What was it really like to live and fight in WW1 trench? Why was throwing your empty food tins into No Man’s Land a death sentence? And what was the worst care package a Tommy could receive from home? Speaking with Emily Briffett, Peter Hart answers listener questions on life in the trenches – from favourite foods and morale-boosting parades to a soldier’s chances of survival in the face of deadly diseases, gas and explosions.

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

The Good Friday Agreement, reached on 10 April 1998, was a careful balancing act, reflecting the competing demands and aspirations of the different parties to the talks. Yet, despite the widespread euphoria that greeted the deal, this was only a beginning. Implementing the Agreement has been a difficult process, depending on the willingness of the political representatives of Northern Ireland’s two communities to work together. That willingness has frequently been missing…

The Good Friday Agreement: the background

The partition of Ireland in 1921 followed more than a century of unrest between Britain and Ireland. Under the Act of Union of 1800 Ireland lost its parliament in Dublin and became governed directly from Westminster. For much of the 19th and into the 20th century, varying states of tension and conflict developed as unionists campaigned for Ireland to remain part of the UK, while nationalists campaigned for either home rule or an independent Irish state. The issue of Irish home rule dominated domestic British politics from 1885 to the start of the First World War.

In April 1916, the Easter Rising shook Dublin, as a group of Irish nationalists proclaimed the establishment of an Irish Republic and clashed with British troops in the capital. The rising, which resulted in the loss of 450 lives and destroyed much of the centre of Dublin, was ended by the British within a week. However, the public mood shifted decisively when the 15 leaders of the rising were executed by the British authorities in May 1916. The executions and imposition of martial law fuelled public resentment of the British. The next five tumultuous years, including the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), resulted in the end of British rule across most of Ireland.

• Read more | The Easter Rising: when Ireland went to war
• Read more | Bullets and ballot boxes: a history of Anglo-Irish relations since the Easter Rising 

The Government of Ireland Act, which became law in May 1921, split Ireland. Northern Ireland was formed from the six predominantly unionist counties in the north-east of the island. The remaining 26 predominantly nationalist counties formed the ‘south’, becoming the independent Irish Free State in 1922.

The Good Friday Agreement and the Troubles

For 30 years in the late 20th century, Northern Ireland was wracked by a bloody ethno-nationalist conflict known as ‘the Troubles’, which has left over 3,700 people dead and thousands more injured.

At the heart of the Troubles is the division in Northern Irish society. The majority population in Northern Ireland – the unionist community – identify as British and want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. The minority community – the nationalists – want Northern Ireland to be reunited with the rest of Ireland, in an independent Irish Republic. As the nationalist community is predominantly Roman Catholic and the unionist predominantly Protestant, the conflict has often been portrayed as a sectarian one. Certainly, sectarian attacks occurred throughout the Troubles. However, the conflict was a consequence of the competing national identities and aspirations of the two communities occupying Northern Ireland.

• Read more | The history of Ireland: 11 milestone moments 

As a result, Northern Ireland’s politics did not develop on class lines, as in the rest of the UK. Instead, Northern Ireland’s politics centred on the constitutional question. Following the partition of Ireland, the unionist community generally voted for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which remained in permanent control of Northern Ireland’s devolved government from 1921 until its abolition in 1972. Discrimination against the minority, particularly in housing and employment, led to the growth of a civil rights movement in the 1960s, demanding ‘British rights’ for the nationalist population. However, the civil rights movement was met by a loyalist backlash and violence flared. Finally, in August 1969, the British government was forced to step in and deploy troops in Northern Ireland. They were to remain there until 2007.

Out of the violence, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) re-emerged, and the focus of the conflict shifted from civil rights to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. The IRA dated to back to the Easter Rising and had launched sporadic campaigns since partition directed at trying to achieve Irish unity. Its recent ‘Border Campaign’ (1956–62) had ended in failure and over the course of the 1960s the IRA came to focus more on extreme leftist united front politics rather than militant republicanism. This caused a split in the republican movement in December 1969, from which the Provisional IRA was born. While most nationalists supported the newly formed Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), who sought to achieve Irish unity by political means, there were those in the minority community who supported the IRA’s ‘armed struggle’, attempting to gain Irish unity by force. Unionists fiercely resisted any moves towards a united Ireland. Loyalist paramilitary groups also formed and contributed to the developing violence. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) emerged from 1966, and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and its proxy Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) from the early 1970s.

• Read more | The big question: Has terrorism ever achieved its aims?

As the conflict deepened, the death toll rose rapidly. Events like Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972 – in which British troops killed 13 unarmed civilians and injured several more (one of whom later died from his injuries) while taking part in a protest march – acted as a catalyst to the increasingly bitter conflict.

The prelude to the peace process

Over the course of the Troubles, British governments attempted to develop political initiatives that sought to end the conflict. Edward Heath’s government (1970–74) developed an ambitious programme, resulting in the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973. This combined a devolved assembly for Northern Ireland, involving power-sharing between unionist and nationalist parties, with the creation of a Council of Ireland to institutionalise links between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. However, this was brought down by a two-week general strike in May 1974, as the unionist population rejected the involvement of the Irish government under the cry that “Dublin is just a Sunningdale away”.

Margaret Thatcher’s government (1979–90) was more modest in ambition, with Mrs Thatcher’s focus on securing cooperation from the Irish government in tackling the IRA. In exchange the Irish government was given the right to put forward its views on Northern Ireland’s affairs. This again infuriated the unionists, who sought to bring the Agreement down.

However, as the 1980s progressed, some significant developments began to reshape the approaches of the participants in the conflict.

• Read more | How should history remember Margaret Thatcher?

Republicans increasingly saw the benefits of combining a political strategy with the armed struggle. Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political counterpart, began contesting elections, and regularly polled between 10 and 15 per cent of the vote. This caused deep concern in both the British and Irish governments and influenced the negotiations leading to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The ‘bullet and ballot box’ strategy caused tensions within the republican movement that had to be carefully managed by Gerry Adams, who became Sinn Féin president in 1983. Experience of the drift to far left politics in the 1960s and the ingrained abstentionism – the refusal to accept the legitimacy of, or to take seats in, political institutions in the Republic, Northern Ireland, or Westminster –  in the republican movement made many suspicious of political engagement.

The IRA had not been defeated and a flow of weapons was reaching Ireland from Libya. Significant IRA attacks continued, such as the attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet in the 1984 Brighton Bombing. However, Sinn Féin could achieve electoral legitimacy by contesting elections, for example through Adams’s election as a Westminster MP in 1983. In addition, in 1988 Adams began a series of talks with John Hume, leader of the constitutional nationalist SDLP. While the Hume-Adams talks had no immediate successes, they were influential in steering the British and Irish governments towards the Downing Street Declaration, which would come in 1993.

There was also some movement from the British government. Influenced by Hume, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Brooke, delivered a speech in November 1990 in which he declared that the British government had “no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”. Instead it was for the people of Northern Ireland to decide its constitutional future. Coupled with this change in mood music, Brooke also approved the opening of a secret communication channel between MI5 and the republicans.

Brooke also sought to get Northern Ireland’s constitutional parties talking to each other. He proposed that inter-party talks should cover three strands: the first dealing with relationships within Northern Ireland; the second dealing with relations between the two parts of Ireland; and the third dealing with links between the British and Irish governments. The talks began in April 1991, but quickly became bogged down in procedural disagreements. But the three-strand format was to be at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Downing Street Declaration and IRA ceasefire

The peace process picked up momentum in 1993. The British prime minister, John Major, worked closely with the Irish Taoiseach [prime minister], Albert Reynolds, on a joint declaration that was hoped would form the basis of a peace initiative. This resulted in the Downing Street Declaration of 15 December 1993. The declaration recognised the two different traditions in Ireland and stated that peace could only come through reconciling the differences between them. The two governments committed themselves to building that process of reconciliation and creating appropriate political structures to facilitate it.

In parallel to the Downing Street Declaration, Reynolds worked to persuade the IRA to declare a ceasefire. Both Reynolds and Hume were convinced that tying Sinn Féin into a cross-nationalist coalition would show them the benefits of using purely political means. This would involve nationalists in Northern Ireland, the Irish government, and Irish America, and would provide the republicans with access to the highest political levels in Washington.

To show Sinn Féin the benefits of constitutional politics, Reynolds lobbied the US president Bill Clinton to grant Gerry Adams a visa to visit the United States. Clinton agreed, and Adams was granted a 48-hour visa to visit America in February 1994, despite most of Clinton’s senior advisors being against the move, and much to the fury of John Major. The visa was important as part of the wider choreography of peace making. But it did not lead to an immediate IRA ceasefire. Indeed, a month later the IRA demonstrated its continued reach by attacking Heathrow Airport. However, the visit was important as part of the process of debate within the republican movement, and finally, on 31 August 1994, the IRA announced its ceasefire. The ceasefire was followed in October 1994 by a ceasefire called by the loyalist paramilitaries.

However, the ceasefires did not lead directly to all-party talks. Instead, the peace process quickly became bogged down over the question of arms decommissioning – the hand-over, or verified disposal, of weapons. The IRA would not consider anything that could be perceived to be surrender and Sinn Féin argued that decommissioning should be negotiated as part of a process of ‘demilitarisation’. But neither unionist politicians nor the British government would countenance talks with Sinn Féin until decommissioning had taken place. Unionists had been disconcerted by republican celebrations following the announcement of the IRA ceasefire; they were not willing to take Sinn Féin at their word.

In an attempt to break the impasse, the British and Irish governments created an international decommissioning body, chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell. This was part of a ‘twin-track’ approach, with decommissioning to accompany political talks rather than precede them. Mitchell delivered his report in January 1996, setting out six principles that should be endorsed by all parties to the talks. This included a commitment to exclusively peaceful means. Mitchell recommended that all parties should sign up to these principles and that some decommissioning could take place during the talks. However, this was not enough to prevent the slide back to violence. On 9 February 1996, the IRA released a statement announcing the end of its ceasefire. An hour later a massive explosion rocked Canary Wharf, killing two people.

What was the Good Friday Agreement?

The election of Tony Blair’s Labour government, on 1 May 1997, was transformational. Blair was as committed to the peace process as Major had been, but had the advantage of being able to approach Northern Ireland without the baggage that Major had accumulated over seven years of talks.

The IRA renewed its ceasefire on 20 July 1997, opening the way for Sinn Féin to be included in the inter-party talks that had begun under Mitchell’s chairmanship. The question of decommissioning remained though, and the British and Irish governments sought to fudge the issue rather than allow it to derail the process again. This led to Ian Paisley’s hard-line Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) walking out of the talks, never to return. The DUP rejected the notion of making any concessions on the constitutional position of Northern Ireland or negotiating with Sinn Féin, whom they considered terrorists. While deeply unhappy, the more moderate UUP remained in the talks. Given the DUP’s declared desire to break the talks, Mitchell wrote later in his memoirs that their decision to walk out actually helped the process of reaching an agreement. However, it was to have a lasting impact on the politics of Northern Ireland, as the DUP’s opposition to the Good Friday Agreement severely hindered its implementation. Sinn Féin entered the all-party talks on 15 September 1997, having signed-up to the Mitchell Principles.

After marathon negotiations, agreement was finally reached on 10 April 1998. The Good Friday Agreement was a complex balancing act, reflecting the three strands approach. Within Northern Ireland, it created a new devolved assembly for Northern Ireland, with a requirement that executive power had to be shared by parties representing the two communities. In addition, a new North-South Ministerial Council was to be established, institutionalising the link between the two parts of Ireland. The Irish government also committed to amending Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic’s Constitution, which laid claim to Northern Ireland, to instead reflect an aspiration to Irish unity, through purely democratic means, while recognising the diversity of identities and traditions in Ireland. Finally, a Council of the Isles was to be created, recognising the ‘totality of relationships’ within the British Isles, including representatives of the two governments, and the devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Referendums were held in both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland on 22 May 1998. In Northern Ireland 71 per cent of voters backed the Agreement, with 29 per cent voting against. While this was a significant endorsement, an exit poll for the Sunday Times found that 96 per cent of nationalists in Northern Ireland backed the Agreement, compared to just 55 per cent of unionists.

What is the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement?

The Good Friday Agreement was hard won. But it has faced considerable challenges over the 20 years since its signing.

On 15 August 1998, 29 people were killed when dissident republicans exploded a car bomb in Omagh. This represented the largest loss of life in any incident in Northern Ireland since the start of the Troubles. While the Omagh bombing was committed by republicans opposed to the Agreement, it returned the spotlight to the question of decommissioning paramilitary weapons, which the Good Friday Agreement had stated should happen within two years. Unionist anger at the refusal of the IRA to give up its weapons was combined with frustration at the refusal of Sinn Féin to accept the reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Under these circumstances, power-sharing proved impossible to sustain. Meanwhile, voters in each community started to turn away from the moderate parties, and instead support for Sinn Féin and the DUP increased, displacing the SDLP and UUP in the process. For a significant part of the decade following the Good Friday Agreement, devolution was suspended because of the inability of the largest parties from each community to reach agreement on power-sharing. Progress was made on decommissioning, which was confirmed to have been carried out in September 2005, but political agreement remained elusive. Eventually, the British and Irish governments hosted crunch talks at St Andrews in October 2006. There, Sinn Féin finally agreed to accept the PSNI, while the DUP agreed to share power with Sinn Féin. In May 2007, an Executive comprised of the DUP, Sinn Féin, UUP and SDLP was finally able to take office. This time, the institutions created under the Good Friday Agreement were to remain in being until the current political crisis led to the collapse of the Executive in January 2017.

Despite the fragility of the institutions created and the continuing bitterness between politicians representing the two communities, the Good Friday Agreement remains an important landmark in Northern Ireland’s history. The Good Friday Agreement was able to bring to an end 30 years of violence, and allows Northern Ireland’s two communities to pursue their contrasting aspirations by purely political means.

Dr Alan MacLeod is a historian of modern Britain and Ireland and Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of International Politics and the Northern Ireland Conflict: The USA, Diplomacy and the Troubles (IB Tauris, 2016).

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in April 2018

In the collections of the British Library is a first edition of, what is for me, one of the most remarkable books ever published: A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. To Which Is Added, a Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Notorious Pyrates.

It was written by one Captain Charles Johnson and published in 1734. On the surface, this is a collection of fascinating stories about various bloodthirsty rogues.

But scratch a little deeper, reading carefully its narratives of murder and mayhem, and you’ll discover that this book actually raises questions that go to the very heart of what we know about the past – and the present.

Who was Captain Charles Johnson?

Johnson was a literary phenomenon in the early part of the 18th century. He first roared onto the London publishing scene in 1724, in a cacophony of swearing and violence, with a book recounting the “true” lives of pirates, building on a tradition of criminal biographies that can be traced back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A decade later, he saw the opportunity to bring together the stories of diverse criminals in one book – the literary equivalent of Newgate Prison, each villain occupying his own cell-like chapter.

Charles Johnson’s identity remains a mystery (that name presumably being a pseudonym), but one thing is certain: he was a masterful storyteller and historian. He weaves fact with fiction and glorifies in his own trickery, celebrating his role as a historical fraudster. At the same time, he often tells the truth – or at least the truth as he wishes it to be remembered.

To read his book is not only to be educated and entertained by a rich cast of criminals going back over a number of centuries, but also to be educated and entertained by life in Britain in the mid 1730s, and by the anonymous author’s beliefs and understanding of his world. In particular, it provides fascinating insights into attitudes towards criminals and wider society in the early Georgian era.

Why did he focus on highwaymen?

As Johnson’s book makes abundantly clear, criminals could strike anywhere. But nowhere were people more vulnerable to crime’s depredations than when they were on the move. For centuries before the Industrial Revolution – with its gates, turnpikes and road patrols – roads were a source of intense anxiety, presenting numerous hazards. Settlements were spread out, dislocated from one another. To travel was to become isolated for long periods of time.

The landscape was more awkward than it is today, with thick forests here, unwadeable streams there, and bogs and thickets regularly blocking the way. Watchmen provided a degree of security in some towns and cities, but there was no formal police force until the Metropolitan Police was established in London in 1829. Roads, even on the outskirts of major cities, were dangerous.

Johnson explores danger on the roads in his chapter on a highwayman called Sir Gosselin Denville, who plied his trade not in the author’s own time but back in the 14th century. Among other exploits, this rogue robbed two cardinals sent to England from Rome to negotiate with Edward II. Johnson gleefully describes his predations:

“The continual preys he and his men made on all travellers, put the whole country into a terrible pannic; for there was no such thing as travelling with any safety; and the great number of persons, of whom his gang was composed, plainly shewed, that they defied the laws, and every thing else. What they could not obtain on the highway, they sought for in houses, monasteries, churches, and nunneries, which were rifled without any distinction; and the most valuable and sacred things carried off.”

• Read more | The extraordinary legend of highwayman Dick Turpin

Did he present the criminals in a positive light?

One of the most eye-catching aspects of Johnson’s book is that he reserves some of his most stinging criticism not for highwaymen themselves, but their victims. He is keenly aware of the deficiencies of the criminals we meet in the book, describing one such rogue, Thomas Dun, as a man of “very mean extraction” who “had contracted thieving so much from his childhood, that every thing he touch’d stuck to his fingers like birdlime”.

Yet the victims of criminal acts are, in Johnson’s estimation, often as culpable as those who commit them. Throughout his book we encounter sly lawyers, grasping politicians, crooked tradesmen and quack doctors, each presented as a parasite on society. The author also notes the villainy of those in power, arguing that “A Great Villain may commit more Depredations in a short time, than a hundred little ones can in a long Course of Years,” and claiming that: “It is not unprecedented for a very great knight to be a very great robber.”

Johnson takes great glee in scolding hypocrites. It is telling that he quotes at length a passage in the Bible in an early chapter from the gospel of Luke in which everyday criminals are named:

“Servants when they embezzle the Goods of their Masters: Nay, Apothecaries, and Taylors, when they make unconscionable Bills; Butchers, when they blow their Veil; Millers, for taking double Toll; Shoemakers, for stretching their Leather larger than their Consciences; Surgeons, for prolonging a Cure; Physicians, for taking away the Lives of their Patients; and Lawyers, for taking Bribes on both Sides: I say, that all these are no better than Thieves, and such as they, nor Covetous, nor Drunkards, nor Revilers, nor Extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”

In his life of Ned Wicks, a highwayman executed in Warwick in 1713, Johnson reserves particular ire for a miserly landlord who relentlessly demanded rent from a poor widow, driving her to ruin. In Johnson’s account, Wicks comes across the weeping widow, discovers her story and hunts down the landlord on the road, whereupon “he did not only bid him stand and deliver, but presenting him also with a whole volley of first-rate oaths, he so frightened him out of his wits, that he delivered all the money he had lately received, and as much more to it.”

• Read more | Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate: how a mid-life crisis created the ‘worst pirate of all time’

How interested were Georgians in tales of criminals?

Johnson’s book demonstrates that true crime sold well in the 18th century, just as it does today. Many of his subjects were not just criminals plucked from obscurity but well-known personalities – celebrities, even.

In 1724, the year Johnson published his first book – a compendium of the lives of pirates – four criminal biographies were printed about the notorious thief Jack Sheppard. He had been hanged that winter at Tyburn in London; almost immediately, chapbooks, ballads and plays appeared telling his story. Meanwhile, the previous year had seen the publication of biographies of the Scottish outlaw Rob Roy and John Stanley, a murderous early 15th-century knight-errant.

Johnson’s writings give glimpses into the private lives of criminal “celebrities” in a period when the public were quite happy not to draw a line between fame and infamy. The most flamboyant stories were preserved and retold time and again, to the great joy of listeners and readers all over the country. There is perhaps no finer example than that of Claude Du Vall, the very essence of a 17th-century gentleman thief.

When he stopped “a knight and his lady” travelling with £400 in their coach – a fortune at the time – the lady began to play a flageolet, a type of early flute. Inspired, Du Vall whipped out his own flageolet and responded with a tune of his own. “’Sir,’ says he to the knight, ‘your lady plays excellently, and I make no doubt but she dances as well: will you please to step out of the coach, and let me have the honour to dance one courant with her on the heath?’

“’I dare not deny any thing, Sir,’ the knight readily replied, ‘to a gentleman of your quality, and good behaviour…’ It was surprizing to see how gracefully [Du Vall] moved upon the grass; scarce a dancing master in London, but would have been proud to have shewn such agility in a pair of pumps, as Du Vall shewed in a great pair of French riding boots. As soon as the dance was over, he waits on the lady back to the coach, without offering her the least affront; but just as the knight was step ping in, ‘Sir,’ says he, ‘you have forgot to pay the music.’

“His Worship replied, that he never forgot such things; and instantly put his hand under the seat of the coach, and pulled out a hundred pound in a bag, which he delivered to Du Vall, who received it with a very good grace.”

• On the podcast | Dr Rosalind Crone answers all the key questions on the history of British prisons

How did Johnson write about more serious crimes?

Claude Du Vall may have been a rogue, but he was dashing one. That wasn’t the case for all of Johnson’s protagonists. There was a darker side to his General History, most especially when it was recounting acts of shocking violence against women. The most powerful example of this was an episode in the life of Patrick O’Bryan. This criminal, we are told, was born in Galway and served in the army under Charles II. He ran up debts, borrowing “with the common defence of his countrymen, a front that would brazen out anything, and even laugh at the persons whom he had imposed on, to their very faces”.

Johnson’s attitude is a reminder of the power of anti-Irish sentiment in the 18th century. So it comes as no surprise when he accuses his subject of an act that, you sense, Johnson sees as the worst crimes imaginable. Having described how O’Bryan shot and dismembered one of his victims, Johnson then ascribes to him a gang rape and mass murder.

With four accomplices “as bad as himself”, O’Bryan heads to the home of Lancelot Wilmot in Wiltshire, an isolated house known to contain substantial wealth. Having broken in at night, they set to work:

“… they ty’d and gagg’d the three servants, and then proceeded to the old gentleman’s room, where he was in bed with his lady. They served both these in the same manner, and then went in the daughter’s chamber. This young lady they severally forced after one another to their brutal pleasure, and when they had done, most inhumanly stabb’d her, because she endeavoured to get from their arms. They next acted the same tragedy on the father and mother, which they told them, ‘was because they did not breed up their daughter to better manners’.

“Then they rifled the house of every thing valuable which they could find in it, that was fit to be carried off, to the value in all of 2500 [pounds]. After which they set the building on fire, and left it to consume with the unhappy servants that was in it.”

We know that O’Bryan was a historical figure who committed terrible crimes because he hanged for them in 1689. Yet readers have to take some of Johnson’s other accounts with a pinch of salt. He tells us that we can “depend” on the “authenticity” of his tale, but then he peppers it with episodes that are implausible or outright fictional.

For the implausible, look no further than Sawney Bean, whom Johnson introduces thus: “The following account, though as well attested as any historical fact can be… is almost incredible.” The author then urges us to believe the story of a cannibal tribe, a near-50-strong family born of incest, living in a cave on a headland in the Firth of Clyde in the 16th century. This clan survived, he writes, by ambushing people on the road near their cave and then eating them, pickling the leftovers in barrels.

• Read more | Did the Scottish mass-murdering cannibal Sawney Bean actually exist?

Less dramatic, but entirely fictional nonetheless, is Johnson’s chapter on the life of John Falstaff, a character invented by William Shakespeare. We are told that he was born in Bedfordshire, and “flourished in the reigns of Henry IV and V”. Johnson also includes Robin Hood among his cast, recounting splendid stories of the outlaw hoodwinking traveller after traveller in the guise of “a very honest and worthy person”.

There is no doubt that Johnson wrote this book with his tongue firmly in his cheek. In our modern world, beset with fake news, to avoid falling prey to credulity we must all learn the skills of the historian. So it is with Johnson’s magnificent book: a reader must be willing to be entertained, but also be sceptical. The moment you open the cover, you have placed yourself in the open palm of a master manipulator. It’s an uncomfortable experience, but one to savour – because it summons the past as does no other book I have ever read.

Sam Willis is a historian, archaeologist and broadcaster. He wrote the introduction to the recent reissue of Johnson’s General History (British Library Publishing, 2020)

This article was first published in the March 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine

If – or when – a nuclear bomb was dropped on Cold War Britain, the nation was primed to react fast. When the sirens sounded, children would run home from school using the quickest familiar route. Families would wait out the nuclear fallout under the stairs, while political leaders would evacuate to bunkers across the country, ready to launch the regeneration plan. But were all these plans actually just a load of nonsense? Julie McDowall tells Matt Elton about Britain’s nuclear response plans, and questions their effectiveness when faced with the reality of instant annihilation.

Julie McDowall is the author of Attack Warning Red! How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War.

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The Victorians had a rich variety of slang terms – many of which seem incomprehensible to use today.

If you could be transported back in time to walk the streets of 19th-century London, would you know what to say if a street hawker implored you to try their bags o’mystery? Or what if a kindly passer-by pointed out that you’d gotten something on your daddles?

We asked historians Michael Wood, Rana Mitter and Catherine Nixey to put their heads together and try and tease out the meanings of eight slang terms that have fallen out of favour.

Watch the video to see how they fared. And, if you think you could do better, take our Victorian slang quiz below.

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• Explainer | What was life like for ‘ordinary’ Victorians?
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• Quiz | Would you be able to speak in National English?

Bettany Hughes’s Treasures Of The World

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Saturday 8th April, 6.30pm

Series two of the archaeology series concludes in Azerbaijan. Here, classicist and historian Bettany Hughes heads for Gobustan, where she sees 40,000-year-old rock art. Plus Hughes also visits Shari, on the route of the ancient Silk Road, where weavers are still working in a traditional manner.

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Fortress Britain With Alice Roberts

Channel 4

Saturday 8th April, 7.30pm
 
The Cold War era was characterised by paranoia and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. As Alice Roberts, Danielle George and Onyeka Nubia discover, it was an era that resulted in the government investing in bunkers and subterranean weapons stores. Plus the story of how notorious spies such as Kim Philby leaked secrets to the Soviet Union.

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Archive On 4: The British Bhangra Explosion

Radio 4

Saturday 8th April, 8pm

During the 1980s and 1990s, British Indians rewired traditional Punjabi folk music by adding electric guitars and synthesizers. As to how all this came about, Anita Rani looks back with the help of key figures such as Alaap, Sheila Chandra and Apache Indian.

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The Reunion – pick of the week

Radio 4

Easter Day, 11.15am

Signed on 10 April 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was designed to end The Troubles in Northern Ireland. What happened in the build-up to this momentous day? Key figures – including Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Bertie Ahearn and Monica McWilliams, co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition – look back. Presented by Kirsty Wark.

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Great Expectations

BBC One

Easter Day, 9pm

Steven Knight’s love-it-or-loathe-it Dickens adaptation reaches episode three. Pip has left Gravesend and gone to work for the lawyer Mr Jaggers, whom it soon becomes clear, if it were’t already, is not the most honest of men. Meantime, Estella learns about Miss Havisham’s scheme.

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Pompeii: The Discovery With Dan Snow

Channel 5

Easter Day, 9pm

The historian heads to Italy to tell the story of how Pompeii came to be rediscovered and excavated. Today, the site is associated with careful archaeology, but those who first dug at Pompeii were essentially treasure-hunters. Tourism, we learn, began as early as the 18th century.

Great Lives

Radio 4

Tuesday 11th April, 4.30pm

King in Prussia from 1740, Frederick the Great survived a brutal childhood to become a musician, a writer and, most of all, a man who took extraordinary military risks. But how do contemporary Germans view a man much admired by Hitler? Historian Christopher Clark nominates Frederick as having lived an extraordinary life.

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In Our Time

Radio 4

Thursday 13th April, 9am

Melvyn Bragg and guests look back to August 1346, when the armies of France and England met outside the town of Crécy in northern France. The French outnumbered the English, but Edward III prevailed. A battle that grew from years of tension between Edward and Philip VI led to decades of further conflict in the Hundred Years’ War.

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Open Country

Radio 4

Thursday 13th April, 3pm

There are around 200 abandoned villages in Norfolk, a county that also has more abandoned churches than anywhere else in the country. Lawrence D’Silva dons his walking boots to discover why this is so, in the process wandering down the grassy outlines of streets that once formed the medieval village of Godwick.

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Pilgrimage: The Road Through Portugal

BBC Two

Friday 14th April, 9pm

The latter-day pilgrims continue their journey through Portugal. Highlights in the second of three episodes include a visit to the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Monte, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a stop in Porto, a city where several pilgrimage routes intersect.

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What was the Declaration of Arbroath?

The Declaration of Arbroath was a letter written in April 1320 at Arbroath Abbey, on the east coast of Scotland. Around 1,000 words long, and written in Latin on a sheep’s skin, it was addressed to Pope John XXII and outlined particular grievances that the Scots held, including the recent excommunication from the Church of their king Robert I, aka Robert the Bruce.

While not directly asking for the lifting of the excommunication, the letter did request that the pope make an appeal to the English king, Edward I, to cease his invasions of Scotland.

In this, the letter emphasised the proud tradition of Scottish independence – “one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken by a single foreigner”. As such, the document remains one of the most significant artefacts in the country’s long and storied history.

Who signed the Declaration of Arbroath?

No one actually put ink to sheep’s skin, but the names of 39 Scottish nobles – eight earls and 31 barons – are listed at the head of the letter. The seals of many, if not all, were applied to the Declaration ahead of it being delivered to the papal court in Avignon.

Robert’s seal wasn’t affixed to it; it was felt that the letter would have greater impact if the king himself – the injured party, as it were – wasn’t one of the authors. It is strongly suspected, though, that he was at least its co writer, especially as it was penned at Arbroath Abbey residence of Bernard of Kilwinning, who was also the king’s chancellor. Robert did send his own letter to Avignon, too, as did the Bishop of St Andrews, but neither of these survive.

• On the podcast | Michael Brown discusses the bloody history of the Anglo-Scottish border wars

What is the background to the Declaration of Arbroath?

In 1290, the child queen Margaret of Norway died, leaving no obvious successor to the Scottish throne. A two year interregnum followed, after which 13 candidates staked their claim to the throne, the most prominent of whom were John Balliol and Robert the Bruce. Edward I was appointed to oversee the arbitration of the claims and to select the most credible contender, a duty he agreed to as long as the Scots swore allegiance to him as overlord. Unsurprisingly, Balliol, the candidate most sympathetic to England, was selected to be the next king of Scots.

Even as a puppet king, Balliol was a weak monarch and was forced to abdicate in 1296, less than four years into his reign. For the next 10 years, an ever shifting cast of Guardians governed the country, among them Robert the Bruce, the fearsome leader William Wallace and John Comyn III, Balliol’s nephew and the husband of Edward I’s cousin.

During this time, the English king – later known as the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ – launched a succession of attacks north of the border, seeking to expand his kingdom by annexing Scotland. He forced all Scottish nobles to submit to him, bar Wallace, who was captured and hanged, drawn and quartered in London.

• Read more | 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Scottish history

How did Robert the Bruce become king?

Despite being rivals for the throne, Comyn and Robert hatched a secret plan whereby the former would renounce his claim to the throne in return for the latter’s not-inconsiderable land holdings across Scotland. But when Comyn appeared to renege on the deal, Robert summoned him to a clear-the-air meeting at the church of Greyfriars in Dumfries. In the heated exchange that ensued, Comyn was fatally stabbed in front of the altar.

Despite being excommunicated from the Church (for the first time) for the murder, it didn’t stop his passage to the throne, and six weeks later, in March 1306, Robert was crowned king of Scots. In response, Edward once again unleashed the might of his troops in Scotland, forcing Robert to go into hiding and to use guerrilla warfare tactics over the next few years to recapture large swathes of his homeland.

He and his troops laid siege to the English-held Stirling Castle, tempting the English army – by now under the command of Edward II, following his father’s death – northwards and inflicting a severe defeat on them at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

• Read more | The battle of Bannockburn: Robert Bruce’s fight for freedom

Were there other efforts to broker a truce before the Declaration of Arbroath?

Edward II’s defeat at Bannockburn, where he only just escaped with his life, had neither chastened him nor dented English expansionist ambitions. A papal effort to negotiate a truce between the warring factions failed when, in 1318, Robert recaptured the strategically significant town of Berwick-on-Tweed, located right on the border of the two countries. The following year, the pope issued an edict to the Scots king, instructing him and four of his bishops to visit him in Avignon. When they refused, Pope John XXII excommunicated all five, as well as threatening to do likewise to the entire Scottish population.

What did the Declaration of Arbroath ask of the pope?

While outwardly the language appears reverential towards the pope, its words carried a gentle threat. The Scottish nobles warned Pope John XXII that should he continue to favour the English to the detriment of the Scots, “then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge”.

It was a confident gambit, the implication that not only would the pope have blood on his hands, but that he would also be subject to divine judgment. The Declaration sets out a history of Scottish subjugation at the hands of the English, particularly their treatment by Edward I, who “came in a guise of a friend and ally to harass them as an enemy”.

The letter’s authors issue a lengthy charge sheet against the late king, making sure to include his crimes against the Church: “imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries, robbing and killing monks and nuns and yet other outrages without number”.

• On the podcast | Iain MacInnes on the Scottish Wars of Independence

How is Robert the Bruce portrayed in the Declaration of Arbroath?

Alongside Edward I’s character assassination, the Declaration contains a glowing reference for Robert, complete with biblical comparisons: “He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, bore cheerfully toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Maccabaeus or Joshua.”

However, rather intriguingly, the authors do stress that their admiration and adoration of the king would be withdrawn if he were “seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the king of England or the English”. They went further: “as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English”.

The pope will have been in no uncertainty about the ardour of their beliefs. When it came to demands for action, the Declaration was more direct. “With our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts”, the earls and barons request the pope to warn the English king that he should leave the Scots in peace. “[He] ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings.”

• Read more | Q&A: When was the last battle between England and Scotland?

How successful was the Declaration of Arbroath?

Only partially. The letter did provoke the pope to write to Edward II to request the cessation of hostilities, but he continued to refuse to recognise Robert as the legitimate occupant of the Scottish throne – and the excommunication remained in place.

What the Declaration did do was contribute to the wider campaign for Scottish self-governance. Eight years after the three-man deputation delivered the letter to Avignon, a peace accord was finally signed – the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton of 1328.

Still, the importance of the Declaration wasn’t acknowledged until it was translated from Latin into English at the tail end of the 1680s. Only then was it revealed to be an extraordinarily worded document. As the historian Agnes Mure McKenzie would later observe, “the whole thing is magnificently lucid”, possessing a clarity that “is shot through with quiet implications”.

Is there a link between the Declaration of Arbroath and the Declaration of Independence?

Some believe the translated letter to have been a heavy influence on the American Declaration of Independence, another document calling for freedom from English rule.

• Read next | Scotland’s cry for liberty: the Declaration of Arbroath

Nige Tassell is a journalist specialising in history

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)

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The image beloved of reconstruction artists, of semi-naked people with woad and tattoos and lime-washed hair with porcupine-like spikes, is based on old classical descriptions, but not specifically of the Britons.

If you look at Iron Age coins with heads on them, you get what seems to be an extravagant range of headgear, or perhaps hairstyles. It could be spiky hair or it could be boarskin hoods.

In the archaeological record, on the western edge of the Icenian lands, you get sites where they’re clearly hunting for fur, pelts, feathers, and wild fowl. A lot of this could be going into paraphernalia.

We can’t make a direct comparison with Native Americans, but we need to consider the idea that they might have been sporting feather cloaks, Mohawk-style haircuts and shaved heads, and perhaps animal skins over their heads.

• Read more | Who was Boudica?

Wild depictions don’t tell the whole story

We don’t have really any contemporary depictions of the Britons.

There were some very wild descriptions in some of the Roman texts that suggest the Britons lived their entire lives in swamps and would spend days underwater. We have no idea really what the Britons would have looked like.

We have to use our imaginations and look at the archaeology. We know they’re hunting for pelts and for feathers, and we have these strange depictions on coins that we can’t really work out.

• Read more | Beyond Boudica: Who were the rebels of Roman Britain?

More than just woad

If we add it all together, it’s clear that they love display. You only have to look at some of their metalwork: the gold and silver torcs, and the enormous, beautifully decorated bronze shields. They obviously went in for display.

The idea they were simply just lime-washing their hair and running naked into battle with a bit of woad probably needs to be reimagined.

Duncan Mackay is the author of Echolands: A Journey in Search of Boudica. He was speaking with David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast, discussing Boudica’s rebellion against the Romans in the Britain. Hear more from this conversation in the full the audio episode.

• Read next | What if Boudica had defeated the Romans?