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39:02
President Woodrow Wilson: Progressive? Warmonger? Overrated?
5 September 2024The 20th Century is up and running and the next President in our series, Woodrow Wilson, is in for a challenge. Reconstruction is over, Europe is...
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48:00
The Romans and India with William Dalrymple
5 September 2024Ancient India was the single greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. For centuries, Indian sailors navigated the Indian Ocean and Red Sea to...
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48:37
The Black Death: The Deadliest Plague
5 September 2024It was beyond Biblical in its horror. Around half of all Europeans are estimated to have died in the Black Death. Death ravaged towns and...
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37:28
Elizabeth I Slept Here: Longleat House
5 September 2024Queen Elizabeth I’s travels round England - known as ‘progresses’ - were never a quick day-trip or city break. They involved scores of...
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28:38
Hitler's V1 & V2 Rockets
3 September 2024As the world closed in on the Third Reich in the final chapter of World War Two, a desperate Adolf Hitler turned to his so-called 'Revenge...
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46:37
Smallfolk Under Siege: Visions of Medieval Violence
3 September 2024In the year 940 in North-Eastern France, a young peasant girl began to experience vivid visions that mirrored the brutal conflict engulfing her...
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43:56
Could You Survive Victorian Surgery?
3 September 2024What was it really like inside a Victorian operating theatre? Did people really smoke cigars and eat oysters while they watched high risk surgery...
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34:47
British Brides for American Tobacco: A Tudor Trade
2 September 2024In 1621 the Virginia Company of London put out a call for young, handsome and honestly educated women to become wives for the planters in its new...
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42:26
The Alexandrian War: Julius Caesar's Biggest Military Blunder
2 September 2024In 47 BCE, Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt as a victorious general, ready to make an easy alliance with the Pharaoh. Instead, he found himself...
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34:59
Omens, Signs and False Prophets
2 September 2024In the autumn of 1621, hundreds of starlings were seen fighting in the sky above Cork. The following May, the city was ravaged by fire. The...
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35:21
Macabre Death of Edgar Allan Poe
2 September 2024Edgar Allan Poe was a poster boy for the macabre whose work thrilled readers throughout America and beyond. How did he end up in a gutter in...
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1:02:07
How WWII Started
1 September 2024On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, France and the United Kingdom declared war on the Third Reich. This was the...
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