How ‘History Alice’ is getting Gen Z to learn about the past

Pop quiz: Napoléon Bonaparte was short – true or false?

Actually, he was taller than average – and taller than his seagoing nemesis, Admiral Nelson.

That’s the sort of nugget that Alice Loxton enjoys teaching people about history. The young millennial doesn’t have a classroom. But she does have a social media following of over 3 million people. (Her handle on X, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok is @history_alice.) In her native Britain, Ms. Loxton gets recognized on the streets of London almost daily. She’s the cool history teacher Gen Z students wish they had.

“Often people have this perception that history is about going to university or reading books – about being a kind of academic,” says Ms. Loxton in a video call. “But there are so many different ways of learning and experiencing history, whether that be experiencing things on location or listening to podcasts.”

Ms. Loxton’s 2023 book, “Uproar!,” detailed how Georgian-era cartoonists such as James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson became politically influential satirists. (Gillray fostered the disinformation that Napoléon was short.) The historian’s second book, “Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives,” is already a bestseller in Britain, having reached No. 1 when it was first published there in August. It chronicles the formative years of famous figures such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Queen Elizabeth I, and Horace (later Horatio) Nelson. But many of the teenagers featured in “Eighteen” have been almost entirely forgotten. In an interview that’s been edited for length and clarity, Ms. Loxton spoke with the Monitor about “Eighteen.”

One of the most fascinating stories in your book is of Jacques Francis, who is now finally getting his due. Could you briefly tease readers with a description of what made him so extraordinary?

I wanted to write in this book a mixture of some people who are very famous and shine a new light on them. But, also, most of the people we know about in history are such a minority – 0.1% – and living incredibly unusual lives. So I wanted to include some figures who are more ordinary and doing kind of more ordinary things. So there’s a real mix of people in it. One of them is a man called Jacques Francis. We don’t know much about his very early life. We know that he probably came from somewhere on the West African coast. It’s hard to trace, but he’s probably taken forcibly by the Portuguese. He might have ended up in Venice. We know that when he’s 18, he’s in Southampton on the south coast of England. He is an extraordinary swimmer and he’s an amazing free diver so he can hold his breath underwater for ages. … This is a time when most people in England wouldn’t swim at all. Even if you join the Navy, you wouldn’t be taught to swim. Doctors would even give orders, “Don’t immerse yourself in water because it’s dangerous.”

So he was there in Southampton just after King Henry VIII’s favorite ship, the Mary Rose, sank during the Battle of the Solent. Sometimes they’d be able to actually bring the ship up, but if they couldn’t do that, they’d try and retrieve the valuable cannons and guns. Jacques Francis’ job was to go out with a team and retrieve cannons. … When you think about someone like Jacques Francis, he’s just one example of all of the different kinds of stories within Henry VIII’s story, within that Tudor world.

In that chapter, you describe how Britain was an island of free men. Once enslaved men from Europe set foot on its shores, they were no longer enslaved. And of course, in 1834, Britain abolished slavery in the colonies, which was three decades before America abolished slavery.

His employer, a man called Corsi, who was a Venetian, was in trouble. Jacques Francis has to testify in court. So he’s the first Black man to testify in court in England. His word is taken as truth. [It] demonstrates that he is a kind of respected person in society.

Your chapter on Sarah Biffin is fascinating. In 1784, she was born without arms or legs. She’s an extraordinary, virtuosic painter who held a paintbrush between her teeth. Do you hope it will reframe how people think about those with a disability?

Sarah Biffin’s story is perhaps the most inspiring of all. It’s about overcoming absolutely every potential challenge in life and not succumbing to, giving up, or giving in to that challenge. It’s not just that she’s disabled, it’s that she’s from a very, very poor background. You know, living in some village in the countryside in Somerset and she is a woman. The chances of her becoming [an] independent businesswoman who’s a household name and a respected person, with all of the perceptions of disability at the time, is so low. When I write about her, it’s not actually the disability that’s the striking thing. The extraordinary thing is her spirit. She is so determined … that if she wants to become a great artist, that’s what she’ll do. …

There are a set number of famous [artists] that we seem to always talk about: Hogarth, Reynolds, Constable, Turner. Whereas, actually, if you think about that period, there is someone like Sarah Biffin and then there’s James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson and other women like Hannah Humphrey, who was the woman who managed the print shop that James Gillray had. There’s all these amazing characters that we still don’t talk about. Sarah Biffin is one of them. There’s another famous artist called Alison Lapper who has the same condition as Sarah. And she’s alive today making art. She’s very inspired by Sarah as well. … Hopefully it inspires people of all backgrounds today and reshapes old thinking of what the past might have looked like, and people in the past might look like, but also what it means for disabled and nondisabled people today.

Women have, for much of history, been treated as second-class citizens in patriarchal societies. But many of the female figures you write about were great leaders, pioneers in their fields, and incredibly brave. For example, Mary Anning, a paleontologist in the 1800s that I’d never heard of.

Another one who was hugely celebrated is Elsie Inglis. She was this Scottish lady who was an amazing nurse, an amazing doctor, a medical practitioner, campaigner, all that kind of thing. She was basically like a Florence Nightingale of Scotland. She was so well known and so beloved that there was this enormous funeral for her at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. People were lining the streets. Members of the royal family were sending their condolences to her family. Hospitals in Scotland were named after her. … The question is: Why, when these people were so famous in their day, do we not know about them now?

If you could time travel, which of your subjects would you most have liked to befriend?

I really like [paleontologist] Mary Anning. She is a favorite of mine because she has a remarkable story. She’s kind of quite a quirky, almost Gothic character. There’s all these stories about her when she was younger. She survived a strike of lightning. She found [a] corpse that was washed up on the beach in Lyme Regis. … And then she goes and finds these fossils or she’s looking at the landscape. By doing so, she’s opening this portal into the origins of the universe and the origins of the world and the origins of humans. ... She would be full of surprises.

When many people turn 18, they’re not sure what they want to do with their lives. So, from researching this book, what would you advise someone who’s just turned 18?

There are a few figures in it – like [fashion designer] Vivienne Westwood, [novelist and poet] Vita Sackville-West – who at the age of 18 are a bit lost. They don’t know where they’re going and they don’t know there’s a great adventure coming and they will be these amazing, successful people. What’s my piece of advice? Well, the lesson you can take from history when you look at all of these 18-year-olds from history, is that people are capable of immensely impressive things. Eighteen-year-olds in the past were given a huge, massive responsibility. Empress Matilda, who was in charge of Italy, for example. Or they had endured extremely difficult situations – perhaps survived the plague or gone to fight in a battle or had children. ... Another example, of course, is Nelson, who’d been at sea six years already by the time he was 18. But in these extreme situations, people can step up to the mark. It’s amazing what young people can achieve.