Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJohn Duffus, "Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)
Episode 211
Today, the Hong Kong Philharmonic is one of the world’s great symphony orchestras. But when John Duffus landed in Hong Kong in 1979 as the Philharmon…
1 year, 7 months ago
Stuart Anderson, "Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)
Episode 142
The word "pharmacopoeia" has come to have many meanings, although it is commonly understood to be a book describing approved compositions and standar…
1 year, 7 months ago
Gareth Millward, "Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Episode 141
Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State (Oxford UP, 2022) is a history of how the British state asked, 'who is really sick?' Tracing medica…
1 year, 7 months ago
Graham Brady, "Kingmaker: Secrets, Lies, and the Truth about Five Prime Ministers" (Ithaka, 2024)
Episode 140
Kingmaker: Secrets, Lies, and the Truth about Five Prime Ministers (Ithaka, 2024) by Sir Graham Brady provides an insider’s look at the power struggl…
1 year, 7 months ago
Hannah Weaver, "Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Episode 80
In Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Hannah Weaver examines the mediaeval pra…
1 year, 7 months ago
Simeon Koole, "Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain's Cerebral Age" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 139
When, where, and who gets to touch and be touched, and who decides? What do we learn through touch? How does touch bring us closer together or push u…
1 year, 7 months ago
Mark Stoyle, "A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549" (Yale UP, 2022)
Episode 138
The Western Rising of 1549 was the most catastrophic event to occur in Devon and Cornwall between the Black Death and the Civil War. Beginning as an …
1 year, 7 months ago
Brian Groom, "Made in Manchester: A People's History of the City That Shaped the Modern World" (Harpernorth, 2024)
Episode 137
Long before Manchester gave the world titans of industry, comedy, music and sport, it was the cosmopolitan Roman fort of Mamucium. But it was as the …
1 year, 7 months ago
Georgia Henley, "Reimagining the Past in the Borderlands of Medieval England and Wales" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Episode 79
Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, Reimagining …
1 year, 7 months ago
Ben Yagoda, "Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Episode 108
The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America--from French fries to Awesome, man!--are destroying the English language. B…
1 year, 7 months ago