Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

If you lived in 16th century London, would you have any idea what was happening in Paris, Venice or Frankfurt? Well, yes,

according to Jode Raymond Wren. And that news might reach you quicker than you would expect.

In this episode, I speak to Jode about his new book, The Great Exchange. It uncovers a complex

network of communication that was operating across

Europe between the end of the Middle Ages and the birth of modern mass media. And we touched

on everything from ambassadors news bulletins to emerging postal services. So why is this a

particularly interesting period in the story of news?

What happens at the beginning of this period is that we see the first soundings of the regular

and effective spread of news across Europe and the beginning of an expectation that you might receive news next week.

Previously, when news happened, you might hear it.

But from around 1,400 to 1,500, we begin to see this expectation that there will be news,

there will be more news.

We can rely on there being more news this week.

We see the first soundings of that around 1400, I think.

So there's loads of fascinating stuff to get into here with how exactly news was spread, who was spreading it.

But before we get into any of that, what are we actually talking about when we're talking about news in this period?

What kind of subjects were deemed worthy

of spreading across the continent?

So if you look at newsletters, if they're exchanged among merchants, it'll be financial news.

It'll be news of spices and trade and so on. But more generally, news of war, battles, court activity,

royal entries, royal ceremonies, you'll see news of war, battles, court activity, royal entries, royal ceremonies.

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