bloomfield is joined by historian and author Professor Bettany Hughes for a tour of Istanbul. Together they lead us through the streets, mosques, museums, palaces and bazaars of the city, reconstructing the story of this captivating city across the millennia. Along the way, Bettany reveals little-known truths about the character of Istanbul, and offers some top advice for history-loving travellers.

• Explore the series so far – Listen to all episodes of History’s Greatest Cities

Throughout history, have societies always been dominated by men? And how have patriarchal values shaped lives across centuries and continents? Historian June Purvis and writer and broadcaster Angela Saini discuss Angela’s new book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule, touching on examples from across world history.

Angela Saini is the author of The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule (Fourth Estate, 2023)

• Buy now on Bookshop.org
• Buy now on Amazon
• Buy now on Waterstones

Although 19th-century thinkers promoted the narrative that Christianity and science have always been at each other’s throats, in reality, argues Nicholas Spencer, the two have existed for centuries in a state of relative harmony – with some notable spikes in tension. Rhiannon Davies speaks to Nicholas to explore this intertwined relationship.

Nicholas Spencer is the author of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion (Oneworld, 2023)

• Buy now on Bookshop.org
• Buy now on Amazon
• Buy now on Waterstones

Nestled in the heart of the Mediterranean some 58 miles south of Sicily, the archipelago of Malta is small – it is the 10th smallest country in the world by area, in fact – yet nonetheless it has played an oversized role in history.

A natural harbour, whoever holds Malta has easy access to Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East, something not lost on the powers of world history. Since the first people on the islands arrived around 5,900 BC, Malta has fallen under the control of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, crusaders, French, British and others, before finally becoming an independent nation in 1964.

It has witnessed wars and strife, vanishing cultures, and the possible shipwrecking of a saint. It was traded for a bird of prey, became a pilgrimage hotspot on the sea route to the Holy Land, and witnessed the creation of one of the first planned cities in Europe. It served as a sanctuary for the exiled Mehmed VI after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire and was lauded as the ‘Nurse of the Mediterranean’ for its part in treating soldiers injured at Gallipoli during the First World War.

Malta’s past is chequered and complex. Here are seven key moments that have shaped the islands, and the world around them.

Temple culture bloomed in Malta around 3600 BC. More than a millennium before the construction of the great pyramid of Giza or the raising of the trilithons of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, the ‘temple people’ built the first of a string of megalithic marvels that can be counted among the oldest free-standing structures in the world.

Today, six of these complexes spread across Malta and Gozo – Ġgantija, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Ta’ Ħaġrat, Skorba and Tarxien – are counted as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Their purpose remains clouded, though collectively they point to the people of the period having a ritualistic culture, with one tantalising clue being the prevalence of statuettes colloquially described as ‘fat ladies’, which may have served as idols of fertility.

Of more obvious purpose is the seventh UNESCO World Heritage site from this period, the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum – not a temple, but a tomb. Hewn out of the soft limestone rock, this underground necropolis held the remains of an estimated 7,000 people when it was excavated in the 20th century.

But in 2500 BC, the temple builders died out and disappeared, leaving these grand structures as their testament. Historians have struggled to determine why this people suddenly vanished from Malta: drought, famine, epidemic and outside aggression have all been put forward as potential reasons for their abrupt end, with no conclusive evidence pointing towards any.

Developing from a Phoenician colony, the city-state and then empire of Carthage ruled over Malta for almost 250 years before losing it to their greatest rival: the Romans.

Malta escaped unscathed during the First Punic War (264-241 BC) – as these clashes between and Rome and Carthage would become known. The islands were raided and occupied during the first months of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC); the Roman historian Livy records that the local garrison surrendered without a fight.

By the time Rome had finally annihilated its hated foe at the end of the Third Punic War (149–146 BC), Malta had been a Roman territory for more than 70 years.

• Read more | How Hannibal beat the Alps but couldn’t beat Rome

The change in overlordship ushered in a new age of prosperity that lasted until the Roman empire’s fracture into east and west in the fourth century AD. The Romans designated Malta a municipium, or free town, incorporating it within the province of Sicilia but otherwise leaving the islands to their own devices, and in time they became a major producer of olive oil.

Maleth, the old Phoenician colony that pre-dated the Carthaginians, became Melite after a period of rapid expansion (and reinforcement, in the form of thick walls and defensive ditches). It is here you can find the Domvs Romana, or Roman House, and its almost entirely intact mosaics.

When Christianity came to Malta in the first century AD, it was no mere missionary who arrived – but an apostle himself. Or at least, that is how this story goes.

The Bible describes how St Paul is shipwrecked en route to standing trial in Rome. Some translations say he washed ashore at an island called Melite. This is oft assumed to be a conflation for Malta, rather than the town of Melite. Other translations of the Bible identify this place as Malta directly. On arriving, Paul is bitten by a viper, miraculously survives its venom, and is received by the Roman governor, Publius – who will later become Malta’s first bishop and, later still, its first saint.

• Read more | 7 controversial saints in history

The apostle’s influence, apocryphal or not, can be seen on the landscape and is now a part of the islands’ national mythos. The place where his ship was wrecked is known as St Paul’s Island, where you’ll find a statue to the saint. The island itself sits within St Paul’s Bay. The cave in which Paul is said to have spent three months is known as St Paul’s Grotto, and counts Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis among its visitors.

When, on 11 January 1693, the church in Mdina (as Melite was known by this time) was destroyed in what remains Malta’s worst ever earthquake, the newly reconstructed one was named for St Paul. Fitting, as it is said to stand on the very spot where Publius received the apostle some 1,600 years earlier.

Arabic caliphates held power in Malta from the closing of the ninth century until the end of the 11th, wresting control from the Byzantine empire.

The arrival of the Arabs was to leave an indelible mark on the islands, bringing changes to cuisine, music and architecture. They introduced cotton and citrus fruits as crops, and brought irrigation techniques that are still in use today.

But perhaps the most lasting influence was on language. Present-day Maltese is a direct derivative of the Siculo-Arabic that was spoken across Muslim-ruled Sicily at that time, and it remains the only Semitic language written in a Latin alphabet, though it is now peppered with loan words from Italian, English and elsewhere. Likewise many place names (Mdina, Rabat, Marsa and Xagħra, to name a few) are derived from this tongue, as are a number of common family names.

• Read more | Digital revolution: the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals

The endurance of this linguistic legacy may have its roots in the Norman conquest of Malta under Count Roger I of Sicily that began in 1091. Approximately 150 years later, in 1249, Arab historian Ibn Hadlun records that all Muslims were expelled from Malta – yet somehow their language survived. It has been suggested that many renounced their religion rather than leave, embracing Christianity, and in doing so kept their language alive.

In 1530, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V gifted Malta to Knights Hospitaller, formally the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, a brotherhood of military monks formed to care for sick pilgrims in the Holy Land. All he asked for was a token annual tribute of a Maltese falcon – a real bird of prey, not the priceless and entirely fictitious MacGuffin made famous by the 1941 film of the same name.

The Hospitallers had come to Charles asking for a new home, after being forced out of their stronghold of Rhodes by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent’s expanding Ottoman empire. Having established themselves on Malta, the Hospitallers carried on largely as they had before: interfering with Suleiman’s shipping. It was little wonder that his army came knocking.

• Read more | Divided they fell: how war, revolution and sectarianism led to the end of the Ottoman empire

An armada of around 200 ships carrying 40,000 Ottoman soldiers descended on Malta on 18 May 1565, the beginning of almost four months of offensives and counteroffensives that can be counted among the hardest-fought of the era. At one point, in a bid to encourage the local people to surrender, the Ottomans fixed the decapitated bodies of the dead to crucifixes and sent them floating across the harbour. The Hospitallers retorted by firing cannons loaded with decapitated Turkish heads back at them.

What broke the deadlock was the arrival of Spanish reinforcements from Sicily on 7 September. In a dreadful oversight, Sulieman ordered his men to face the new arrivals in open battle. Met by experienced and fresh troops, the Ottomans buckled, with thousands cut down as they retreated to their ships.

In was a turning point for the Hospitallers, now hailed as the saviours of Europe, a bulwark against the Ottoman menace. Fearing a future invasion, they began to build a new stronghold named after their grandmaster, Jean Parisot de Valette. It would become Valletta, the current Maltese capital.

Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Malta in June 1798 as a pit-stop on his way to Egypt, the French taking control of the islands within a day and after little resistance. Many Hospitallers at this time were of French heritage themselves and were simply unwilling to fight their countrymen.

The French occupation would last for two years, but Napoleon himself would only spend six days on Malta, leaving behind a garrison of 4,000 men. He marked the end of Hospitaller rule with a set of radical political and administrative reforms – including the dismantling of feudal structures and the abolition of slavery – but his mistake was to allow his men to loot churches and help themselves to Maltese treasures.

Public anger reached its tipping point at an auction of church property in September 1798. Within days, a 10,000-strong Maltese militia was at the gates of Valletta, trapping the French inside. With no way to breach the walls, they entreated Britain to come to their aid, and so Malta was blockaded once more, with the British finally gaining control of the islands in 1800.

• Read more | Napoleon: the rise and fall of a dictator

This was the beginning of a long period of British rule in Malta. Though the 1802 Treaty of Amiens required the islands to be returned to the Hospitallers, Britain quietly ignored this stipulation – Malta’s strategic location was too valuable to lose in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. The Knights of St John would never regain it: Malta would formally be confirmed as a British crown colony with the 1814 Treaty of Paris.

As for the church treasure, a great desal was taken by Napoleon himself, stashed on his flagship L’Orient – and was subsequently sunk by Admiral Horatio Nelson at the battle of the Nile.

In 1942, King George VI awarded the George Cross – the highest British honour awarded for non-military gallantry – to Malta in its entirety, for withstanding a two-year siege during the Second World War.

Though it was neglected in the run up to the conflict, Malta’s eventual importance to Britain cannot be overstated. The ancestral home to the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was, in Winston Churchill’s words, as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier” ideally placed to frustrate Axis ambitions in northern Africa and chip away at shipping convoys carrying vital supplies to Libya.

• Read more | 8 of Churchill’s greatest speeches

Germany and Italy recognised this too. Between June 1940 and November 1942, the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica bombarded the archipelago relentlessly, with one sustained attack that lasted 154 days and nights seeing 6,700 tonnes of bombs land on the islands. By the summer of 1942, the situation was desperate: people were having to turn to curtains for clothes and tyres to resole their shoes, disease was spreading, and the risk of starvation was imminent. With fuel reserves dwindling, offensive operations had ground to a halt.

The British response was Operation Pedestal, a supply run of epic proportions. Fourteen merchant vessels ran the gauntlet of sniping submarines and aerial assaults, accompanied by three aircraft carriers, two battleships, seven light cruisers and 32 destroyers, among others.

Only five of the merchant ships made it to harbour, but the presence of the tanker SS Ohio among them – limping into port lashed between two destroyers – turned this into a strategic victory, its vital cargo allowing Malta to be used as launch point for attacks on Axis shipping once more.

Malta would go on to serve as the launch point of Operation Husky, the July 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. In a reversal of its role in 1565, it was no longer a bastion to protect Rome, but one from which to subdue it.

• Read next | Britain’s island weapon: Malta in the Second World War

From the glories of early medieval Northumbria to the urban powerhouses of the industrial revolution, northern England has long had an identity of its own. In his book Northerners, Brian Groom traces the story of the North from the Ice Age to the present day. He tells Ellie Cawthorne about some of the key moments in the history of the region – and how the North-South divide goes back further than you might think.

Brian Groom is the author of Northerners: A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day (HarperCollins, 2022)

• Buy now on Bookshop.org
• Buy now on Amazon
• Buy now on Waterstones