Anglotopia Podcast | Discussing UK British Travel, History, Culture, London, British Slang, and More!

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  I Walked Hadrian’s Wall Coast to Coast — Here’s What It Was Actually Like – Blisters, Meat Pies & Beautiful Countryside 16.10.2026 1t 20min

  Jonathan is finally ready to talk about it. After fifteen years of wanting to, a year of preparation and nine days of walking, he completed the Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail — coast to coast across the neck of England, from Wallsend in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west, following a line a Roman emperor drew across Britain nearly two thousand years ago. This is the full account: what it was actually like, what he learned, the glorious bits and the genuinely hard bits, and whether you should do it too. The honest version includes a first leg out of Newcastle that was frankly a disappointment — graffiti on every information board, burnt-out shopping trolleys, an industrial hum he recognized from growing up near the Indiana steel mills. It includes three cafés and leisure centers that turned out to be shut when he arrived starving. It includes a thousand-foot climb he's not sure he could have managed if he hadn't broken the first day in half, and a final fifteen-mile stretch across open marshland with no shade and cars passing at sixty that was, he says plainly, the hardest day of the whole thing. But it also includes the day that made the entire walk worth it: a tiny church alone on a hill at Heavenfield, sheltered from a ferocious wind by ancient trees, empty, silent, and one of the most beautiful places he has ever been. And a man in a lay-by whose entire job is selling two-pound cups of tea to walkers, who became his hero. And honesty sheds with kettles and PayPal QR codes. And a communal dinner with eleven strangers at a Lanercost B&B that he dreaded and which turned out to be one of his favorite evenings of the trip. And standing at the little hut at Bowness with Scotland in the distance, phoning his wife in tears. Plus the practical stuff: how the self-guided model actually works, why you will walk considerably more than 84 miles, why distance is a bad measure of difficulty, and what he'd tell you to do differently. 🥾 OUR SPONSOR: MACS ADVENTURE This episode is brought to you by Macs Adventure — the self-guided walking and cycling specialists who planned and booked Jonathan's entire Hadrian's Wall walk and made it possible. The self-guided model is the reason a walk like this is achievable for someone who isn't a hardened hiker. You walk at your own pace, on your own, but everything else is arranged: a bed booked every night along the route, breakfast included, and — the genuinely magic part — luggage transfer, so you leave your bag at reception each morning and it appears at your next stay while you carry only a day pack. You also get their app, which handles navigation, distance, pace, elevation profiles and a written briefing for each day including where to find food and facilities. There's a 24-hour emergency line if things go wrong. As Jonathan puts it: you still have to walk every hard mile yourself, and nobody carries you. But the logistics are handled by a staff of people who have done these walks themselves, and that is what makes it manageable. Hadrian's Wall Path — East to West — 9 days, 8 nights (the direction Jonathan walked) Hadrian's Wall Path — West to East — 9 days, 8 nights, with the prevailing weather and sun at your back Best of Hadrian's Wall Path — shorter options if you want the finest central section without the full coast-to-coast All Macs Adventure Hadrian's Wall itineraries Book one a year ahead if you can — there is a limited stock of accommodation near the trail, and Jonathan's was booked the October before he walked. Links The Trail Itself Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail — the official trail site Hadrian's Wall Path Passport — £6, stamped at points along the route, with the fee going toward maintaining the trail AD 122 Hadrian's Wall Bus — the seasonal bus along the central section, and a perfectly honorable way to skip a stretch SplashMaps — the fabric maps that also sponsored the walk, and which everyone along the trail
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  Strictly Jane Austen Episode 5: America’s Love Affair with Jane Austen — One of Literature’s Strangest Romances 12.10.2026 58min

  This is Episode 5 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen. It is, when you stop to think about it, one of the strangest love affairs in literary history. Here is a country founded on tearing up the rule book of aristocracy, of inherited rank, of who married whom — a nation that fought a war precisely to be free of all of it. And what does it do? It falls utterly and permanently for a clergyman's daughter from Hampshire who wrote six novels about the English gentry. Americans fill ballrooms in Regency gowns. They queue for Chawton. They've given the world Clueless, Bridget Jones, and Mr. Darcy fighting zombies. Mark Twain loathed her so passionately he said he wanted to dig her up — and lost, comprehensively, to his own countrymen. Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm, who holds a PhD from the University of Kent, is the author of Fan Phenomena: Jane Austen and There's Something About Darcy, and is the creative director of Strictly Jane Austen — so there is nobody better placed to explain what draws people across an ocean to walk in Austen's footsteps. The conversation starts with the tote bag that started it all: Gabrielle moved to Bath, saw students and tourists carrying bags reading "I ♥ Darcy," and realized no other character in English literature could possibly warrant one. Along the way: why everybody calls her Jane and nobody calls Dickens Charlie; the Netherfield scene that demonstrates exactly how Austen gets inside everyone's head at once; her genuinely provocative argument that Americans recognized Austen's contribution before the English did; the Victorian children's novel in which an American girl visits Austen's grave and the cathedral warden has no idea who she's talking about; why male academics were still dismissing Austen as a romance writer within living memory; what makes Darcy structurally different from Rochester and Heathcliff — he is the one who actually changes, rather than needing to be set on fire first; why the 1995 adaptation and the growth of the internet were a tandem phenomenon; why Austen fandom is, improbably, the kindest corner of the internet; and why Bath — a city Austen never much liked — became the heart of the pilgrimage. 🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. Today's guest, Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm, is their creative director, and in this episode she explains exactly what she was brought in to build. Gabrielle's role is to recruit the speakers and specialists — experts in Georgian embroidery, fashion, architecture and gardens, the literary history of Austen's writing and her family — so that guests spend each day of a residency doing something different. Guests stay at the Gainsborough Bath Spa, with access to the warm spa waters, the opportunity to dress in Regency costume (which in Bath, as Gabrielle notes, causes nobody to bat an eyelid), and the chance to actually spend time with those speakers rather than simply hear them. Novelist Gill Hornby, whose Miss Austen has now been dramatized for television, has been among them. And if you want a shorter visit, the expert guided walk is the thing: an architectural historian or literary specialist who will take you to the nooks and crannies of Jane Austen's Bath — Sydney Place and Sydney Gardens, Gay Street, the Old Theatre Royal, Milsom Street — the places we know from her letters that she shopped, bought her walking boots, and bought the stationery she wrote them on. What they offer: Expert Guided Tours of Jane Austen's Bath — Private walking tours led by expert Janeite guides Period Dress Hire & Afternoon Tea in Bath — Regency costume delivered to your hotel, then promenade through Bath and take afternoon tea in a historic tearoom Bridgerton in Bath — The city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society Jane Austen & Ba
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  Strictly Jane Austen Episode 4: The People Who Made Jane Austen — The Crowded World Behind Six Perfect Novels 05.10.2026 56min

  This is Episode 4 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen. We tend to imagine great writers alone — a solitary genius at a small writing desk, which in Jane Austen's case is quite literally true; you can still see the little twelve-sided walnut table at Chawton. But nobody becomes Jane Austen alone, and behind those six perfect novels stands a whole crowded, noisy, loving and complicated world of people. Jonathan Thomas is joined by Theresa Roche, a Jane Austen speaker and one of Strictly Jane Austen's own Bath guides, who has mapped out the entire web of Jane's relationships: an orphaned clergyman father who gave his daughters a boys' education and 500 books to roam in; a sharp-witted mother who may well be the original of Mr. Woodhouse; an eldest brother whose Oxford magazine published Jane under an alliterative pseudonym before she was fifteen; a disabled brother she spoke to on her fingers; the brother who was handed three estates and without whom, Theresa argues, we would have no novels at all; a favorite brother who was a bit of a rogue and negotiated her publishing deals; two naval brothers who sailed into Mansfield Park; and the sister who was her whole heart and who burned most of her letters to protect her. Then the women beyond the family: a flamboyant French cousin presented at Marie Antoinette's court whose husband was guillotined, who hit it off with Jane instantly and died holding her hand; Martha Lloyd, who took on the housework so Jane could write and who ended up marrying Jane's brother and becoming Lady Austen; and Anne Sharp, a governess in financial limbo whom Jane befriended across a class line she was not supposed to cross. Plus the proposal Jane accepted one evening and fled the next morning, the Irishman she danced with and never forgot, and the clergyman at Sidmouth who may have been the love of her life and who died before anything could come of it. 🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. Today's guest, Theresa Roche, is one of their Bath guides, so book a tour and you may well get her. If this episode has put you in the mood to experience the Regency for yourself, there is no better way than stepping directly into Jane Austen's Bath with an expert guide. Strictly Jane Austen's award-winning tours bring Regency England to life through expertly guided walks, immersive storytelling, and carefully curated itineraries in Bath and beyond. Their guides are avid Janeites steeped in Regency knowledge — and, as Austen herself would have it, genuinely "clever, well-informed people." What they offer: Expert Guided Tours of Jane Austen's Bath — Private walking tours through the streets Jane walked, led by expert Janeite guides Period Dress Hire & Afternoon Tea in Bath — Exquisite Regency costume delivered to your hotel, then promenade through Bath and take a sumptuous afternoon tea in a historic tearoom Bridgerton in Bath — A private tour of the city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society Jane Austen & Bath's Gothic History Twilight Tour — Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, and the darker side of Regency Bath Discovering Jane — A Three-Night Travel Experience in Bath & Hampshire — The full immersive short break, including Jane's Hampshire home and burial place Escape to Bath by Rail from London — Travel from Paddington to Austen's Bath in style Bespoke Group Tours of Bath & Hampshire — Built for individuals, couples, book clubs, and groups of any size Annual Jane Austen Celebrations — Dance, discussion and Regency merriment at the Gainsborough Bath Spa 🎁 Gift Vouchers — The perfect present for the Janeite in your life Book or learn more at strictlyjaneausten.com · Call +44 1225 333747 (Mon–Fri, 09:00–17:00 GMT) Follow them: Instagram · Facebook Winner, Bristol Bath & Somer
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  What’s On in London in October 2026 — New Exhibitions, Half Term & What to Pack 01.10.2026 20min

  Tomorrow is October 1st, which means it's time for the monthly What's On in London — and October might be Jonathan's single favorite month to be in the city. The summer crowds have gone, prices have softened, the museums have hung their big autumn blockbusters, and the parks turn gold. It's the month the locals quietly love and the guidebooks tend to ignore. In this solo episode Jonathan runs through everything opening this month: Renoir and Love at the National Gallery, the British Museum's sweeping Korea, Painting the French Riviera at the Royal Academy, Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji out at Dulwich, Tim Walker's Fairyland at the National Portrait Gallery, The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain, a completely free Freddie Mercury display at the V&A, and Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery at the British Library. He covers the one big exhibition closing mid-month — Anish Kapoor at the Hayward, gone after the 18th — and the single most important date in the episode: October 21st, when the British Museum releases Bayeux Tapestry tickets for January to March 2027, the only realistic shot left for anyone visiting in that window. Then the practical half: what half term actually means for visitors and how to use it to your advantage, spooky-season programming from Historic Royal Palaces to the Mail Rail tunnels to Hidden London's Clapham South deep-level shelter, why you should pack for wet rather than cold, when the clocks go back and the transatlantic time muddle that follows, and the best thing happening in London this month, which costs nothing at all. Editor’s Note: I have the BST/US Daylight Saving Time change backward, and it’s BST to GMT. Links Opening This Month Renoir and Love — The National Gallery — from 3 October, runs to 31 January. Book a time slot; October may already be full. Korea — The British Museum — 1 October to 31 January (gallery closed 1–2 December for a rotation of light-sensitive works) Painting the French Riviera — Royal Academy of Arts — 2 October to 31 January; 160+ works, 1870s–1960s Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from the Iuchi Collection — Dulwich Picture Gallery — 20 October to 17 January; all 46 prints, a UK first Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends — National Portrait Gallery — 8 October to 7 February The 90s: Art and Fashion — Tate Britain — 8 October to 14 February; curated by Edward Enninful Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things — V&A South Kensington — from 24 October, free, no booking needed Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery — British Library — 30 October to 20 June 2027 Agatha Christie exhibition preview — Londontopia The Bayeux Tapestry The Bayeux Tapestry — The British Museum — 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027. Tickets through 31 December are sold out. Tickets for 1 January–31 March 2027 go on sale 21 October 2026. April–July 2027 opens in early 2027. Britain's Bayeux Tapestry replica — Reading Museum — the full-size Victorian replica, free entry, no booking frenzy required The story of Britain's Bayeux Tapestry — Reading Museum Closing This Month Anish Kapoor — Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre — closes 18 October. Extended hours to 9pm on select Wednesdays, Fridays and weekends through the final week. Half Term & Spooky Season Historic Royal Palaces — What's On Mail Rail — The Postal Museum — ride the abandoned Royal Mail railway 21m below Mount Pleasant Clapham South: Ghosts of the Underground — Hidden London — 21 October to 1 November. Note: aimed primarily at adults, minimum age 10. Aldwych: The End of the Line — Family Tour — Hidden London — the actually family-friendly Hidden London option, from 21 October Hidden London — London Transport Museum Theater & Music Hamlet Hail to the Thief — Barbican — 31 October to 23 January; Thom Yorke's reworking of the Radiohead album, performed live Royal Albert Hall — What's On Southbank Centre — Classical Music
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  Strictly Jane Austen Episode 3: Jane Austen’s England on Screen – A Location-by-Location Visitor’s Guide 28.09.2026 53min

  This is Episode 3 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen. When we picture Jane Austen's world, most of us aren't actually picturing Hampshire in 1810 — we're picturing a television program. Colin Firth striding out of a lake. Keira Knightley on a windswept crag. A proposal in the pouring rain in front of a domed temple. The great screen adaptations gave Austen's imagined places real addresses, and this episode maps them out house by house. Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm — author, leading expert on Austen fan culture and literary tourism, and creative director at Strictly Jane Austen — who has interviewed the people who actually made the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and knows exactly which door is which. They cover why 1995 changed everything (before it, every adaptation was studio-bound), Simon Langton's instruction to "throw open the drawing room doors," and the hierarchy of houses the production had to find: Luckington Court as Longbourn, Edgcote House as Netherfield, Lyme Park and Sudbury Hall as Pemberley, and the village of Lacock as Meryton. Along the way: the message Susannah Harker sent Gabrielle about the summer of 1994; the choreographer who poured Coca-Cola on Edgcote's polished floors so the cast wouldn't slip; the truth about who actually dived into that lake, and where the underwater shots were really filmed; why Chatsworth is arguably too grand even for Mr. Darcy; the Wilton Diptych and how Wilton House saved it; Stourhead's Arcadian fantasy gardens; and Barton Cottage on the Flete Estate in South Devon, with a five-bedroom "cottage," only two servants, and a Ferrars family named after a nearby Devon village. Most usefully of all, Gabrielle explains which of these places you can actually get into, which ones you can only nose around on an estate agent's website, and how to string the best of them together into one Wiltshire trip. 🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm, today's guest, is their creative director. If this episode has you dreaming of an Austen pilgrimage, there is no better way to begin than stepping directly into Jane Austen's Bath with an expert guide. Strictly Jane Austen's award-winning tours bring Regency England to life through expertly guided walks, immersive storytelling, and carefully curated itineraries in Bath and beyond — including the Wiltshire locations discussed in this episode, which, as Gabrielle points out, are very hard to reach without a car. Their guides are avid Janeites steeped in Regency knowledge — and, as Austen herself would have it, genuinely "clever, well-informed people." What they offer: Expert Guided Tours of Jane Austen's Bath — Private walking tours through the streets Jane walked, led by expert Janeite guides Period Dress Hire & Afternoon Tea in Bath — Exquisite Regency costume delivered to your hotel, then promenade through Bath and take a sumptuous afternoon tea in a historic tearoom Bridgerton in Bath — A private tour of the city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society Jane Austen & Bath's Gothic History Twilight Tour — Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, and the darker side of Regency Bath Discovering Jane — A Three-Night Travel Experience in Bath & Hampshire — The full immersive short break, including Jane's Hampshire home and burial place Escape to Bath by Rail from London — Travel from Paddington to Austen's Bath in style Bespoke Group Tours of Bath & Hampshire — Built for individuals, couples, book clubs, and groups of any size Annual Jane Austen Celebrations — Dance, discussion and Regency merriment at the Gainsborough Bath Spa 🎁 Gift Vouchers — The perfect present for the Janeite in your life Book or learn more at strictlyjaneausten.com · Call +44 1225 333747 (Mon–Fri, 09:00–17:00 GMT)
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  The Real Miss Moneypenny: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence With Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall 25.09.2026 1t 1min

  If I say "British spy," you picture a man: James Bond, George Smiley, Kim Philby. And the one woman most people can name from that world is fictional — Miss Moneypenny, sitting outside M's office, quietly in love with 007. But Miss Moneypenny was real, or at least the woman who inspired her was. Her name was Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs of MI6, and every secret in the wartime service passed across her desk. When someone asked whether she'd been the real Moneypenny, she replied: "I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power." In this episode, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall, historian of secret intelligence, honorary associate professor of intelligence history, and author of Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence (published in the UK as Her Secret Service). Claire explains how she found the pencil-crossed "Miss Pettaval" in Fleming's first draft of Casino Royale; how Pettigrew and one colleague received every decrypted Enigma message sent from Bletchley Park to MI6; why the word "secretary" was a perfect cover for agent running, code work and courier duty; and how she tracked down women trained to leave no trace — reading margin notes and paper chits, then turning family historian and writing some 200 letters to surviving relatives. Plus: Rita Windsor, the MI6 officer in wartime Lisbon who got July Plot survivor Otto John out of Europe; the post-war "travel agency" she ran with Ina Molesworth; an incendiary briefcase carried by train to Bletchley Park and blown up on the lawn; the long zigzag road to the first female heads of MI5, GCHQ and MI6; and why Slow Horses gets it right. Links The Book Secret Servants of the Crown — Amazon US Secret Servants of the Crown — Penguin Random House Secret Servants of the Crown — Barnes & Noble Secret Servants of the Crown — Blackwell's Her Secret Service — UK Edition — Amazon UK US edition published by Citadel (Kensington). ISBN 9780806543710. Published in the UK as Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence. Claire Hubbard-Hall Claire on Instagram — @thespyhistorian Claire on the Spybrary Podcast Places to Visit Bletchley Park The National Archives, Kew — Intelligence Records Imperial War Museum — Oral History Collections Mentioned in the Episode MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 by Keith Jeffery Casino Royale by Ian Fleming Slow Horses — Apple TV+ Related Anglotopia Episodes Mark Dunton & Dr. Stephen Twigge on The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets Dr. Chris Smith on the Cambridge Five and The Last Cambridge Spy Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways Kathleen Pettigrew served MI6 from the late 1920s to the 1950s as personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs. In Ian Fleming's first draft of Casino Royale, the character we know as Miss Moneypenny was originally called "Miss Pettaval" — crossed out in pencil and renamed. Fleming, a wartime naval intelligence officer, would have walked past Pettigrew's desk outside Stewart Menzies's office at 54 Broadway. Pettigrew's power was real. She helped set up MI6's communications team at Bletchley Park in 1939, and back at headquarters she and a colleague, Miss Jones, personally received every decrypted Enigma message passed from Bletchley to MI6 — the gatekeeper deciding where intelligence went. She also accompanied Menzies to Churchill's famous late-night meetings to take notes. She came from nothing like Moneypenny's polished upper-class background. Born in industrial East Bermondsey to a seal fur dresser, she grew up in a two-room flat above her parents' shop off the Strand. Technical college, secretarial training and elocution lessons got her into Special Branch in the First World War — and from there, "through the looking glass." Career women like Pettigrew paid a steep price. Marriage bars meant choosing
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  Strictly Jane Austen Episode 2: What Jane Austen Actually Saw – The Real Georgian Bath with Dr. Moira Rudolf 21.09.2026 1t 8min

  This is Episode 2 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen. Today's episode has duels fought over a runaway marriage. It has a scandal so severe it drove one of England's richest men into exile. It has the truth about what those elegant public baths were actually like to get into — considerably less charming than the paintings suggest. It has quack doctors selling electricity as medicine, and a notorious celestial bed that promised to cure infertility for fifty pounds a night. It has vanished pleasure gardens, a vulgar villa, a ferry ride that went badly wrong, and two of the great women of English letters falling out spectacularly over their choice of husbands. Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Moira Rudolf, historian of Georgian and Regency Bath, for a tour of the city's darker corners — and Jane Austen, as Moira points out, pops up in nearly all of them. Along the way: Richard Brinsley Sheridan's two duels over the honor of Elizabeth Linley, the celebrated "Maid of Bath"; William Beckford, his scandal, his exile, his 276-foot tower with no foundations, and the Bath retreat Moira describes as the most haunted building she has ever stayed in; what Jane's brother Edward actually endured in the name of taking the waters; Tobias Smollett's stomach-turning account of the King's Bath; where Mary Shelley really wrote Frankenstein; and Fanny Burney's gloriously catty account of an evening at Bathwick Villa, complete with a mechanical eagle. 🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. If this episode has put you in the mood to experience the Regency for yourself, there is no better way than stepping directly into Jane Austen's Bath with an expert guide. Strictly Jane Austen's award-winning tours bring Regency England to life through expertly guided walks, immersive storytelling, and carefully curated itineraries in Bath and beyond. Their guides are avid Janeites steeped in Regency knowledge — and, as Austen herself would have it, genuinely "clever, well-informed people." What they offer: Expert Guided Tours of Jane Austen's Bath — Private walking tours through the streets Jane walked, led by expert Janeite guides Period Dress Hire & Afternoon Tea in Bath — Exquisite Regency costume delivered to your hotel, then promenade through Bath and take a sumptuous afternoon tea in a historic tearoom Bridgerton in Bath — A private tour of the city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society Jane Austen & Bath's Gothic History Twilight Tour — Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, and the darker side of Regency Bath Discovering Jane — A Three-Night Travel Experience in Bath & Hampshire — The full immersive short break, including Jane's Hampshire home and burial place Escape to Bath by Rail from London — Travel from Paddington to Austen's Bath in style Bespoke Group Tours of Bath & Hampshire — Built for individuals, couples, book clubs, and groups of any size Annual Jane Austen Celebrations — Dance, discussion and Regency merriment at the Gainsborough Bath Spa 🎁 Gift Vouchers — The perfect present for the Janeite in your life Book or learn more at strictlyjaneausten.com · Call +44 1225 333747 (Mon–Fri, 09:00–17:00 GMT) Follow them: Instagram · Facebook Winner, Bristol Bath & Somerset International Tourism Award 2025 (Bronze). Part of ECT Travel, a Bath-based tour operator running successful travel programmes since 1993. Links Places in Bath Mentioned The Roman Baths & Pump Room The Cross Bath — Thermae Bath Spa Beckford's Tower & Museum, Lansdown Stay in Beckford's Tower — The Landmark Trust The Bath Preservation Trust The Royal Crescent Lansdown Crescent, Bath Queen Square, Bath Theatre Royal Bath The Jane Austen Centre, Bath Visit Bath Anglotopia Friends of Anglo
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  The Impossible Journey: The Man Who Visited Every Country on Earth Without Ever Setting Foot on a Plane 18.09.2026 1t 11min

  In October 2013, a young Dane named Thor Pedersen set off from his home with a single, slightly mad rule: he wanted to visit every country on earth — all of them — in one continuous journey, and to do it without ever once setting foot on an airplane. Container ships, trains, buses, and a great deal of waiting around. He thought it might take three or four years. It took almost ten. He crossed closed borders and war zones, ran out of money more than once, was stranded for two years by the global pandemic, and served the whole time as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Red Cross. In 2023 he became the first person in history to do it. In this episode, Jonathan Thomas talks to Thor about the whole extraordinary decade — and, this being the Anglotopia Podcast, spends a good while on Britain, which came remarkably early in the itinerary. Thor recounts crossing from Calais to Dover after meeting Syrian refugees at the port, being awestruck by Bristol's maritime heritage, a memorable host in Wales whose front garden contained a toilet lying on its side, a Red Cross officer in Belfast who felt like the James Bond of the Red Cross, falling for the Scottish countryside, buying dodgy Les Misérables tickets in London, a desperate dash for seasickness pills in Immingham, and Hogmanay in Inverness courtesy of a kind bartender. But the deeper story is the one Thor tells in an unusual way: he doesn't sell it as a triumph. He's honest about the loneliness, the setbacks, the cerebral malaria, the migraines, the moments at gunpoint, the two years stuck in Hong Kong — and about the thing that actually got him around the world, which turned out not to be toughness at all, but the kindness of strangers. Links The Book The Impossible Journey — Amazon US The Impossible Journey — Amazon UK The Impossible Journey — Waterstones The Impossible Journey — Barnes & Noble The Impossible Journey — Hachette Australia ⠀Published by Robinson. ISBN 9781472149763 (hardback) / 9781472149770 (paperback). Thor Pedersen Thor Pedersen — Official Website The Impossible Journey — Thor's Site Once Upon A Saga — The Original Project Blog Thor Pedersen on Instagram Thor Pedersen on Facebook Speaking Engagements & Talks ⠀Mentioned in the Episode The Danish Red Cross International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) British Red Cross The Adventurers' Club of Denmark The Explorers Club, New York Hong Kong Tourism Board The Danish Seamen's Church, Hong Kong The California Zephyr — Amtrak ⠀Anglotopia Friends of Anglotopia Club ⠀ Takeaways 1 The idea arrived by email. Thor's father sent him a link about the world's most-travelled people, and Thor — then 34, twelve years into a career in shipping and logistics, and having visited around 50 countries — discovered that roughly 200 people had reached every country, but nobody had done it entirely without flying. He describes it striking him "like lightning." 2 His definition of "every country" was deliberately generous. The UN recognizes 193 sovereign states plus two observer states (the Vatican and Palestine). Thor built on that, splitting the Danish kingdom into Denmark, the Faroes and Greenland, and splitting the UK into England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — arriving at 203 — precisely so nobody could come back afterward and say "but what about Kosovo?" 3 Britain came very early — country numbers seven through ten, in late 2013, just weeks after leaving Denmark. He crossed Calais to Dover after meeting Syrian refugees camped by the rail tracks, was refused as a foot passenger, and got across by knocking on car windows until a driver calling himself Rambling Rat let him ride along. 4 Travelling only overland and by sea teaches you something you cannot learn from an airplane: how enormous the world actually is, and how gradually it changes. Thor points out that at borders, people wear the same clothes, eat the same food,
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  Strictly Jane Austen Episode 1: The Regency Explained — Robert Morrison on the Most Consequential Nine Years in British History 14.09.2026 1t 4min

  This is Episode 1 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. We talk a lot on this show about the Regency. It's the backdrop to Jane Austen, to Bridgerton, and to a thousand romance novels and costume dramas. But what actually was the Regency? Strictly speaking it was a brief window from 1811 to 1820, when George III's descent into apparent madness meant his eldest son ruled in his place as Prince Regent. And yet for such a short period, it cast an extraordinarily long shadow. To open the series, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Robert Morrison — literary historian, Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University in Ontario, British Academy Global Professor at Bath Spa University from 2019 to 2024, and author of The Regency Years, named a book of the year by The Economist and shortlisted for the HWA Crown Award. Robert walks us through what the Regency literally was, the constitutional crisis that created it, the extraordinary contradictions of the Prince Regent himself, and his bold central claim: that these nine years laid the foundations of the modern world. Along the way — why 1813 saw both Pride and Prejudice published and Charles Babbage begin dreaming of a thinking machine; why Mrs. Bennet's hysteria is really about the Napoleonic Wars; why Persuasion is Austen's greatest novel; and why Bath remains the beating heart of the Regency imagination. 🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. If this episode has put you in the mood to experience the Regency for yourself, there is no better way than stepping directly into Jane Austen's Bath with an expert guide. Strictly Jane Austen's award-winning tours bring Regency England to life through expertly guided walks, immersive storytelling, and carefully curated itineraries in Bath and beyond. Their guides are avid Janeites steeped in Regency knowledge — and, as Austen herself would have it, genuinely "clever, well-informed people." What they offer: Expert Guided Tours of Jane Austen's Bath — Private walking tours through the streets Jane walked, led by expert Janeite guides Period Dress Hire & Afternoon Tea in Bath — Exquisite Regency costume delivered to your hotel, then promenade through Bath and take a sumptuous afternoon tea in a historic tearoom Bridgerton in Bath — A private tour of the city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society Jane Austen & Bath's Gothic History Twilight Tour — Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, and the darker side of Regency Bath Discovering Jane — A Three-Night Travel Experience in Bath & Hampshire — The full immersive short break, including Jane's Hampshire home and burial place Escape to Bath by Rail from London — Travel from Paddington to Austen's Bath in style Bespoke Group Tours of Bath & Hampshire — Built for individuals, couples, book clubs, and groups of any size Annual Jane Austen Celebrations — Dance, discussion and Regency merriment at the Gainsborough Bath Spa 🎁 Gift Vouchers — The perfect present for the Janeite in your life Book or learn more at strictlyjaneausten.com · Call +44 1225 333747 (Mon–Fri, 09:00–17:00 GMT) Follow them: Instagram · Facebook Winner, Bristol Bath & Somerset International Tourism Award 2025 (Bronze). Part of ECT Travel, a Bath-based tour operator running successful travel programmes since 1993. Links Robert Morrison's Books The Regency Years: During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern Persuasion by Jane Austen — Annotated Edition, edited by Robert Morrison (Harvard University Press) The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey Robert Morrison at Queen's University Jane Austen's Bath The Jane Austen Centre, Bath Visit Bath — Jane Austen's Bath Guid
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  Double Agents, Dead Drops & Declassified Files: Inside the MI5 Archive of Official Secrets 11.09.2026 1t 2min

  For over a century, in a building most of us could not name, an organization known only by its post office box number — PO Box 500, London — has been quietly reading other people's letters, following other people's footsteps, and keeping the realm's most closely guarded secrets. MI5, the British Security Service, was founded in 1909 in the nervous run-up to the First World War under the motto Regnum Defende — Defend the Realm. James Bond and George Smiley are the fictions. This is the real thing. In this episode, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Mark Dunton, Principal Records Specialist at the National Archives and lead curator of their hit MI5: Official Secrets exhibition, and Dr. Stephen Twigge, former Head of Modern Collections at the National Archives and a historian of the Cold War and code breaking. Together they've written The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets, a remarkable visual record drawn from the 6,000 files MI5 has released since 1997. They explain what it actually feels like to hold these documents, how MI5 differs from MI6 and GCHQ, how a secret becomes an archive, and how historians work with a record that is deliberately incomplete. Then come the stories: the German spy hanged by a lemon, the last man executed at the Tower of London, the astonishing Double Cross system that invented 27 fictional agents to deceive Hitler about D-Day, the surveillance transcript that records atomic spy Klaus Fuchs stoking his own fire, the truth about MI5's limited role in the Profumo affair, and the handwritten note authorizing a tap on the King's telephone during the abdication crisis. Links The Book The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets — Thames & Hudson The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets — The National Archives Shop The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets — Thames & Hudson USA The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets — Waterstones The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets — Amazon UK The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets — Amazon USA Published by Thames & Hudson in association with The National Archives. 368 pages. Foreword by Nick Harkaway. ISBN 9780500030455. Our Guests Mark Dunton at The National Archives The National Archives, Kew Related Reading Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré Places Mentioned The Tower of London — Historic Royal Palaces MI5 — Official Website GCHQ — Official Website Bletchley Park Anglotopia Friends of Anglotopia Club Related episode: Dr. Chris Smith on the Cambridge Five and The Last Cambridge Spy Takeaways MI5 has transferred over 6,000 files to the National Archives since 1997, and while most government departments operate under a twenty-year rule, MI5 works to an unofficial fifty-year rule. Strictly speaking they are not obliged to transfer anything at all — they choose to. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are, as Stephen puts it, "brothers from the same mother." All emerged from the Secret Service Bureau created in 1909, which had a domestic side and a foreign side. The two heads shared an office for about a month before going their separate ways. MI5 catches other people's spies at home; MI6 runs Britain's spies abroad; GCHQ, which began as the Government Code and Cypher School under MI6, provides signals intelligence to both. Unlike the famously fractious CIA/FBI relationship in the US, the British agencies get on reasonably well — largely because they're staffed by lifetime civil servants rather than political appointees, and because people move between them (Dick White ran MI5 and then MI6). Less turf war, less budget anxiety. The exhibition MI5: Official Secrets — which ran April to November 2025 and drew over 55,000 visitors — was the first time MI5 has ever collaborated with another institution to tell its own history. The book contains a great deal that wouldn't fit in the exhibition space. Karl Muller, a First World War
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  What’s On in London in September 2026 — Open House London, the Bayeux Tapestry & the Last Night of the Proms 02.09.2026 26min

  Recorded on location in Hammersmith at Emery Walker's House — the best-preserved Arts and Crafts interior in Britain, packed with original William Morris wallpaper and once home to William Morris's great friend and collaborator, the printer Emery Walker — this is the September edition of What's On in London. Jonathan makes the case that September might be the single best month of the year to visit London: the summer crush lifts as families return to school, everything is still open on summer hours, the weather turns crisp and golden, hotel prices drop, and the cultural calendar goes into overdrive. He covers Open House Festival (September 12–20, free, 621 listings including 10 Downing Street), Heritage Open Days across England, Totally Thames across twenty riverside boroughs, the London Design Festival in its 24th year, and the Last Night of the Proms — including the trick to getting in for eight pounds on the day. He then runs through the autumn's blockbuster exhibition openings, led by the Bayeux Tapestry's arrival at the British Museum (and the British Museum membership workaround for anyone who missed the sold-out ticket release), Nature and Us at the Natural History Museum in a gallery closed since 1943, the Burberry Trench at the V&A, and How We Lost America at Hogarth's House — curated by the very person who let him record this episode. Plus what's closing and when, live music and theater, family activities, the September weather outlook, and Jonathan's own remaining London itinerary. Not for members and listeners: Due to the timely nature of this episode, I'm releasing it to members and general listeners on the same day, so there won't be a new episode Friday. This is this week's episode. Links Where This Episode Was Recorded Emery Walker's House, Hammersmith — Book a Tour Londontopia's Hammersmith Neighborhood Guide The Londontopia Events Calendar 🗓️ Londontopia London Events Guide — The Full Calendar What's On in London Today What's On in London This Weekend Free Things To Do in London Today Cheap Things To Do in London London Exhibitions Listings London Festivals Listings Free London Events Listings The Full September Guide on Londontopia 📖 What's On in London in September 2026 — The Secret Best Month to Visit London What's the Best Month to Visit London? A Season-by-Season Breakdown The Big September Events
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  Open Gates and Victoria Sponge – Inside Britain’s National Garden Scheme with Richard Claxton 29.08.2026 54min

  In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Richard Claxton, Chief Executive of the National Garden Scheme, for a conversation about one of the most quietly magical institutions in Britain. On weekends across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, ordinary people — and some rather extraordinary ones — throw open their garden gates and invite strangers in. You pay around six pounds, wander through someone's private paradise, and then sit down to homemade Victoria sponge and a cup of tea. Every penny goes to charity, most of it to nurses. Richard came to the role by an unusual route: a GP for 23 years in Tonbridge, he became a leading advocate of "green prescribing" — the idea that time in a garden can be genuine medicine — founded the charity Gardening4health, launched an NHS therapy garden, retrained as a garden designer specializing in healthcare spaces, and volunteered as a guide at Sissinghurst. He explains the real clinical evidence behind therapeutic horticulture, tells the story of Elsie Wagg and the 600 gardens that opened in 1927 to fund the Queen's Nurses, walks through how the scheme works today and how visitors can find and book gardens, describes the intensive care roof garden and the spinal unit gardens the charity funds, unpacks what makes an English garden English, tells the love story behind Sissinghurst, reveals his own favorite garden in the scheme, and — live on air — writes Jonathan a green prescription. Note: Cover image is Wordsworth Garden in Cumbria, which I don't think is actually in the scheme, but it is the prettiest picture of a garden I had! Links The National Garden Scheme National Garden Scheme — Official Website Find a Garden to Visit Who We Are & What We Do The National Garden Scheme App — iOS & Android NGS on Instagram Dr. Richard Claxton on Instagram — @richardclaxtongardens Beneficiary Charities Mentioned The Queen's Nursing Institute Macmillan Cancer Support Parkinson's UK Marie Curie Carers Trust Horatio's Garden — Gardens for Spinal Injury Centres Greenfingers Charity — Gardens for Children's Hospices Gardens Mentioned Sissinghurst Castle Garden — National Trust, Kent Knole, Sevenoaks — National Trust Also Mentioned Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways The National Garden Scheme is a charity, not a membership body — a network of around 3,500 private gardens across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Island
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  Doggerland, Lyonesse & Cantre’r Gwaelod: The True History Behind Britain’s Drowned Lands 21.08.2026 49min

  In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Professor Patrick Nunn — geographer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, and visiting fellow at Oxford — for a conversation that will permanently change how you look at the map of Britain. Patrick's new book, Whispers from Celtic Seas, published this month by Reaktion Books, makes an extraordinary argument: the legends of drowned kingdoms off the coasts of Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany are not fantasy at all. They are testimony — eyewitness memories of real catastrophes, passed down by word of mouth for as long as eight thousand years, which would make them quite literally the oldest stories we have. Patrick explains how a conventionally trained scientist came to take myths as seriously as data (via Pacific island oral cultures and Aboriginal Australian traditions), walks Jonathan through the twelve-thousand-year-old Colinda harpoon dredged from the North Sea in 1931 that first revealed Doggerland, describes the Storegga submarine landslide that severed Britain from mainland Europe 8,200 years ago, and unpacks the real histories buried inside the stories of Cantre'r Gwaelod, Lyonesse, and the sea-crossing giants of the Celtic fringe. Along the way: two islands drawn on the 1360 Gough Map that no longer exist, an eighteenth-century Cornish parson who got there first, why stone circles may have been climate mitigation strategies, and the Welsh mudflats whose name translates as "the place of weeping." Links The Book Whispers from Celtic Seas — Reaktion Books (published August 4) Whispers from Celtic Seas — University of Chicago Press (US distribution) Whispers from Celtic Seas — Blackwell's Patrick's Earlier Books The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World (2018) About Patrick Patrick Nunn — Official Website Prof. Patrick D. Nunn — University of the Sunshine Coast Academic Publications Places & Things Mentioned The Gough Map (c.1360) — Bodleian Library, Oxford Doggerland — Wikipedia overview The Storegga Slide Cantre'r Gwaelod, Cardigan Bay Isles of Scilly Conwy Bay & Traeth Lafan (Lavan Sands), North Wales Outer Hebrides — VisitScotland North Uist & the Monach Islands Crater Lake National Park, Oregon (Mount Maz
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  The Story So Far: Everything Before I Walk 84 Miles Across England Along Hadrian’s Wall 14.08.2026 59min

  This is a special one. Recorded on home soil just days before departure, this is Jonathan Thomas's complete pre-trip briefing before he leaves to walk the entire 84-mile length of Hadrian's Wall — coast to coast across Northern England. It has been fifteen years in the making. Jonathan walks through the whole story: the conversation with his wife a year ago that set everything in motion, the year of training that followed, why he chose this particular trail, and how a long-held someday became a definite date on the calendar. He then goes deep into the logistics — the Macs Adventure app and luggage transfer service, his full ten-stage itinerary from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, why he's walking east to west, the "day zero" plan to get the first five miles out of the way, the gear he's packing (and the beloved Ordnance Survey maps he's leaving behind), and the tradition he's borrowing from the Wainwright Coast to Coast. Finally, he lays out everything coming down the line: a ten-episode podcast series sponsored by SplashMaps, social posts from the trail, mini-documentaries, articles, a possible book, a possible revival of the Travels in Britain video series — and the extra week in England afterward, taking in the Settle & Carlisle line, four days in York, a day out in Yorkshire with Tim Barber, Castle Howard, and a final stretch in London that includes Buckingham Palace, the Ceremony of the Keys, the Wallace Collection's Churchill exhibition, and a recording of next month's What's On in London from inside Emery Walker's House. The Anglotopia Hadrian’s Wall Hub — Progress Tracker & All Content Links The Sponsors Macs Adventure — Hadrian's Wall Path Walking Holidays Macs Adventure — Hadrian's Wall Path East to West, 9 Days SplashMaps SplashMaps — The New Hadrian's Wall Challenge Series Map (Anglotopia Collaboration) Previous Anglotopia Episodes Mentioned Episode 70 — Tips on Walking the Hadrian's Wall National Trail with Emily Graver of Macs Adventure Episode 87 — How to Walk Hadrian's Wall with Quintin Lake Episode 82 — Your Travel Guide to Britain in 2026 Tim Barber — The Real Yorkshire Tours Episode
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  The Last Cambridge Spy: Dr. Chris Smith on John Cairncross and the Cambridge Five 07.08.2026 1t 13min

  In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas welcomes back Dr. Chris Smith — historian at Coventry University, author of The Hidden History of Bletchley Park and The Last Cambridge Spy, and a returning friend of the podcast for his third appearance — to explore one of the most remarkable and troubling stories in modern British history: the Cambridge Five. Five young men, recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s, rose to the very heart of the British establishment — the Foreign Office, MI5, MI6, and Bletchley Park — and spent decades passing its secrets to Moscow. Dr. Smith takes Jonathan through the full arc: the political radicalization of the 1930s that made Soviet recruitment possible, the individual stories of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Anthony Blunt, and — above all — the fascinating, overlooked figure of John Cairncross, the ironmonger's son from a Scottish mining town who was never quite let into the fold, mocked for his accent, made to fetch the tea, and who nonetheless walked out of Bletchley Park with raw decrypts stuffed in his trousers and fed them to Moscow. The episode covers the Battle of Kursk and what Cairncross's intelligence really contributed, the extraordinary Venona Project that began unravelling the ring, why MI5 couldn't prosecute the men they knew were guilty, how Anthony Blunt accidentally revealed himself by threatening to sue Private Eye, and why the story of the Cambridge Five — class, betrayal, embarrassment, and the establishment protecting its own — still grips Britain seventy years on. Links The Last Cambridge Spy by Dr. Chris Smith The Hidden History of Bletchley Park by Dr. Chris Smith My Silent War by Kim Philby My Five Cambridge Friends by Yuri Modin (better than any spy novel — though not entirely true) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — John le Carré Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 78 - Did Churchill Know? Unraveling the Myths of the Coventry Blitz and Wartime Espionage Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 86: Codebreakers, Spies, and Secrets - The Truth About Bletchley Park and Alan Turing Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways The Cambridge Five were not recruited because they were ideological fanatics — they were recruited because the 1930s presented them with a genuine political crisis: mass unemployment, fascism rising across Europe, a British establishment incapable of responding, and the Labour Party wiped out in 1931. Soviet communism appeared to be the only organized force willing to fight the Nazis. Kim Philby did not seek out the NKVD — he fell into their hands almost by accident when he went to work with the Viennese underground and met Litzy Friedmann, whose contacts led straight to Soviet intelligence. His recruitment was as much luck as design. John Cairncross was the only one of the five who did not come from the upper-middle or upper class. Born in 1913 in Lesmahagow, a mining town south of Glasgow, the son of an ironmonger and one of eight children, he arrived at Cambridge already primed with a chip on his shoulder — and was immediately reminded by An
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  What’s On in London in August 2026: Notting Hill Carnival, Buckingham Palace & London’s Newest Museum 31.07.2026 31min

  In this monthly episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas returns with his August edition of What's On in London — and this one comes with a personal twist, because Jonathan will be in London himself later in the month. August is London's most contradictory month: the busiest tourist season of the year, a million-plus visitors, packed attractions and carnival streets — and yet simultaneously the month when Londoners themselves flee to Cornwall and France, leaving whole districts strangely quiet. Jonathan covers it all: the Notting Hill Carnival (August 30–31, its 60th anniversary this year, Europe's largest street festival, free entry); the major royal and historic building openings including Buckingham Palace State Rooms, Houses of Parliament summer tours, and the freshly restored Banqueting House reopening August 1st; London's brand new museum, Trent Park House of Secrets — just opened July 21st, telling the extraordinary wartime spy story that was kept under the Official Secrets Act for over 50 years; new West End openings including Jane Eyre the Musical and Kimberly Akimbo; the blockbuster exhibitions still running and closing this month; live music at Victoria Park and Wembley; family-friendly highlights; the VAT tourist discount reducing admission prices across major attractions this summer; and Jonathan's own personal list of what he's booked and planning to see — including the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace's East Wing tour, the Wallace Collection's Churchill as Painter exhibition, and Trent Park. Links The Big One — Notting Hill Carnival (August 29-31, 60th Anniversary) Notting Hill Carnival — Official Website Notting Hill Carnival 2026 Schedule & Info (Sat Aug 29 Steel Band Competition; Sun Aug 30 Children's Day; Mon Aug 31 Main Parade) Royal & Historic Building Openings Buckingham Palace State Rooms — Book Tickets (Open July 9 – September 27, 2026; daily 9:30–19:30 through August 31) Buckingham Palace East Wing Highlights Tour — Book Separately Houses of Parliament Summer Tours — Book Tickets (Reduced prices throughout summer recess; Westminster Hall, House of Commons, House of Lords) Banqueting House — Tickets & Info (Fully reopened August 1 after major restoration; open Thu–Mon 10:00–16:00; Adults £10, under 16s free) London's Newest Museum Trent Park House of Secrets — Book Tickets (Open since July 21; Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00; Adults £14/~$20; Oakwood tube station, Piccadilly Line) Ceremony of the Keys Ceremony of the Keys — Tower of London — Book Tickets (Next ticket release: August 3, 2026 at 13:00; suggested price £30, pay from £10; sells out immediately — set a reminder) Festivals & Outdoor Events Greenwich + Docklands International Festival — Free (August 21 – September 6, 2026; outdoor theatre,
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  BritRail 101: The Definitive Guide to Train Travel in Britain for Visitors with Expert Tim Roebuck 24.07.2026 58min

  In this sponsored episode of the Anglotopia Podcast — brought to you by ACP Rail and BritRail — Jonathan Thomas sits down with Tim Roebuck, a man who has spent his entire career in rail travel: station manager, head of BritRail Travel International in New York, senior VP at ACP Rail for 25 years, and one of the most knowledgeable people alive on the subject of getting around Britain by train. This is the episode Jonathan has wanted to make for a long time — a complete, practical, friendly guide to understanding and using the BritRail Pass, demystifying the network for international visitors, and unlocking the kind of trip most Americans never imagine is possible. They cover the history of British Rail and the coming Great British Railways rebrand, how London's multiple terminal stations work, the game-changing Elizabeth line, the best scenic routes in the country (from the East Coast Main Line's North Sea coastal run to the Far North Line to Wick and Thurso), how train ticket types actually work and why the BritRail Pass cuts through all the confusion, the difference between a consecutive and a flexi pass, what the pass does and doesn't cover, seat reservations, luggage tips, apps to use, and Tim's all-time favorite rail journey. Plus: a giveaway. To celebrate this episode, Anglotopia and ACP Rail are giving away a first-class BritRail four-day flexi pass. Enter at anglotopia.net/britrail. Giveaway closes August 15th. Links Sponsor ACP Rail — Buy Your BritRail Pass BritRail Pass Options & Map 🎁 GIVEAWAY — Win a First Class 4-Day Flexi Pass (closes August 15th) BritRail Railway Maps of Britain Planning Tools National Rail — Timetables & Real-Time Updates Trainline App — UK Train Tickets & Times Seat Finder — UK Seat Reservation Tool London Terminals Guide King's Cross Station (East Coast Main Line — York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen) St Pancras International (Midland Main Line & Eurostar) Euston Station (West Coast Main Line — Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow) Paddington Station (Great Western — Cornwall, Devon, South Wales; also Heathrow Express & Elizabeth Line) Waterloo Station (South Coast & commuter lines) Victoria Station (Gatwick, Brighton, South Coast) Liverpool Street Station (East Anglia — Cambridge, Norwich) Scenic Routes Mentioned The Settle & Carlisle Railway The Far North Line — Inverness to Wick & Thurso
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  Dragons, Black Hens & Sleeping Warriors: The Legends of England’s Buried Treasure with Jeremy Harte 17.07.2026 43min

  In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Jeremy Harte — folklorist, winner of the Catherine Briggs Folklore Award, curator of Bourne Hall Museum in Surrey, and author of Cloven Country: The Devil in the English Landscape and Travelers Through Time: A Gypsy History — to discuss his remarkable new book Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in the English Landscape, published by Reaktion Books. Jeremy has spent his career chasing the uncanny side of the English landscape, and in this book he has gathered hundreds of treasure legends together for the first time — organizing them not by region or date but by emotion: memory, ruin, strife, terror, failure, and longing. The result is one of the most original and quietly brilliant books on English folklore in years, and the conversation it generates is irresistible: Why did people surround buried gold with dragons, black hens, and demons? What does the moment a laborer on the River Ribble accidentally uncovered a Viking army's war chest have in common with Oak Island? Why is the folklore always cruelest at the very last minute? What is the real fantasy underneath the search for treasure — not gold, but escape, freedom, and the dream of never having to work again? And what does the figure of Mackenzie Crook's Detectorists, swinging their machines over Essex fields and dreaming of Saxon gold, tell us about the ancient human urge that these legends have always mapped? Links Treasures on Earth by Jeremy Harte (Reaktion Books) Cloven Country: The Devil in the English Landscape by Jeremy Harte Travelers Through Time: A Gypsy History by Jeremy Harte Bourne Hall Museum, Ewell, Surrey The Cuerdale Hoard The Rillaton Cup Detectorists — Mackenzie Crook (BBC/AcornTV) Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways Treasure legends are not really about gold. They are, as Jeremy Harte argues throughout, about the emotions that surround gold — longing, memory, failure, terror, and the fantasy of transformation. The stories survived because of what they did to the people who told and heard them, not because of any actual buried wealth. The Cuerdale Hoard — the largest Viking silver hoard ever found in Britain, unearthed by laborers straightening the River Ribble in the 1840s — is one of the most powerful examples of how real treasure finds retrospectively generate legends. Almost all treasure "traditions" that seem to predict a find are only recorded after the find is made. The classic Anglo-Saxon image of the dragon sitting on a barrow of gold — doing nothing but guarding it forever, sacrificing whatever life a dragon might have — is, Jeremy argues, an early cultural articulation of what happens when treasure takes over a human life. The same psychology drives Oak Island today. Treasure guardians shift with the centuries — dragons and giants give way to fairies, then to demons, then to ghosts — not randomly but in response to what each era finds believable. A legend must sit in the zone between "obviously true" and "obviously made up" to function: too real and it's history,
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  Bonus Podcast: Genealogy 201 – Parish Records, Military History & the Secrets Hidden in Old Newspapers and Findmypast 13.07.2026 1t 2min

  In this second sponsored episode with Findmypast — the follow-up to our Genealogy 101 introduction — Jonathan Thomas and Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast, go deeper into the records, techniques, and stories that turn a nervous beginner into a confident family historian. The episode covers the extraordinary richness of the 1921 census and 1939 register, why the newspaper archive is the place where ancestors stop being names and start being people, how the Industrial Revolution left its fingerprints across every family tree, the truth about name changes and spelling variations (it was almost never Ellis Island), how to avoid drowning in common surnames like Thomas or Smith, the unexpected discoveries that make genealogy so addictive — including Jen's own Cornish mail-order bride ancestor, an Irish great-great-grandfather with two arrests across two countries, and Audrey Thompson the World War II rat-catching champion — and how to connect all of it to the great currents of British history. The episode also covers parish records, military records, DNA testing, the role of offline archives, and the mindset that keeps family history a lifelong joy rather than a frustrating quest for perfection. If you haven't heard the first episode, Genealogy 101, go back and listen to that one first. Links Sponsor Findmypast — Start Your Free Trial (US) Findmypast — Start Your Free Trial (UK) British Newspaper Archive (via Findmypast) Findmypast Crime & Criminal Records The Family History Of — Findmypast Podcast Was Justice Served? Podcast — Jen Baldwin Also Referenced Genealogy 101 — Previous Episode with Jen Baldwin (listen first) Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways The 1921 census and 1939 register work best as a pair — together they bookend the interwar period, and used in combination they can anchor a family from living memory all the way back through the Victorian era. The 1921 is the most detailed census ever taken in England and Wales; the 1939 register is the only census-style record with full birth dates and tracks maiden-to-married name changes for women. The 1939 register is the foundational document of the NHS — a living document updated for decades after the war, making it uniquely valuable for women's research. ARP warden and Home Guard volunteer roles recorded in its margins bring the home front of World War II vividly to life. Less than 10% of historical records are currently available online. The other 90% live in county record offices, local archives, churches, and museums — and going to them in person, touching the original documents, is an irreplaceable experience that no screen can fully replicate. Names were almost never changed at Ellis Island. Spelling variatio
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  Bonus Podcast: Genealogy 101 – Everything You Need to Start Tracing Your British & Irish Family History with Findmypast 13.07.2026 48min

  In this sponsored episode of the Anglotopia Podcast — brought to you by Findmypast, one of the world's leading family history websites — Jonathan Thomas sits down with Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast and a professional genealogist since 2010, for a warm, practical, and genuinely inspiring introduction to British and Irish family history research. Jen specializes in British social history and the British diaspora — exactly the intersection where family stories meet the great sweep of British history — and her own family tree reaches back to London in 1635. In this first of two episodes, Jen and Jonathan cover everything a complete beginner needs to get started: why family history is so addictive, how to interview living relatives before the memories are lost, what records to look for at home, the cornerstone British records (civil registration from 1837, the census from 1841, parish records, military records, and the extraordinary British Newspaper Archive), the common mistakes that trip up beginners, how to track ancestors who came to America via Canada or Australia, the surprising political dramas hidden inside census returns, and three quick wins that any listener can complete this week. A second episode, covering deeper research and connecting your family story to the wider sweep of British history, is coming soon. Links Sponsor Findmypast — Start Your Free Trial (US) Findmypast — Start Your Free Trial (UK) British Newspaper Archive (via Findmypast) Findmypast Crime & Criminal Records The Family History Of — Findmypast Podcast Was Justice Served? Podcast — Jen Baldwin Also Mentioned Birmingham Back to Backs — National Trust The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes — Convict Transportation to Australia Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways Family history research is genuinely addictive — not because of the pedigree chart but because of the moment when a name becomes a person: someone with a job, a neighborhood, neighbors, a dog, and a life that intersects with historical events you already care about. There is no such thing as a boring ancestor. Agricultural laborers, mill workers, sailors, and servants all lived lives of remarkable complexity — moving seasonally, navigating economic upheaval, living through wars and weather — and the records to explore those lives exist and are increasingly accessible online. The golden rule of genealogy is to start with yourself and work backward one generation at a time. "Slow is fast" — taking time to verify each connection saves hours of untangling mistakes later. Talk to your oldest or most vulnerable living relatives now, before the memories are lost. Don't ask them to recite facts — ask them to tell stories. Put a photograph in front of them. Ask about their first car, their father's job, the f