Neil Oliver: News, Comment, History

In this podcast we’re landing in Lyme Regis with a swashbuckling Duke who is determined to be the King. Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, lands in the west country with a small army of soldiers intent on deposing his catholic uncle, King James II. The duke’s uprising gains momentum and his army swells to around 8000 strong. Because the majority of the Duke’s new...

In this podcast we’re travelling the sharp end of a war which ripped the British Isles apart. King Charles I went head to head with increasingly bold Parliamentarians. Bitter, internecine politics and deadly powerplays led to opposing armies being raised, and a bloody civil war swept across the whole of the British Isles. Families, neighbours and lifelong friends were pitted against each another a...

In this podcast we’re teetering on the brink of a war that would rip the three kingdoms apart.   In what is one of the most significant moments in Scottish history the National Covenant was born. King Charles I of England and Scotland, an imperious and domineering monarch, went heat to head with the Presbyterian Scots who were in no mood to listen to new ideas, not even from a king. Riots and...

In this podcast we’re prowling the beautiful coves and bays of the Irish coast with Barberry Corsairs. On a dark night in 1631 a notorious Dutch pirate known as ‘Captain Murat’, who operated out of Morocco with the blessing of the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul, sailed ashore to Dunashad castle in Baltimore, County Cork. On this one fateful night Captain Murat and his pirates left a dark shadow of vio...

In this podcast Neil takes us to a place where all our modern senses and sterile sensibilities are thrown into shock. London at the turn of the C17th was a major metropolis, a city teeming with life, where pestilence and poverty sat cheek by jowl with great wealth and riches. A major industrial centre it was ripe with every stink of animal and human imaginable, streets crowded and claustrophobic,...

In this podcast Neil takes us with him, setting foot into a building whose history is inextricably woven into the story of the British Isles. A landmark building, that’s as beautiful as it is beguiling. In 1944 General Dwight Eisenhower camped beside it and planned the D-Day landings, William Shakespeare and his troop of actors performed in it’s Great Hall, but Henry VIII’s bloated and corrupt sha...

This week we’re witnessing the final destructive crescendo that put paid to a powerful, but ill-fated invasion fleet bent on conquering England. Queen Elizabeth I stood firm against the mighty Spanish Armada, and the elemental forces of nature came to her assistance. The Spanish ships sent to invade England were bristling with the latest weapons of war and full of men and treasure. After being att...

This week Neil takes us along an Elizabethan jetty to hear one of history’s great speeches. In 1588, as Sir Francis Drake sailed to meet the mighty Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth I travelled down the river Thames to Tilbury fort where she addressed her army. If the powerful Spanish force landed and invaded England these are the men who would defend the country and its queen. Dressed in white and...

This week Neil is taking us aboard the Golden Hind, a legendary ship that sailed around the world and into history. In 16th century Aldeburgh, which was then an important east-coast port, shipbuilders set to work building a vessel that was to have a profound influence on British history. Once completed and seaworthy Francis Drake and his crew climbed aboard and set sail on an epic 3 year voyage to...

This week Neil marches with us across the wild beauty of Northumberland to a battleground that broke Scotland’s heart. In 1513 Margaret Tudor watched as her husband, the glamours renaissance king, James IV of Scotland, set off to invade England and do battle with her brother, Henry VIII. When Henry invaded France James felt duty bound to honour the Auld Alliance, a treaty of mutual assistance betw...

This Week Neil’s on his home turf delving into the deep history of one of the most glorious castles in the British Isles. They say Stirling castle is the silver brooch that hitches the Highlands of Scotland to the lowlands. Neil very much regards it as his personal touch stone. It’s a place that was already well trodden by our ancestors when the Roman road builders turned up around AD80. The castl...

This week Neil follows the money! By the C13th the Hanseatic League had crystalised its power base and was busy spinning lucrative trading routes right across northern Europe, from the Baltic to the British Isles. Neil travels to the Norfolk town of Kings Lynn, which thanks to the Hanseatic League became the third richest port in England. Two building survive from this time, St George’s Guildhall...

This week, side by side with Neil, we’re striding across a vast, treacherous bay where one false move could see us paying for it with our lives. Almost 500 years ago, in 1548, the people of Morecambe Bay Sands asked for help, because crossing this vast tidal expanse was so treacherous many lives were being lost. The tides race across the sands faster than a horse can gallop and the bay is dotted w...

This week Neil comes face to face with the mighty walls of an almost impregnable castle, which down through its history inspired many heroic ‘last stands’ and a song that famously features in one of Neil's favourite films. On the orders of Edward I, Harlech castle was built between 1283 and 1285 by James of St George a military engineer of unsurpassed genius. It’s clever design, a castle within a...

This week Neil steps into the middle of a brutal family feud - the Wars of the Roses. The warring family, the Plantagenets, have been described as ‘a race dipped in their own blood. The factions within the family and their unremitting quest for power and the English throne led to a civil-war that ripped England apart for 30 years and left tens of thousands of soldiers dead on battlefields rig...

This week Neil steps foot into Cambuskenneth Abbey, a place that was to prove crucial in the making of a legendary king - Robert the Bruce. The Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 was a defining moment in the long Wars of Scottish Independence. Overlooked by the mighty Stirling castle, which sits atop the crag and tail of an extinct volcano, is a low-lying plain with the lazy meandering river Forth runn...

This week Neil’s journey takes us to one of the most beautiful glens in Scotland where we discover, what is believed to be, the oldest living thing in Europe - the Fortingall Yew. The legendary Fortingall Yew nestles at the eastern end of Glen Lyon – the glen which Sir Walter Scott called the ‘longest, loneliest and loveliest in Scotland’. Many experts put the age of the yew at 9000 years old, whi...

This week Neil takes us to a place of legends, a place where, with a glint in his eye, he proudly tells us he was once the warm-up act to Bono and U2 on the Pyramid stage. Glastonbury Tor is a magical landscape shimmering with ancient traditions, beauty and horrors. It’s a place that has always been, and still feels ‘special, the air around it thick with history. Tales of Jesus, the Holy Grail, Ki...

This week we travel with Neil to Angus where the glowing red eye of Arbroath Abbey casts a watchful look over us. It was here at the Abbey in 1320 that the Declaration of Arbroath was written, a revolutionary document whose words would resonate around the world. Drafted as a declaration of Scottish independence and a show of support for the celebrated king, Robert the Bruce, it also held the monar...

This week Neil takes us off the beaten track to St Nectan’s Glen in Cornwall. It’s one of a number of enchanted places that are dotted all over the British Isles, which have a real aura and presence around them. Shimmering with crystal clear waters and enclosed by cliffs coated with rich moss and ferns it’s a place that somehow manages to stop you in your tracks and invites you to think. Named aft...

This week Neil travels to an island at the heart of the British Isles. Snaefell is the highest mountain on the Isle of Man. On a clear day, from it’s peak, they say you can spin 360 degrees and see seven Kingdoms. The Isle of Man is at the geographical centre of the British Isles archipelago, but it’s a place apart. A constitutional anomaly that’s under the UK’s protection, but has its own parliam...

This week, Neil travels to see an iconic document that shook the world. In 1215 a battling king squared up to his rebellious barons in a power struggle produced Magna Carta and a new political order. A charter of rights that started to pin back the monarchy, Magna Carta declared not even a king is above the law. Never again would an English monarch have absolute power. Magna Carta and a follow-up...

This week Neil travels back in time, almost 1000 years, to what became the city of Durham and the construction of a majestic building whose beauty and power have resonated down through the centuries ever since – Durham cathedral. Our ancestors have always been driven by the need to build. In the years following the turn of the first millennium a great wave of energy ran across Europe and through t...

This week Neil’s journey takes us in search of the battle whose ferocity, violence and savagery shocked the whole of the British Isles and shaped its borders for ever – the battle of Brunanburh. The repercussions from this momentous battle, fought in AD 937, have reverberated right up to the present day. Long remembered as the Great War this was the battle that sliced the long island in two! Check...

This week Neil takes us in search of the remains of one the greatest Kings ever to reign in the British Isles. Not far from Winchester’s city centre, in amongst modern residential streets, Neil is on the trail of the location where Alfred the Great’s bones were buried. Alfred the Great took on the Vikings and won. On the field of battle he was a brave and determined soldier. As a ruler his intelle...