Dan Snow's History Hit

If you travelled back in time to the Medieval period this very second, do you think you would survive? The short answer is probably not. If you weren't wearing a hat, wore glasses on the street, or even laced your corset in the wrong way, things would go south for you very quickly. Luckily, in this episode Matt is joined by Toni Mount, author of the book 'How to Survive in Medieval England' who pr...

Bletchley Park, Britain's key decryption centre during WWI, is known for the success of breaking the Nazi Enigma codes - experts have suggested that the Bletchley Park codebreakers may have shortened the war by as much as two years. David Kenyon is the research historian at Bletchley Park. Recorded at the grounds, David and Dan walk through Bletchley’s latest exhibition, The Intelligence Factory....

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK so we’ve got a special episode exploring the surprising way Victorians approached mental health treatment in the 19th century. Oral historian Stella Man from the Glenside Hospital Museum in Bristol tells Dan how the Victorians get a bad rap but in truth, they took a very forward thinking occupational approach. With no real medicines to prescribe...

In 1649 Britain was engulfed by revolution. Charles I was executed for treason and within weeks the English monarchy had been abolished and the House of Lords discarded. The people, it was announced, were now the sovereign force in the land. What did this mean for the decade that would follow? Anna Keay is a historian, broadcaster and Director of the Landmark Trust. Anna joins Dan on the podcast t...

For most of us, VE Day conjures up black and white images of carefree servicemen and women dancing and beaming in Trafalgar Square, of Churchill greeted by jubilant crowds in Whitehall, and of course, lots and lots of bunting. But was it really like this? In this podcast, you'll hear the speech given by Churchill from the Ministry of Health, cheered on by the boisterous crowd, an account by vetera...

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European slave traders forcibly uprooted millions of African people and shipped them across the Atlantic in conditions of great cruelty. Today, on the bottom of the world’s oceans lies the lost wrecks of ships that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. Justin Dunnavant is an Assistant Professor, archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer. Jus...

Agincourt is a name which conjures an image of plucky English archers taking on and defeating the arrogant and aristocratic knights of the French court. But was it really the David and Goliath struggle often depicted on stage and screen?  In this episode of the podcast, Dan is joined by Mike Loades to challenge some of the popular myths that surround the battle. Just how outnumbered were the...

The Dudleys were the most brilliant, bold and manipulative of power-hungry Tudor families. Every Tudor monarch made their name either with a Dudley at their side - or by crushing one beneath their feet. With three generations of felled family members, what was it that caused the Dudleys to keep rising so high and falling so low? In this edition of Not Just the Tudors , Professor Suzannah Lipscomb...

John Donne (1572-1631) lived myriad lives. Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral – and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Katherine Rundell, author and acad...

On this day 40 years ago the HMS Conqueror, a British nuclear submarine, propelled silently through the South Atlantic stalking the Argentinian light cruiser the ARA General Belgrano in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands. At 2.57 pm Conqueror was given the order to torpedo the enemy warship. With two direct hits to the ship, more than 300 Argentine sailors were killed in what remains one of the...

The Falkland Islands lie 8000 miles from Britain making the Falklands War a particularly tricky one to fight; it required some seriously innovative thinking. No story from the Falklands better tells the story of that innovation than Operation Blackbuck which ran from the 30th of April 1982 to the end of the war. British bombers flew 4000 miles from the Southern Atlantic base at Ascension Island to...

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 - January 6, 1919), was an American politician, conservationist and writer. After the assassination of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt unexpectedly became the 26th president of the United States in September 1901 - he won a second term in 1904 and served until 1909. Michael Patrick Cullinane, Professor of U.S. History and winner of the 2018 Theodore Ro...

On November 15 2021 Russia tested an anti-satellite weapon, shattering one of their own satellites into over a thousand pieces. This space debris will orbit the Earth for a very long time, posing a threat to space travel and other satellites. With space increasingly becoming a site of military activity, is war in space a real possibility? In this episode James is joined by Major General Robert H....

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon documented British high society in eye-watering detail. His diaries are gossipy, sometimes vile and rude but always honest. Even after his death, his diaries struck fear into the British upper classes and it is only recently that they have been able to be published in all their glory. Chips' friendships with figures such as...

We are told that modern science was invented in Europe, the product of great minds like Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. But science has never been a uniquely European endeavour. Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques borrowed from Arabic and Persian texts. When Newton set out the laws of motion, he relied on astronomical observations made in Asia and Af...

Just before midnight on January 20, 1936, King George V died at Sandringham, in Norfolk, England. The scandal of King George V’s reign would not be revealed publicly until 1986, in the diary of his physician, Lord Bertrand Dawson. Dawson had written about the night of January 20, detailing that he had injected the king with a lethal concoction of morphine and cocaine, intending to both grant the k...

Warning: There are adult themes, explicit language and references of disordered eating and diets in this episode. Did you know that before Queen Victoria married Albert she was a well-known party animal, who could easily stay up until 5am, drunk on a concoction of red wine and whiskey? Or that she was notorious for being able to eat seven or eight courses in half an hour, and had a penchant for mu...

Since its foundation in 1824, the volunteers of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have been braving the most savage of elements at sea to rescue sailors in distress. Their work has saved the lives of an estimated 143,000 people and helped many, many thousands more. Funded entirely by charitable donations and staffed primarily by volunteers it is a much loved national institution in the UK an...

It’s 1943. The Allies are determined to break Hitler’s grip on occupied Europe and plan an all-out assault on Sicily, but they face an impossible challenge - how to protect a massive invasion force from a potential massacre. It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley to dream the most inspired and improbable disinformation strategy of the war - centred...

On November 30th, 2021, Josephine Baker, the French-American performer, second world war resistance hero, and activist became the first Black woman to enter France’s Panthéon mausoleum of revered historical figures. As one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century, Baker risked her life working for the resistance during the second world war, smuggling documents between music sheets and us...

Swashbuckling, murder and robbery on the high seas! We're bringing back the fan favourite episode on Dr Rebecca Simon's 'Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny & Mary Read' from our archive. She takes Dan through a dramatic history of piracy in the Caribbean and the Atlantic World. She tells the extraordinary stories of pirates Anne Bonny, Mary Read as well as captains Blackbeard, Jack Rackham and...

Part 3/3. News of Titanic's fate sent shockwaves around the world; stories and illustrations of that fateful night splashed across newspaper stands on every corner. One town was affected more than most: Southampton. It's said everyone in the Southern English port knew someone who had perished on the Titanic.  In today's episode, Dan travels to the Southampton SeaCity museum to meet with Andy...

Depicted countless times in art, television and film, the night of the 14th of April 1912 has haunted and fascinated us for over a century. This is a dramatic moment by moment retelling of the sinking of the Titanic in the freezing North Atlantic after the 'unsinkable' ship struck an iceberg. Hear the stories of what happened on the decks and in the lifeboats; those who survived and those who peri...

On April 10th, 1912, RMS Titanic cast off from Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage. The largest of its kind, full of grandeur and the most sophisticated technology for the time, Titanic was determined “practically unsinkable” in admiring reviews of the ship beforehand. The colossal tragedy of Titanic’s fate and the humanity of those who survived and those who perished on the luxury passenge...

In Ancient Greece, the symposium was no ordinary after-dinner drinking party, but one in which the Hellenic men of society got together to wine, recline and philosophise. They took various forms depending on the whim of the leader of the symposium - the symposiarch - but were exclusively male affairs (aside from the occasional courtesan or two). In this episode from The Ancients Tristan is joined...