Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
William Cecil: The Power Behind Elizabeth I
Episode 554
Who really ruled Elizabethan England?
For almost four decades, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, guided Queen Elizabeth I through religious turmoil, …
1 month ago
Witnesses to the French Revolution
Episode 553
What was the French Revolution like for those who lived through it? What can private journals reveal that speeches, pamphlets and official records ca…
1 month, 1 week ago
New Discovery: Who Really Wrote Elizabeth I's Letters?
Episode 552
Was Elizabeth I really as angry and bad tempered as history has always claimed? How did some of her most secret state letters come to be penned by a…
1 month, 1 week ago
Robespierre & Revolutionary Terror
Episode 551
How did the French Revolution, built on liberty, become ruled by fear? And how did Robespierre - the man who had sent kings, nobles and priests to th…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
How Protestants Justified Slavery
Episode 550
Was the Protestant Reformation ever truly global? How did radical theology, empire, slavery and missionary ambition collide across the early modern w…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
French Revolution: Storming of the Bastille
Episode 549
What drove a hungry city to storm a fortress? How did the fall of the Bastille become the defining symbol of the French Revolution?
In this second epi…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
True Crime: Murder & the Popish Plot
Episode 548
Was a London magistrate, found dead in a ditch in 1678, the victim of a Catholic conspiracy, political convenience, or secrets too dangerous to survi…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Who Lit the French Revolution?
Episode 547
How did a kingdom of palaces, privilege and powdered wigs collapse into revolution? What turned hunger into uprising?
In this first episode of our ser…
1 month, 4 weeks ago
Bess of Hardwick: Elizabethan England's Richest Woman
Episode 546
How did a Derbyshire gentlewoman become England’s richest woman after Elizabeth I? Why does she still fascinate us as her 500th anniversary approache…
2 months ago
Edmund Halley & His Comet
Episode 545
How did our understanding of the universe begin in a London coffee house? How did a man who had a comet named after him change science forever?
From h…
2 months ago