Podcasts

Vantablack: The Darkest Material On Earth

!!!REAL LIFE INVENTOR ALERT!!!

Usually we talk about dead people on this podcast. It is history after all. But this week we’ve got living,...

How the English Accent Changed Forever

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, a profound transformation took place in the ways that the English language was spoken and words...

300 Years of British Prime Ministers Part 2

2/2. It's a big summer for British politics with Boris Johnson's resignation and the race between conservative hopefuls Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss...

Escaping the Blitz: A WW2 Evacuee Remembers

Today's guest Kitty Baxter was aged just nine when World War II broke out in 1939. One of five children born to a road sweeper and a cleaner,...

Rasputin: Myth & Manhood

Was Rasputin really Russia’s greatest love machine? Did he have any healing powers? And why might his penis be pickling in a jar?

In this...

The Witches of Warboys: England's Most Famous Witch Trial

The Cambridgeshire village of Warboys was the scene of one of the most famous English witch trials of the sixteenth century. There, the privileged...

The Oracle of Delphi

"If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire." That was the prophecy the Oracle of Delphi delivered to the Lydian King - she just...

300 Years of British Prime Ministers Part 1

1/2. It's a big summer for British politics with Boris Johnson's resignation and the race between conservative hopefuls Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss...

Pyramids

The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building in the world for nearly four thousand years…until it was beaten by Lincoln...

Unrest in Parliament: The Hot Summer of 1911

The summer of 1911 was a hot one. Massive strikes took place across the country, including seamen, railwaymen, coal miners, women working in food...

What the Romans Did for Us

Early Medieval Britain was more Roman than we think. The Roman Empire left vast infrastructural resources, not least roads, walls and bridges. Why...

Female Pirates

Yo ho ho, a pirate’s life for me - but what is a pirate’s life, and what was it like for women?

This is the story of Anne Bonny and Mary...