Subject to Change

Епизоди

• Crimea (part 2): from the Golden Horde to Catherine the Great 15.06.2026 56мин

  Donald Rayfield returns for the second of three episodes on Crimea — this time taking the long view, from the Mongol Golden Horde to Catherine the Great's annexation and the early Soviet period. At its height the Crimean Khanate was a sophisticated and surprisingly humane state. It was also, as Rayfield puts it, the self-appointed freeholder of the former Mongol empire — and it collected its rents in the form of money, livestock, and human captives. Eventually, the leaseholders rebelled. A st...
• POWs of the Crimean War 22.05.2026 46мин

  The subject today comes out of the Crimean war (1853-1856). I talked to Professor Donald Rayfield, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian history at Queen Mary University of London, about the war itself and in particular what happened to those taken prisoner. Surprisingly life could be pretty good!
• The Return of the Emperor (Justinian II - part 2) 27.04.2026 1ч 3мин

  Part 1 of the podcast told the sad story of how some shocking misjudgements on the part of Justinian saw him dragged to the Hippodrome where a man with a pair of pliers cut off his nose, cut out his tongue. But in a misjudgement every bit as big as Justinian’s instead of putting him in a sack and throwing him in the Bosphorus his successor exiles him to the Crimea. I mean everyone knows you can't be emperor unless you are bodily intact so there is no chance he is coming back is there? Is ther...
• Mutilated and exiled (the Emperor Justinian II - part 1) 20.04.2026 47мин

  Justinian II becomes emperor at sixteen. Even allowing for the hostility of our sources the reign is not all plain sailing. I'm joined by Professor David Parnell to work through the first half of one of Byzantium's most extraordinary reigns. Part one takes us from his accession to the moment the city loses patience and terminates the reign violently. David and I are left scratching our heads as to why this story has never had its own Netflix series. We started with the empire Justinian inheri...
• Buckingham: the most hated man in England 31.03.2026 1ч 18мин

  You don't have to be young and beautiful to get ahead in Stuart England but it really doesn't hurt. The is the story of 'gorgeous George' - that is to say George Villiers (later Duke of Buckingham) who in his early 20's became the favourite of James I of England (VI of Scotland). Despite his willingness to promote based on good looks, James I comes out of this rather well. He may have believed in witches (how else to explain what happened to his bride??) but he also believed in peace - ...
• YEAR ZERO: Jonathan Clements on the First Emperor of China 10.03.2026 1ч 20мин

  Jonathan Clements returns to talk about his book on the First Emperor of China and the man who was sent to kill him: facts and fictions in Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero (2002), the evil mirror-universe version of Confucianism, an impossibly well-endowed “eunuch”, the construction of the Terracotta Army, the politics of archaeology, and how to spent a slave labour dividend. And what to do when you had the Mandate of Heaven a minute ago but can't remember where you put it.
• The Big Hop of 1919 17.02.2026 1ч 16мин

  It is astonishing to me that we went from the first powered flight of a few hundred feet in 1903 to attempting to fly the Atlantic in 1919. The Daily Mail had offered a prize of £10,000 to cross the Atlantic. The pilots called it the Big Hop. Nowadays we think nothing of it but back then they had open cockpits, primitive navigation tools, unreliable weather forecasting and many other problems. This was right on the edge of what was possible at the time. And not always on the right edge!...
• Martin Luther, serfdom and the German Peasants’ War 26.01.2026 1ч 4мин

  Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University is on excellent form to talk me through the German Peasant's War of 1524-25. Things I learned: - take Martin Luther seriously (but not literally) - monasteries feed the poor and needy (particularly when they are armed and extremely determined) - the scale of the revolt was off the charts, nothing like it until the French Revolution - the East German State celebrated its revolutionary past with a mural of the war which needs to be ...
• World War I: The surprising victory of 1918 05.01.2026 1ч 8мин

  Today the thing we find mysterious is why WWI lasted as long as it did. Why continue a pointless slaughter. Comparisions with the war in Ukraine suggest an answer! My guess is is Professor David Stevenson and for him the mystery is not why it lasted so long but why it ended when it did. For the German public is was particularly mysterious. Just a few months before the Armistice Germany was all conquering. Russia had been driven out of the war on terms hugely favourable to Germany. And in the ...
• Ed West on 1066 and all that 14.12.2025 54мин

  Ed West is a journalist and massively popular substacker - do check out his substack The Wrong Side of History. But he has a sideline in history so I got him on the show to talk about 1066 and the battle of Hastings. Ed is on top form so please join us as he talks about: - why Harold should have listened to his Mum - Harald Hadrada's absolute last poem - what made the Norman's so very hard to beat - and why the Normans were the woke progressives of their day! If you enjoy the conversation the...
• Edward I - a Great and Terrible King 24.11.2025 1ч 6мин

  A six-foot-two prince who loved tournaments, outfoxed a revolution, and nearly died on crusade returns to build castles that still dominate the Welsh coast and to bend Scotland to his will until Robert the Bruce strikes back. We follow Edward I’s path from a devoted crusader to the architect of a more centralised, harder-edged medieval state, where finance, logistics, and image mattered as much as swords. Along the way, we discuss the political craft behind his parliaments, the Italian banker...
• Empress Wu Zetian and the Age of Female Rule 29.10.2025 1ч 15мин

  “With the heart of a serpent and the nature of a wolf, she gathered sycophants to her cause and brought destruction to the just. She slew her sister, butchered her brothers, killed her prince, and poisoned her mother. She is hated by men and gods alike.” Jonathan Clements came back on to talk about his book on Wu Zetian (623–705), the only woman ever to rule China in her own name. Rising from lowly concubine/chambermaid to God-Emperor, she outmanoeuvred courtiers, generals, monks and poets al...
• Napoleon III Part 2: The Power of Lust 06.10.2025 1ч 3мин

  As promised in part 1 we started the podcast by talking about some of Napoleon III’s many mistresses. Women like Harriet Howard, the Brighton bootmaker’s daughter, Virginia de Castiglione, sent by the Italians to seduce and spy on him (and welcomed with open arms!), Marguerite Bellanger and Louise de Mercy-Argenteau. His wife hated his infidelities but at least in the case of Louise she took comfort that she was a proper aristocrat! Moving on from the scandalous we talked about Napoleon...
• Napoleon III Part 1: The Lust for Power 30.09.2025 1ч 6мин

  From exiled prince to emperor, Napoleon III's rise to power reads like a political thriller too wild to be true. Edward Shawcross tells the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, a man who attempted not one but two comically failed coups before finally succeeding in becoming Emperor of France. This episode explores Louis-Napoleon's bizarre childhood as the imperial nephew raised in Swiss exile, where his mother turned their home into a shrine to Napoleon while teaching him the arts of conspir...
• From Eunuchs to Corsairs: The World of Islamic Slavery 02.09.2025 1ч 4мин

  Fourteen centuries of enslavement, from the Prophet Muhammad's day to modern Mauritania. Justin Marozzi's fascinating book "Captives and Companions" has as its subject the complex history of slavery across the Islamic world, challenging simplistic narratives and revealing uncomfortable truths about power, race, and religion. Our conversation touched on how Islam didn't invent slavery but incorporated existing practices while encouraging manumission. We talked about the huge diversity o...
• The Tokyo Tribunal: War Crimes, Justice, and Geopolitics 18.08.2025 1ч 16мин

  This episode looks at the courtroom drama that helped to shape Asia after World War II with Princeton University's Gary Bass. Far more than a simple account of justice served, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal represents a fascinating intersection of international law, power politics, and competing visions of history that continues to reverberate through East Asian relations today. The tribunal tried 28 Japanese leaders for crimes that began long before Pearl Harbor. Imperial Japan's expansionis...
• The Pilgrimage of Grace: When England Fought the Reformation 28.07.2025 1ч 24мин

  When 50,000 northerners marched under their banners in 1536, England witnessed its largest rebellion since the Peasants' Revolt. The Pilgrimage of Grace wasn't just a protest - it threatened to undo the English Reformation completely and return the kingdom to Rome. Professor Peter Marshall, the renowned Tudor historian, tells the story of this extraordinary episode where religious devotion, political power, and regional identity collided with explosive results. Henry VIII's desperate ...
• Byzantium and the First Crusade 09.07.2025 1ч 13мин

  The ever excellent Professor David Parnell (of Belisarius and Antonina fame) came on to talk about the First Crusade. And given his interest in the Eastern Roman Empire we spent a lot of time talking about it from that angle. When Emperor Alexius I found his thousand-year-old empire crumbling under Turkish advances in the late 11th century, he asked the West for help. He got more than he could have expected! What followed was extraordinary. Pope Urban II's call at the Council of Clermo...
• Shattered Jewels - Japan's Path to War (3 and final) 19.06.2025 1ч 24мин

  What makes a nation launch an attack it cannot hope to win? Admiral Yamamoto, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, warned Japan's leadership they would have only six months before America would mobilize its entire continent to destroy them. He was right, but his warning was ignored. The episode starts with a discussion about the controversial Yasukuni Shrine and museum, where we gain insight into how Japan's military establishment viewed their expansionist ambitions. This museum is not just ...
• Manchuria to Pearl Harbor: Japan's Path to War (2) 11.06.2025 1ч 4мин

  How did Japan become embroiled in one of history's deadliest conflicts? The answer lies not in December 1941, but decades earlier. Jonathan Clements returns to unravel the forces that propelled Japan down a path to war with the world's greatest industrial power. Following Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the country emerged with new confidence only to face the humiliation of the Triple Intervention, when European powers forced them to surrender their hard-won territories. This...