History Today Podcast

In this episode, David Coke describes life at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and recounts how the artist William Hogarth helped it survive during a period when its future seemed uncertain.

In this episode we talk to Tom Holland, author of the cover story in the May issue of History Today, about his research into Islam's beginnings.

In this month's episode:

- Who killed Alexander the Great? James Romm discusses new evidence about the mysterious death of the revered Macedonian ruler in 323 BC;

- John Guy reappraises the relationship between Thomas Becket and Henry II;

- and Patrick Bishop recalls his time with the British Task Force sent to reclaim the Falkland islands in 1982.

We welcome your comments and suggestions about any topic discussed in this episode; go to http://historytoday.com/podcast for more.

In this month's episode:

- Roger Moorhouse on Germania, Hitler's plan to rebuild Berlin as the capital of a thousand-year Reich;

- Patrick Bishop on Winston Churchill's obsession with sinking the Nazi battleship 'Tirpitz';

- and Craig Koslofsky on the history of the night.

We welcome your comments and suggestions about any topic discussed in this episode; go to http://historytoday.com/podcast for more.

In this month's episode:

- Hugh Purcell talks about the Battle of Jarama in the Spanish Civil War, and the doomed love affair between an English captain and an American journalist;

- Keith Howe discusses how Britain treated Germany after the Second World War, and describes how life was for the average German citizen following the fall of the Third Reich;

- Sam Moorhead and David Stuttard introduce their new book, 'The Romans Who Shaped Britain'.

In this month's edition:

- Antony Lentin, who wrote about the Treaty of Versailles in the cover story of our January issue, talks about the reasons behind the treaty's difficult legacy, and about the enduring legacy of The Economic Consequences of the Peace, JM Keynes' definitive book on the peace conference.

- Nicholas Mee discusses Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the medieval poem whose benefactor, and the place in which it was set, remain unknown. He explains how he went about researching the poem's mysterious origins, a subject he expands on at lenght in Patron's Place, also in the January issue.

We welcome your comments and suggestions about any topic discussed in this episode; go to http://historytoday.com/podcast for more.

In this edition:

- Former editor Gordon Marsden talks about the Second World War origins of History Today and the adverts that helped to fund its publication in the 1950s and 1960s;

- Greg Carleton explains how the US and the Soviet Union transformed their disastrous military defeats at Pearl Harbour and Brest Fortress in 1941 into positive national narratives.

- Martin Evans discusses his latest book Algeria: An Undeclared War.

We welcome your comments and suggestions about any topic discussed in this episode; go to http://historytoday.com/podcast for more.

In this month's edition:

- Colin Jones on previously unpublished caricatures of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's favourite mistress;

- David Wilson on the photographs taken during Captain Scott's expedition to the Antarctic;

- and Tim Grady on the Jewish soldiers who fought for Germany during the First World War.

We welcome your comments and suggestions about any topic discussed in this episode; go to http://historytoday.com/podcast for more.

In this month's edition:

- Jonathan Fenby on China's 1911 revolution;

- Nigel Jones on the Tower of London;

- Helen and William Bynum on their new book about the history of medicine

We've re-launched the podcast in a new, longer format, with more interviews and features on each episode.

We welcome your comments and suggestions about any topic discussed in this episode; go to http://historytoday.com/podcast for more.

David Boyle discusses his book Voyages of Discovery, which charts key voyages of discovery from the 1490s to James Cook in the 1770s and focuses, for the first time, on the views of those who were 'discovered'. But to what extent was this possible given that the vast majority of historic sources are written by the European explorers?

Caroline Moorehead talks about her latest book, A Train in Winter, which tells the story, for the first time, of 230 French women resisters who were deported to Auschwitz from Gestapo detention camps in France. Why has their story been forgotten? Why were they sent to Auschwitz? How do the few survivors who are still alive remember the horror of their experiences?

History Today editor Paul Lay interviews Roger Moorhouse, author of Berlin At War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital.

Angie Butler talks to Kathryn Hadley about her seven year long journey to research the last years of Frank Wild's life in South Africa, her breakthrough discovery of his ashes in Johannesburg, and her expedition to South Georgia to rebury the ashes alongside those of Wild's 'Boss' Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Helen Castor talks about the challenges of writing narrative history based on inevitably fragmented medieval sources.

In the second of our History Today Book Club podcasts, Helen Castor, discusses Matilda (1102-67) and the claim made by some historians that she was England’s first true female ruler.

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