What's The Real History Behind Your Favourite Movies & TV Shows? - HistoryExtra

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How true are your favourite historical dramas?

Delve into the real historical stories and people that inspired your favourite period dramas. Find out if the tales told on screen were really true, and where history has been bent out of shape in guise of creative licence...

(l-r): Thomas Turgoose, Charlotte Ockelton, Sophie McShera and Michael Socha star as members of the Hartley clan in BBC Two series The Gallows Pole (Photo by BBC Pictures)

The Gallows Pole The true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners

Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred of Bebbanburg in The Last Kingdom season 5

The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg The historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero

Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, Princess of Wales in 'The Crown' (left) and Princess Diana touring an

Watch this The best historical movies and TV series streaming now

Woman in wheelchair with two women pushing a pram

History TV and radio in the UK: what’s on our screens this week?

Illustration of Major Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate

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

Indiana Jones

General History

Was there a real Indiana Jones?

Bridgerton & Queen Charlotte: the real history behind the drama

Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma in Bridgerton, next to a Regency portrait of Kitty Kirkpatrick.

Inspiring Bridgerton: the real South Asian women in Regency-era England

The Featherington sisters (played by Nichola Coughlan, Harriet Cains and Polly Walker) curtsey to Queen Charlotte in Netflix series ‘Bridgerton’ as part of their debutante debut. (Photo by LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX © 2020)

From balls to Bridgerton: a brief history of debutantes and the social season

Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

The real story of Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte: from glittering courts to tragic decline

General Early Modern

Q&A How did people learn to dance in Baroque and Regency times?

How to survive in the Georgian court

Bridgerton: behind the scenes of season 2 . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The real history of Bridgerton

The Last Kingdom – how real is Uhtred's tale?

Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred of Bebbanburg in The Last Kingdom season 5

The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg The historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero

An early 14th-century portrait of 10th-century leader Edward the Elder

Who was Edward the Elder? A brief guide to the Anglo-Saxon king

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, illustrated sitting on a throne

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians: the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings

Aelfwynn in season 5 of The Last Kingdom, holding the crown of Mercia that belonged to her mother

The real Aelfwynn of Mercia

The real history of The Last Kingdom

Vikings: Valhalla – the myths and the reality

Leif Erikson in Vikings Valhalla

Vikings: Valhalla – the real history behind Netflix’s successor to Vikings

Freydis Eiriksdottir in Vikings Valhalla

Was Freydís Eiríksdóttir a hero or a deranged murderess?

Photo of statue of Leif Erikson

Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland

Depiction of the battle of Stamford Bridge. Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, seen here wielding a battleaxe, was slain at the battle

Harald Hardrada: why there’s more to the last great Viking than his death in 1066

The real history of Vikings: Valhalla

Find out the real history behind your favourite TV shows

Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, and the real Queen Elizabeth II

Netflix’s The Crown: the real history behind the royal drama

Aidan Turner as Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo: the real history behind the new Renaissance drama

The Spanish Princess Part II. (Image by Starz)

The real history behind The Spanish Princess

The cast of Downton Abbey in front of Highclere Castle. (Image by Alamy)

The upstairs/downstairs world of Downton Abbey: how true to life is it?

Alex Hogh Andersen as Ivar the Boneless

The real Vikings: the early medieval world behind the hit drama

Louisa Jacobson as Marian Brook & Denée Benton as Peggy Scott in The Gilded Age. (Image by Alison Cohen Rosa © 2021 Heyday Productions, LLC and Universal Television LLC)

The Gilded Age preview: “Entry into a world that really hasn’t been covered on television before”

Claire Foy as the Duchess of Argyll in A Very British Scandal (left); Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll (right)

The Argyll divorce: the society scandal that rocked 1960s Britain

More historical dramas

What's the real history behind your favourite movies?

Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain, in Munich – The Edge of War

Second World War

A martyr and a hero? How Munich – The Edge of War tries to soften Neville Chamberlain’s rotten reputation

AnneBoleyn-Diana

8 historical reasons behind Anne Boleyn’s appearance in Princess Diana film Spencer

Zazie Beetz and Jonathan Majors in the Netflix film The Harder They Fall

The Harder They Fall: the real cowboys who inspired the black Western

“A spotlight on historic societal misogyny and disbelief of women”: what The Last Duel gets right and wrong

“An intoxicating triumph true to the grandeur of the poem”: a historian’s review of The Green Knight

Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla: the history behind The Current War

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TV and film on the HistoryExtra podcast

Listen to our interviews about the latest historical movies and TV…

Still shows Iain De Caestecker as Arthur Pendragon in The Winter King

How The Winter King brings Arthurian Britain to life

King Arthur in The Winter King

The Winter King: the true story of the King Arthur drama

Consuelo Vanderbilt reclining for a photograph.

Dollar princesses The American heiresses who changed the face of British aristocracy

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Netflix’s The Crown: history and storytelling . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.