How do I clear Recently Closed Tabs on Safari on iPhone?

iPhone 16e

iOS v 18.6.2 (as of 2025/09/12)

256 G storage

purchased 2025/05/16

On Safari on iPhone holding the + sign in the bottom left corner displays Recently Closed Tabs (see screenshot);

This is a useful feature if it works properly as sometimes I close tabs without intending to. And years ago on older versions of my phone this did work as expected for me.

The problem is that my recently closed tabs list seems to be frozen. None of the tabs in the list are recently closed, some of them go back many years. And when I do close a tab it is not added to the list. If possible, I would like to clear this list and then have it refreshed as new tabs are closed, with older ones aging out of the list (that's what recent should mean, IMO).

What I have tried:

• According to a web search the list itself should have a control for clearing it at the top. You can see from my screenshot that this is not the case.
• Navigated to Settings>Apps>Safari. Under the heading HISTORY AND WEBSITE DATA is a control: Clear History and Website Data. I pressed the controls Selected 'All History' with the Close All Tabs additional option turned on. The list remains as it was before. I actually did this with help in the Apple Store. The two specialists who helped me tried this on their own phones and it worked for them. But not for me.
• I thought maybe I have a corrupted version of Safari. But it can't be uninstalled and the App Store only offers me the option to Open, not to update, much less reinstall.

I have searched this question but have not found any replies that seem relevant. Still, I'm a pretty vanilla user, not attempting any fancy configuration, so I figure if it's happening to me, it must have happened to other people.

Any help the community can provide will be much appreciated.

[Edited by Moderator]