Dan Snow's History Hit

Poison, swordplay and bloodshed. Shakespeare’s characters met their ends in a plethora of gruesome ways. But how realistic were they? And did they even shock audiences who lived in a time of plague, pestilence and public executions, a time when seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the theatre were high. I was joined by the wonderful Dr Kathryn Harkup, a chemist and author, on a tumultu...

The last great battle of the Second World War was fought on the island of Okinawa. After 83 blood-soaked days, almost a quarter of a million people lost their lives. The death toll included thousands of civilians lost to mass suicide - convinced to do so by Japanese propaganda. I invited Saul David on the podcast to tell me about this shocking - often overlooked - chapter of the Second World War....

This episode features military historian Douglas Gill who has extensively researched the origins of the Spanish Influenza as it emerged in 1915 and 1916 in northern France. Douglas has worked alongside leading virologist, and previous guest on Dan's podcast, John Oxford, to track the initial cases of this particularly violent strain of influenza which would go on to kill millions of people across...

I was thrilled to have Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir on the pod. We talked about Viking women, old Norse-Icelandic sagas, mythology and poetry. Who were these Viking women who were champions on the battlefield, did they really exist, and is there much historic evidence? Jóhanna answered all these questions drawing upon the latest archaeological evidence. It seems the lives of Viking women were far...

Dr. Jamie Wood and Professor Niall Mackay at the University of York are mathematicians who love history. Sensible dudes. They released a paper which sent the rest of the history world into a meltdown when they tried to use the statistics of airframe losses from the Battle of Britain to test just how close Germany might have come to victory in the battle. Essentially (I think but then again I am to...

We were delighted to have comedy royalty on the podcast. Omid Djalili talked to me about one of his earliest stage creations, first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1993. Over the next four years it was performed 109 times in 10 different countries. The backdrop of this epic storytelling piece was the tumultuous expectation for a Promised One in Persia in 1844. The claims made by a yo...

There are more historic artefacts on our ocean floor than there are in every museum in the world put together. Over thousands of years ships carrying every conceivable cargo have sunk in the rivers and oceans of the world. Protecting them is an enormous challenge.  Thankfully there are heroes out there who are taking on that challenge. In this episode I was lucky enough to talk to maritime ar...

Everyone is Thomas Cromwell obsessed at the moment. The man who rose to be the most powerful member of Henry VIII's court, his Lord Privy Seal, Principal Secretary and Chancellor. He was a driving force behind the English Reformation and constitutional changes that emphasised the centrality of Parliament, but his current mighty reputation depends on the fictional trilogy of the genius novelist Hil...

Daniel Todman is a Professor of Modern History at Queen Mary. He has just published his epic study of how during the Second World War Britain fought back from near disaster to triumph. It opens with the fall fall of Singapore Feb 1942 and ends with Britain’s post war experiment in social democracy well underway.  Speaking to him amidst the Covid crisis was particularly fascinating. I was able...

Great leaders? Industrial change? Revolutions? If you thought these were the things that shaped history, think again. Back by popular demand, I was thrilled to be joined by bestselling author Lewis Dartnell.  He explained how modern political and economic patterns correlate with events which happened not decades or centuries ago, but hundreds of millions of years before human civilisations ex...

Off the coast of the Gaza Strip fishermen have been discovering coins of extreme rarity and importance. They date from the brief reign of Alexander the Great in the Third Century BC. Strangely, months later, a collection of very very similar coins were sold in a London auction house. What's the story here? Were they illegally trafficked? And what does that tell us about the antiquities found in so...

Dan chats with journalist and author Ed West about Ed's conservative views, which make him an anomaly among his peers. They explore why conservatives have lost almost every political argument since 1945, and why Ed worships on the altar of Edmund Burke. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Dan meets New York Times journalist and writer Bari Weiss, who grew up near and attended the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsberg, Pensylvania. In 2018 this synagogue was the site of the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in American history. Dan and Bari delve into the long history of anti-Semitism, from 2nd century BCE to our modern era. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priva...

Of all the clubs in the world, perhaps the most extraordinary is the Guinea Pig Club, a group of Second World War veterans that suffered terrible injuries and were then treated by pioneering surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Today there are only a handful left. Dan visits Jan Stangreciuk, one of the few surviving members, to hear his remarkable life story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Professor Paul Preston doesn’t pull his punches. His magisterial new history of modern Spain is called 'A People Betrayed'. He is the greatest living authority on Spain and he is not a fan of how that country had been governed. In this podcast he tells me a sorry story of corruption, war and brutality. And that's before the 20th Century even kicks off. This podcast, unusually, made me feel profoun...

I was thrilled to chat to Paul Morland, a historian who uses population to explain almost all the major global shifts and events of the last two centuries. Using the power of sheer numbers, Paul has the answer to all the big questions - why China is going to get old long before it gets rich, why Russia is heading for disaster and the future is African, and why fertility rates are plunging where we...

Professor John Oxford is a virologist. He is one of the world's leading experts on influenza. He is a leader in the study of the great Influenza outbreak of 100 years ago that killed upwards of 50 million people around the world. I talked to him today to ask him, what are the key lessons that we can learn from past outbreaks. The best way to support the History Hit team who produce this podcast is...

Dominic Sandbrook is one of Britain’s most prolific historians, working his way through a series on Britain since the Second World War. His most recent book examines the pivotal early years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. In this podcast, Dominic and I discuss the social change of the tumultuous 1980s, a decade of the personal computer, snooker, Spandau Ballet, the Falklands War, and of course...

It came from Asia via the Middle East and Italy. But, says 17th Century historian, Rebecca Rideal, the parallels with the Black Death, The Plague, are not helpful. It was great to catch up with Rebecca again on the podcast. She tells me what effect plague had on British people and society when it struck throughout the 17th Century. Her ultimate conclusion seems to be: be very very grateful that yo...

Rebecca Gibb is a Master of Wine. A ninja who can sniff out a Merlot from a Margaux at 50 paces. I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about wine other than I like drinking it. So we had a lot to talk about. She has written a fascinating research paper on the riots that tore through the region of Champagne just before the First World War as the small wine growers rose up against the power of the big Champagne...

The universe has always been there, kind of, but it took intelligent life on earth billions of years to start to grapple with its nature. Carolyn Collins Peterson is a science writer who charts the progress of astronomy through the observatories used throughout history, from the earliest such as Stonehenge, to places like Birr Castle with its Leviathan telescope used by Herschel.  As always t...

George. Where did it all go wrong? George Washington could have had a comfortable career as a loyal member of HIs Majesty's Virginia militia and colonial grandee. But no, he had to go and roll the dice. I am thrilled in this episode to be talking to historian Alexis Coe about her new biography of Washington. She has a fresh take on the first President, but no less scholarly for that. Young George...

75 years ago this Spring, the aerial assault on Germany was reaching a crescendo as city after city was devastated by British and American bomber fleets. History Hit TV have just launched a major documentary to mark this anniversary featuring veterans and historians like Max Hastings and Victoria Taylor. In this podcast one of our contributors, the hugely popular James Holland, joins me to talk ab...

Dan made a stupid comment on twitter. Irish history twitter melted down. So we did a pod on why.  100 years ago the Irish War of Independence was being fought in Ireland as the UK government sought to keep Ireland within the Union while the Irish independence fighters seized control of much of the countryside.  Dan and Finn Dwyer, host of the Irish History Podcast, had a good chat about...

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Channel Islands. Dan went to meet four people who remember the war years on the islands and hear their experiences of occupation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.