Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPirate flags & wedding gowns: a patchwork of a Victorian life
Episode 1594
In 2016, fashion historian Kate Strasdin was given an extraordinary object – an album of richly coloured and brightly patterned fabric scraps, all co…
3 years ago
Oscar Wilde on trial
Episode 1593
At a time when male homosexuality was illegal in Britain, celebrated playwright Oscar Wilde became embroiled in a scandal that ultimately saw him put…
3 years ago
Medieval peasants: everything you wanted to know
Episode 1592
What was it like to be a peasant in the Middle Ages? Did they live well, with access to sufficient food, water and shelter, or were their lives chara…
3 years, 1 month ago
History's greatest cities | Berlin
This week we are featuring episode one from our brand new series, History's greatest cities. If you enjoy this episode and want to listen to the rest…
3 years, 1 month ago
The book that transformed medieval England
Episode 1591
It was an enterprise that helped transform a marginalised language into a global powerhouse. Lydia Zeldenrust tells Spencer Mizen how, some 550 years…
3 years, 1 month ago
Why the Middle Ages matter
Episode 1590
The Middle Ages have often been shrouded in myth and mystery, but was it actually as unchanging, uncivilised and muddy as we might think? Historian a…
3 years, 1 month ago
The cult of Freud: science, sex & psychoanalysis
Episode 1589
From the Oedipus complex to the Freudian slip, the theories of Sigmund Freud are still familiar to us today. But how much do we know about his life? …
3 years, 1 month ago
Breastfeeding: a cultural history
Episode 1588
Breastfeeding may seem like an innate human experience that transcends history. But, according to art and cultural historian Joanna Wolfarth, experie…
3 years, 1 month ago
Heliogabalus: Rome’s scandalous emperor
Episode 1587
The story of the Roman emperor Heliogabalus is filled with sex, death, decadence and religious extremism, but it also touches on some key questions a…
3 years, 1 month ago
Interwar Britain: everything you wanted to know
Episode 1586
How ‘roaring’ were the roaring twenties for ordinary britons? Did views of the British empire change after the first world war?And what caused the ec…
3 years, 1 month ago