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PLAYLISTS PER SERIES FOR EASY NAVIGATION Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as they delve into the murky waters of history. Drop in to the History Cafe weekly on Wednesdays for discussions that give old stories a refreshing new brew.

Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe


    • Feb 21, 2024 LATEST EPISODE
    • weekly NEW EPISODES
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    • 272 EPISODES


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    #89 Britain's Nazi Allies - Ep 8 Trading with the Nazis

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2024 30:51


    In 1935 the Etonians in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office rejected all calls from the USSR to unite with France and Eastern Europe against the rise of the Third Reich. They were far too terrified of Communism. Instead, Britain agreed a treaty allowing the Germans to expand their navy. When supporters of the elected left-wing government in Spain faced annihilation by Franco's fascists in 1936-7 the Tory Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, openly welcomed the carnage in Spain. It would, he declared, make the British public understand that Nazi Germany would be ‘an ally of ours and of all order-loving folk.'

    #88 'It haunts me' - Ep 7 Trading with the Nazis

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2024 27:50


    Horrified by the implications of aiding German rearmament, a few British and American companies made serious attempts to get out of Germany in the 1930s. Particularly after Kristallnacht, 10 November 1938, when Nazi thugs attacked Jewish businesses. But the British Establishment saw Hitler as ‘a man who could be relied upon'. The Bank of England argued as late as March 1939, four days after Hitler had marched into Prague, that the British couldn't just pull out of Germany, without bringing down the whole London banking sector.

    #87 Kill Nazism with kindness? - Ep 6 Trading with the Enemy

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2024 27:45


    A perfect storm created the conditions for the Nazi's march to war. The naïve belief that you could kill Nazism with kindness (aka trade agreements from which bankers and businessmen personally hoped to profit) was held simultaneously by the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and the second in command at the British Foreign Office, Orme Sargent. Their opponents in government argued that tough action was necessary to contain Germany ‘even at a cost' to those who had invested. They were consistently undermined.

    #86 'Hell-bent to supplant our democratic government' - Ep 5 Trading with the Enemy

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2024 26:26


    In 1936 the US Ambassador in Berlin, William Dodd, wrote to President Roosevelt warning of a pro-Nazi clique of US industrialists ‘hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government.' We look at the notorious Liberty League and the dinner in New York's Astoria to celebrate the fall of Paris to the Nazis. We showcase the businessmen who believed they were above democracy and could achieve world peace (under fascism) through world trade.

    #85 Nazi sterilisation, the American way

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2024 30:25


    For all the complaints about the difficulties of doing business in Hitler's Germany, the Americans seemed strikingly settled there. Now we get to the nub of why, when Germany occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and then part of Poland in 1938-39, its military rolled out in General Motors and Ford cars and trucks, and its planes were using General Motors and Ford parts. They were also burning American fuel. And using American research to justify forcibly sterilising those they considered mentally unfit.

    #84 Dollars and Dictatorship – Ep 3 Trading with the Enemy

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2024 24:21


    STAND-ALONE. The Americans insisted on extracting every cent from war-torn Britain and France in the aftermath of World War I. They made them repay the money they had borrowed, at increasingly high interest rates, to buy American weapons to fight Germany. It led to economic depression. The 1929 Wall Street Crash was part of a global financial meltdown which led to economic nationalism – survival of the fittest, everyone for himself. And that was before Hjalmar Schacht Reichsminister for Economics in Germany, trapped American companies in a series of clever regulations. It enabled Hitler to rearm. [We'll soon get to how the British also enabled Hitler!]

    #83 Enrich your enemy, impoverish your allies - Ep 2 Trading with the Enemy

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2024 31:47


    The US had a paradoxical strategy to ensure repayment of its WW1 loans. It would make Germany economically prosperous to ensure Germany was in a position to pay reparations to France and Britain (as per the Treaty of Versailles). This would mean that impoverished Britain and France could keep repaying the interest on their wartime loans to the Americans. Economist Maynard Keynes, aware that Britain and France would never recover from endless interest repayments, proposed cancelling all war debts. Everyone would end up better off in the long run, as was later proved. But the US government refused and American companies, including Ford, General Motors, and Standard Oil, began to invest in Germany, exploiting its economic collapse and setting the stage for the rise of the Nazis.

    #82 'The whole world belongs to the Americans' - Ep 1 Trading With The Enemy

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2024 28:01


    Carl Siemens, chair of Siemens the German electronics business, complained in 1929, ‘the whole world belongs to the Americans.' If you want to understand how it was that American businesses ended up investing so heavily in Germany in the 1920s and 30s – so heavily that eventually they enabled Hitler to arm the fascist Third Reich - then you have to start by going back to the First World War. It starts with asking why the Americans declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917 but mysteriously did not ally with either Britain or France.

    #33 Sex, Hollywood and Fashion

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2023 33:37


    Why did fashion become so much more conservative in the 1930s? We look at the puritanical Hays Motion Picture Production Code that banned indecent passions, and at MGM's Adrian Greenberg, the most powerful Hollywood designer of his day. The arrival of colour film stock and the invention of the close-up meant Adrian designed for the camera, experimenting with hats and calf-length dresses that flattered both the lead actresses and ‘Nancy' in the plush seat. MGM's Louis B Mayer, who'd started out selling second hand clothes, made a fortune producing mass-made copies to coincide with each film's release for Nancy's modest budget.

    #79 Santa Claus and the Knickerbockers

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2023 29:37


    A whole lot of nonsense has been written about the invention of the modern Christmas. It was thought up by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens or Prince Albert. We just can't resist attaching a famous name to things, especially if the name belongs to a writer or a royal. We deserve better than this. So here's our offering from the History Café Christmas Party! Have a good one.

    #30 ‘A tall and desperate fellow' - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2023 33:19


    The night before - 4 November 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic with experience as a soldier fighting for the Spanish, is found with matches and fuse powder in a storeroom under the House of Lords. He's ‘booted and spurred', ready for a quick get-away. Or maybe not. The government account keeps changing.

    #29 The king's fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 6, 2023 32:09


    As his father had done, King James I's Chief Minister, Robert Cecil ,built his entrapments around a germ of genuine plotting. We uncover a small Catholic rebellion in Warwickshire in response to the king's tougher anti-Catholic laws. And we examine Cecil's imaginative embellishment: a mystery letter delivered to a compromised Catholic peer on 26 October warning of ‘a terrible blow this Parliament.' It was handed to the king to decipher. If anything was designed to terrify James I, whose father had narrowly escaped death from a gunpowder blast, this was it.

    #28 ‘A formidable network of secret agents' - Ep 5 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2023 31:52


    We dig deeper into the animosity between the King, James I of England and VI of Scotland and his Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, whom he bullied and called names. And we see the Gunpowder plot in the context of the previous plots hatched by the Cecils (father and son) against their enemies. All of which historians now agree were largely fabrications. Father was Elizabeth I's Chief Minister, like his son he had spies everywhere and openly boasted of his policy of entrapment.

    #27 'Hellish miners' - Ep 4 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2023 33:26


    To avoid any possible blame for the plot falling on himself or the king, Cecil procures confessions saying the seven gentlemen plotters began excavating a tunnel under the House of Lords long before the government stepped up its anti-Catholic legislation. They apparently lived on site, in an upstairs room, seven to a bed. They dug unnoticed, only in the day (or was it only in the night?) for almost a year, before spying a handy cellar next door for the gunpowder barrels. Yes. Of course.

    #26 Why blow up Parliament anyway? - Ep 3 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2023 30:27


    The parliament of 1604 refuses to grant the king money. They're still paying for the effects of the last plague. But this is Cecil's job. What to do? On 5 November 1605 the assembled MPs and peers are calmly informed that there has been a devilish Catholic plot to blow the lot of them up. A plot that their king and Cecil have brilliantly foiled. Unsurprisingly, this time, they vote the king the money he so badly needs. Job done.

    Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 3 Taster

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2023 5:04


    Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 3 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe

    Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 2 Taster

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2023 2:38


    Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 2 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe

    #25 ‘Here lieth the Toad' - Ep 2 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2023 34:50


    We take a look at James I's shadowy chief minister Robert Cecil who manages to implicate most of his Catholic enemies in the plot. Cecil was so desperate to improve King James's dire view of him (his father had caused the execution of James' mother, Mary Queen of Scots) he would stoop to anything.

    #24 ‘There is no state trial so totally devoid of reality' - Ep 1 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2023 32:25


    BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND - FOR 5 NOVEMBER! We look at the story the government published as The King's Book, more than 500 witness statements and other contemporary sources and conclude, like the Victorian antiquarian Jardine who wrote up the trial from the State Papers, there is no reliable corroborating evidence for the gunpowder story we've been told.

    Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 1 Taster

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2023 5:56


    Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 1 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe

    #06 London fires were visible from France - ep 6 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2023 23:48


    Who won the Battle of Britain? For good strategic reasons Churchill claimed victory. But the Germans, who saw the eight months of the Blitz as part of the same campaign, achieved much of what they intended.

    Battle of Britain - London Fires Were Visible From France - Ep 6 Taster Final

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2023 1:23


    Battle of Britain - London Fires Were Visible From France - Ep 6 Taster Final by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe

    #05 Forcing Britain 'to her knees' - ep 5 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2023 25:05


    The Battle of Britain was never as close as the popular story has it. The RAF was too well organised and supplied. But is that why the Luftwaffe switched to bombing London? Or was there another reason?

    Battle of Britain - Taster Ep 5 - Forcing Britain To Her Knees

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2023 1:25


    Next episode - coming soon

    #04 More than a double bluff - ep 4 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2023 31:59


    Churchill talks up the threat of invasion, even though it looks impossible. ‘I might as well send my men straight into a sausage machine,' writes the German Chief of Staff. But invasion preparations still go on. Who is bluffing who?

    #03 'Always carry pepper to throw in their eyes' - ep 3 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2023 31:50


    Britain is gripped by fear of invasion. Government leaflet 'If the Invader Comes' calls for pepper and ‘a sharp knife to kill them if necessary.' Churchill goes on BBC and says ‘we await undismayed by the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight.' So why in private is Churchill saying he doubts the invasion would ever take place?

    #02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2023 29:27


    Was the Battle of Britain a fight for Luftwaffe air superiority in order to enable an invasion? The Luftwaffe itself did not think so. It had another agenda altogether.

    #01 Waterworld Flotilla - ep 1 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2023 24:47


    The Germans make extraordinary preparations for the immense task of invading Britain in 1940. Why bother when neither Hitler nor any senior German officer wanted to do it or thought it was possible?

    #72 It was mainly the poor who burned - Ep 5 Bloody Mary Tudor?

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2023 42:58


    Most of those executed for their beliefs under Philip and Mary 1555-58 came from places with a long history of religious dissidence. It matches European evidence that many – perhaps most – of those burned at the stake were not Protestants, but ‘anabaptists' or people with similar beliefs – usually poor - whom both Protestants and Catholics were persecuting. The government of Edward VI had already begun before Mary came to the throne. But why so many in England? We discover literature appearing from the late 1540s that openly encouraged dissenters to die for their beliefs. And we explore the possibility that so many died because the English uniquely insisted on public hearings, in which there was no room for quiet, face-saving compromises.

    #71 Most who were burned were not Protestants - Ep 4 Bloody Mary Tudor?

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2023 41:49


    Until six weeks before the child was due, everybody at court and indeed in Europe, believed Mary was pregnant. She suffered a rare disorder - pseudocyesis - maybe triggered by a tumour on her pituitary gland that would eventually kill her. The imminent birth of a Catholic heir to the Anglo-Spanish dynasty meant that the select council governing the kingdom really now had no alternative but to grasp the nettle of suppressing any potential causes of unrest – including any remaining shreds of die-hard Protestantism - and promptly. We also discover, that the majority of those who were burned were not Protestants at all, but followers of much older, rural religions.

    #70 More interested in pirates than heretics - Ep 3 Bloody Mary Tudor?

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2023 39:16


    Who ran the persecution of heretics in England 1555-58? England was a joint monarchy but historians traditionally accused bigoted Mary of running the clamp down herself - with her cousin, Reginald Pole the Archbishop of Canterbury. There's no evidence it's true and Pole was useless at running anything. But didn't Mary intervene to make sure Thomas Cranmer was burned – Henry VIII's archbishop? No, again. Cranmer was tried by the pope and Mary had no power to spare him. As for Mary's Privy Council, they turn out to have been more interested in pirates than heretics. Much more important was Bartolomé Carranza, a Spanish friar, King Philip's trusted eyes and ears at the English Court, but he was later accused of heresy by the pope for being too lenient. Finally the campaign in England was distinctively English, not Spanish. That points the finger for responsibility at Philip's own select council of veteran English courtiers. But almost all of them had for years been Protestants. What was going on?

    #69 Who exactly was a heretic? - Ep 2 Bloody Mary Tudor?

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2023 38:07


    England in the mid-1550s was being governed by a joint monarchy: Philip and Mary and a select council of extremely able English politicians. Almost all of them had experience in government stretching back through the violently protestant regime of Edward VI. To all appearances they had for years been living as active protestants. And yet here they were in a government that was conducting a campaign against religious heresy that we have always understood to be a Catholic campaign to stamp out Protestantism.

    #68 Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! - Ep 1 of Bloody Mary Tudor?

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2023 40:06


    Bloody Queen Mary? 313 people died for their beliefs 1555-58. We owe it to the victims to get the story right. In 2020 historian Alexander Samson said about the reign of Mary Tudor ‘it feels as if we are at the start.' So dismiss everything you thought you knew and be prepared to be amazed. Ever since Mary died childless, at the age of just 42 in 1558, the history of her reign was written almost exclusively by English Protestant historians, mainly using Foxe's ‘Book of Martyrs' written by an Elizabethan Protestant. We look at why Foxe exclusively blames Mary and why he's wrong.

    #16 The men behind the myth - Ep 7 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2023 21:04


    Within days of 28 October 1962 two journalists publish the official but untruthful White House account, as instructed and edited by the President. They also call-out a political enemy for daring to consider a humiliating missile swap with the Soviets. But we show how the Kennedys had already suggested this very missile swap to Khrushchev via private backchannels, on condition he kept it secret. Which he did.

    #15 ‘The Fourteenth Day' - Ep 6 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2023 29:59


    28 October 1962: by holding his nerve Kennedy defuses the crisis in just 13 days. He says it's over although he's unable to verify whether Khrushchev ever withdraws his missiles or not. The last missiles do indeed leave Cuba on day 48 of the crisis but for very different reasons.

    #14 ‘Eyeball to eyeball' - ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuban Missile Crisis?

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2023 31:29


    22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine' nothing but ‘grand theatrics.' Not a single Soviet ship is stopped by the US Navy. What was going on?

    #13 ‘Russian roulette' - ep 4 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuban Missile Crisis?

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2023 23:49


    15 October 1962: Soviet nuclear missile sites are discovered. It's only three weeks before the mid-term elections. Kennedy decides that to negotiate publicly with Khrushchev would be a disaster at the polls; as would ignoring them which is what his allies advise him to do. So, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the President chooses ‘to play Russian Roulette with nuclear missiles.'

    #12 ‘The only way to save Cuba' - Ep 3 of Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2023 22:06


    The Cuban Missile Crisis begins not because Castro is a dangerous communist but because he is NOT. Khrushchev tells his ruling council: ‘The only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there' - not only to prevent an American invasion, but also to keep Fidel Castro sweet.

    #11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2023 28:31


    Synopsis: 1959: The first country the new revolutionary president of Cuba visits is the United States of America. And he's a big hit. The students at Princeton carry him on their shoulders. Castro wants a trade deal with the American government. So why does Kennedy fight the presidential election of 1960 on getting tougher than the Republicans with Cuba?

    #10 'these missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Cuba Missile Crisis

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2023 31:14


    We have the memo to President Kennedy dated Day 2 of the crisis with his own security chiefs clarifying that 'these missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power.' So why does October 1962 develop into the closest we've ever come to nuclear war?

    balance missiles cuba missile crisis
    #77 Stanley never got the joke - Ep 5 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2023 40:05


    The events that followed Livingstone's funeral are perhaps important for the light they shed on everything that Livingstone was not. Stanley, having declared that he would complete what Livingstone had begun, undertook three ‘momentous' journeys. Whatever the cover stories he created, Stanley's expeditions were intended to grab and occupy African lands, sometimes through fake treaties he claimed to have signed with African leaders. One result was the wholesale mapping of central Africa; the other was what we now know as the ‘scramble for Africa', a gruesome series of invasions and seizures by European states. Stanley's presumption earned him the lasting scorn and hatred of the British establishment. But his ability as a publicist won Livingstone a place in the nation's affection – and that lived on much longer. FINAL EP IN SERIES

    #76 Twelve reckless Americans - Ep 4 Dr Livingstone, I presume?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2023 31:23


    Henry Morton Stanley, the New York-born journalist who was actually born in Wales, ‘finds' Livingstone, although everyone knows he's not lost. Stanley's employer Gordon Bennett Jr of the daily New York Herald has spotted a fantastic money-making enterprise, pedalling fictitious stories of the romantic failures of the British explorer, Dr Livingstone. It was time for the Americans to take over the exploration of Africa. The British had bogged themselves down with ‘too many theodolites, barometers, sextants'. Stanley and other ‘energetic… reckless Americans' would ‘command … an expedition more numerous and better appointed than any that has ever entered Africa' and infinitely more ruthless.

    #75 The Lion and the Tartan Jacket - Ep 3 Dr Livingstone, I presume?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2023 38:24


    The British audience for Livingstone's book 'Missionary Travels' can't get enough of his ‘manly' and ‘forcible' style. He brings a very personal mix of far-away adventure and science to his stories. His account of being mauled by a lion – shaken like ‘a terrier dog does a rat' and how the tartan jacket saves his life – are still vivid reading. But had he not glossed over the danger of malaria and other diseases fatal to Victorian Britons (in much the same way as he casually dismissed as an ‘inconvenience' the arm savaged by the lion and rendered useless even before his real exploring days had begun) fewer missionaries and their families would have died trying to follow in his footsteps.

    #74 Smoke that Thunders Ep 2 Dr Livingstone, I presume?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2023 37:24


    Livingstone was the first European to record his visit to Smoke that Thunders on the Zambezi river. 100 metres of plummeting water, across the entire kilometre of the Zambezi's width. He promptly named it after his queen, Victoria Falls. His ambition was to find a navigable river from the east coast of Africa inland. Although it was clear that Smoke that Thunders would put a stop to any trade boats navigating any further inland he remained undaunted. He calculated that just being able to bring a ship this far would be well worth the effort. Now he just had to hope that there was nothing else like these immense falls before the Zambezi reached the sea.

    #73 Stronger than the ox he rode Ep 1 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2023 37:43


    Exploration changed in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Henry Morton Stanley met Dr David Livingstone. We discover that Livingstone isn't remembered for anything he achieved. A missionary and medical doctor from a poor Scottish background – and an indestructible traveller - he learned to make accurate geographical calculations and used them to map a small part of Africa. Amazingly he did most of his successful exploration with an African team and backed by African funds. So why did he become an international sensation?

    Memory and Myth – Oxford research project ‘Their Finest Hour' - SOUND CORRECTED

    Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2023 25:06


    Their Finest Hour is a University of Oxford project that aims to collect and digitally archive the everyday stories and objects of the Second World War that have been passed down from generation to generation in the UK and Commonwealth. Closing date July 2024. We interview project manager Dr Matthew Kidd and reflect on the evidential issues this online collection raises about memory and myth. website: theirfinesthour.english.ox.ac.uk

    #81 Coronation and the chilling ghost of Lord Esher

    Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2023 55:16


    The coronation of King Charles III on 6 May 2023 has prompted this humorous historical look at the British coronations. Since 1902, when Edward VII and his queen were crowned, the religious ceremony itself has drawn upon rites going back to the crowning of Anglo-Saxon kings. But reviving these old rites just belongs to an Edwardian fascination with a mythical Merrie England. And once you step outside all the solemnity of the Abbey, we are in a world that was entirely invented between the 1870s and the first world war. It was then that British royals turned into a strange mix of an oddly middle-class family that was given to stagey, mock-historical popular pageants, with an increasing display of military uniforms to boost Britain's failing international image. Thespian imperialist Lord Esher, who headed the coronation planning committee in 1902, had very little time for the ordinary British people he called ‘millions of drudges'. He insisted that everyone in royal ceremonies – not just the military – had to wear a uniform. It was meant to distinguish them from the mere mortals who could watch from the sidelines. Ultimately these events were always about international politics. The coronation of Charles III occurs in the context of Brexit and deep economic crisis and carries as much international weight as anything that has gone before.

    #57 From mayor to meat market. Getting elected in the 18th Century

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2023 35:12


    It is still wrongly but commonly thought that in the 18th Century the gentry bought their way into a parliamentary seat, mainly by purchasing land, or by gaining the approval of some unrepresentative local patron who had the borough in his pocket. You've heard of pocket boroughs, and rotten boroughs? Well, Jon's 1985 doctoral thesis, researched entirely from local documents rescued from mouldy parish chests and corporation vaults, contradicted so many of the leading historians of the day so baldly that although Jon was awarded his doctorate he could never publish. But NOW that the old orthodoxy has collapsed and everyone agrees with Jon, he's been able to bring out his book updated with all the latest scholarship. It's a world of lively – not to say riotous, overheated, rumbustious, often embittered, endlessly partisan, endlessly changing and challenging - local politics. What reading the local records tells us is that it was a world of lively local democracy.

    #53 '1066 And All That' - really serious nonsense

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2023 37:44


    Published in 1930 by Methuen and never out of print since, this isn't (as everyone has always supposed) just an innocent laugh at kids' mistakes. It is a laugh, and we explore many of the jokes. But 1066 And All That is suffused with subversive subtexts. Our original research reveals its origins back in the academic infighting and socialism young authors Sellar and Yeatman experienced studying history in 1919 Oxford. Both had fought and been wounded in the war.

    #59 The crimes of the rector George Wilson Bridges - Ep 5 Slavery

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2023 40:29


    By 1832 it was clear to both the House of Lords and the Commons that the British planters in the Caribbean were dragging the British economy into a credit crash. It looks to us very like the crash of 2008. The Jamaican Rebellion of 1831 and the vicious retaliation by the white supremacist Colonial Church Union in 1832 was the final nail in the coffin of British enslavement. The CCU showed beyond doubt that the Jamaican planters, who had always dominated the West Indian planters lobby in London, were a breed of racist thug who flatly refused to make conditions tolerable on their plantations. But the result was that they would never be commercially viable. Abolition became the obvious solution.

    #58 The Ship that sank and took the slave trade down with it - Ep 4 Slavery

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2023 37:04


    When the HMS Lutine went down, 9 October 1799 off the Dutch coast, carrying a million pounds of gold and silver, it led to the collapse of the Hamburg sugar market and within a few years the banning of the slave trade.

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