Trapped History

With a name and a story Dickens would have killed for, Peg Plunkett owned Dublin in the 1780s. Surviving a horrific childhood, she escaped to the big city and swiped right and left to her heart’s content until she blew everything up with her incendiary memoirs. Award-winning Filthy Queens author, Christina Wade, plunges us into the life of an 18th century courtesan – a world in which Peg is a mode...

Sathnam Sanghera blows the doors off the Hall of Fame today alongside his nominee, the Pirate Queen of Ireland, Grainne – or Grace – O'Malley. Born in County Mayo when Henry VIII was on the throne of England, Grainne would command a fleet of ships, raid neighbouring clans, revenge the deaths of her loved ones and take on the English army. She would even meet with Queen Elizabeth to – in the best J...

Mahatma Gandhi is a worldwide hero. Nehru led India through turmoil. But who in the West knows of Subhas Chandra Bose? Well, perhaps we should learn more about him because he is the man of the moment in Modi’s 21st century India. Empireland ’s Sathnam Sanghera joins us today to try to understand someone who lived and died by the maxim ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. We find out what that actually...

After demolishing and rebuilding Halls of Fame through the ages, our guest Habib Hajallie has chosen his own nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: the great Bill Richmond, an African-American born into slavery who by the early 19th century had become Britain's first Black sports star. Bill was the terror of the boxing ring, winning 17 of 19 matches, fighting the All England Champion, decli...

We’re proud of our own Hall of Fame here at Trapped History, but what are they and where did the idea come from? As we celebrate our three-year anniversary, join Oswin, Carla and MK for a very special episode in the company of award-winning British artist Habib Hajallie. His very own artwork, A British Hall of Fame , speaks to the past, present and future as we grapple with how we honour and remem...

This holiday season, we've got a meditative and, we hope, nourishing bonus for you – as Michaela Strachan remembers taking part in the BBC series "Pilgrimage". She is also remembering her friends and family and on the hike through the Welsh hills, she was walking hand-in-hand with grief. But the healing power of nature is truly something to behold. This is an emotional but also a fulfilling journe...

Michaela Strachan's nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is one of the most selfless people we have heard of – Jill Robinson, who has dedicated her life to saving bears from the cruelty of the bear bile industry in China and across Asia. It is a story rooted in horror but also in love. And Jill's life bears witness to our capacity for both. If you feel moved by her story, please visit Anim...

We have a wonderful season opener for you – as wildlife TV legend Michaela Strachan joins Trapped History to help us tell the tale of the woman who fought for nature. Her name was a bit of a mouthful – Ethel Haythornthwaite – but we know her as the defender of Britain’s National Parks and the Green Belt. She even has nearly 100 hills named after her (don’t worry, they’re ‘Ethels’ not ‘Haythornthwa...

Join us for Helen Lewis' nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: Constance Bulwer-Lytton, daughter of a Viceroy, sister to an Earl – but one of the bravest suffragettes of them all. In changing women's history, she was imprisoned four times for campaigning for the vote, carved "V" for votes on her breast, went on hunger strike and was force-fed by prison guards. In Constance's own words, whi...

We are delighted to be joined today by Helen Lewis, whose new book, The Genius Myth, rips apart the stories we like to tell ourselves about ‘them’ – the heroic geniuses we idolise and adore. This is the ultimate history reboot. And it's one of the reasons we created Trapped History in the first place – because we don’t need more stories about Leonardo, Churchill or Elon. We need the hidden history...

Jet's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is an oldie – 850 years old, to be precise. A Renaissance Woman centuries before the Renaissance, a medieval queen of music, philosophy, science and medicine, the Mother of Everything: we give you Hildegard von Bingen. Throw in poetry, mysticism and sainthood and you have perhaps the greatest genius of the medieval world. A paragon of women's h...

There’s a photo – you can google it – which when you see it, you’ll laugh, you’ll double-take, you’ll think ‘whaaaat?’. It’s of a young woman, she’s small, five foot nothing and she’s in a fitness gym. But it’s what she’s carrying that makes you stare. Because balanced on her shoulders is none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Her name is Lisa Lyon and she is a legend in the fitness world. The fir...

Tune in for a riveting Hall of Fame as Joshua Levine nominates Mick Gurmin, a member of the SAS before the SAS even existed. This is the very apex of forgotten history, hidden history and untold stories. Warned by the debonair master of deception Dudley Clark that "any carelessness or indiscretion on your part may well upset carefully arranged and important plans and have far-reaching consequences...

It's time for a history reboot. In this Trapped History Special, Oswin and historian Joshua Levine discuss truth, myth and storytelling in front of an invited audience at an event hosted by Saboteur, a London-based brand agency. In a wide-ranging conversation which covers everything from Trump and Putin to Downton and Dunkirk, we grapple with the fundamentals of what we mean when we talk about his...

Tune in to hear the historian Gwen Strauss' nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. A hidden history hero of the Resistance, she is someone we have truly never heard of but she is perhaps one of the bravest people we should know about. Please be upstanding for Odette Pilpoul, the Parisian soul of the French Resistance who took it upon herself to document and save evidence of atrocities when...

It’s October 1940 and you are walking down a dusty lane when someone slips a scrap of paper into your hand. You hold it tightly in your palm, waiting until you’re round a corner and away from prying eyes.  When you manage to find that moment and open the folded paper square, you read: “Milena from Prague requests a meeting.” You are Margarete Buber-Neumann and you are a prisoner in Ravensbruc...

Please put your hands together for Sarah-Jane Morris' Hall of Fame nominee, music's hidden hero Mary Margaret O'Hara. So many of our nominees are lost in the mists of history. They are part of our forgotten history, our hidden history. But Mary Margaret O'Hara is very much still with us. She is loved and admired by other music industry greats, such as Michael Stipe, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones and...

A decade before Dylan, there was Connie Converse – arguably the very first singer-songwriter with inner-city tales of loss and longing. But have you heard of her? Have you heard her music? Connie's story is the epitome of forgotten history, hidden history. But her name deserves to be shouted from the rooftops. Oswin and Carla are joined today by the singer Sarah-Jane Morris to help us understand t...

Nihal Arthanayake's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is a great one. The lost, forgotten and overlooked Sri Lankan hidden hero of architecture Minnette de Silva. She was the first Asian woman elected to the Royal Institute of British Architects and a friend of Le Corbusier and Picasso. But she's been overshadowed by those men of architecture and cultural history. So tune in to hear...

How do you hear the testimony of someone who has been terrorised and tortured? How do you listen as a perpetrator defends their crimes? How can two peoples who have hated and killed each other throughout history learn to live in peace? These are the questions unsung hero Helen Bamber asked herself when she travelled to Belsen at the end of WW2 and bore witness to untold stories when she engaged su...

Our new season kicks off proper next week with an enthralling episode where the broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake helps us tell the story of the woman who listened – the great Helen Bamber. And we’ll be taking you all the way through the summer till it starts getting cold again – introducing you to the tragic tale of the first singer-songwriter alongside the Communards’ Sarah-Jane Morris, the first fe...

We've spent so long asking our guests who they'd like to see in the Trapped History Hall of Fame, that for our 30th episode we thought we'd do something a bit different. And so Carla, MK and Oswin have each brought along someone they'd like to see honoured in the Hall of Fame. Tune in for a whistle-stop tour through the lives of a First World War heroine, a couple who fought for freedom in South A...

Roll up, roll up for the Season Four closer — as we take a trip to the circus! At Trapped History, we look at lives and stories which have been forgotten or ignored, and there is one community in Britain which is still shrouded in mystery even in the 21st century: that of the circus people. So who better to lift the curtain than the King of the Ring himself, Zippo the Clown — or just plain Martin...

Join Oswin and Carla for this moving Hall of Fame from historian Clare Mulley as she remembers wartime nurses, Dorothy Field and Mollie Evershed. They are the only women among over 22,000 men to be remembered on the Normandy Memorial in Bayeux. It is a story of courage and selflessness. Prepare to have your heart broken. history, ww2 history, inspiration, heroes, forgotten history, hidden heroes,...

She is one of the most important women of the Second World War — a fighter, a secret agent, a government envoy and a commando. But have we heard of her? Can we sing her name? If not, you've come to the right place. Tune in to hear the astounding story of Elżbieta Zawacka, AKA Agent Zo. It's a tale which takes us from Warsaw and Berlin to Paris and London, a tale of hope and fear, of courage and te...