Subject to Change

Professor Donald Rayfield picks up Crimea’s story in spring 1942, when Germany turns south for the Black Sea and oil. Some Tartars can't imagine anyone worse than Stalin. Some can't imagine anyone worse than Hitler. Tragically, they are both right though in different ways. Donald explains the realities of the German occupation, from the early “orderly” phase to the arrival of SS units wh...

Donald Rayfield returns for the second of three episodes on Crimea — this time taking the long view, from the Mongol Golden Horde to Catherine the Great's annexation and the early Soviet period. At its height the Crimean Khanate was a sophisticated and surprisingly humane state. It was also, as Rayfield puts it, the self-appointed freeholder of the former Mongol empire — and it collected its...

The subject today comes out of the Crimean war (1853-1856). I talked to Professor Donald Rayfield, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian history at Queen Mary University of London, about the war itself and in particular what happened to those taken prisoner.  Surprisingly life could be pretty good!

Part 1 of the podcast told the sad story of how some shocking misjudgements on the part of Justinian saw him dragged to the Hippodrome where a man with a pair of pliers cut off his nose, cut out his tongue. But in a misjudgement every bit as big as Justinian’s instead of putting him in a sack and throwing him in the Bosphorus his successor exiles him to the Crimea. I mean everyone knows you can&ap...

Justinian II becomes emperor at sixteen. Even allowing for the hostility of our sources the reign is not all plain sailing. I'm joined by Professor David Parnell to work through the first half of one of Byzantium's most extraordinary reigns. Part one takes us from his accession to the moment the city loses patience and terminates the reign violently. David and I are left scratching our h...

You don't have to be young and beautiful to get ahead in Stuart England but it really doesn't hurt. The is the story of 'gorgeous George' - that is to say George Villiers (later Duke of Buckingham) who in his early 20's became the favourite of James I of England (VI of Scotland).  Despite his willingness to promote based on good looks, James I comes out of this rather well...

Jonathan Clements returns to talk about his book on the First Emperor of China and the man who was sent to kill him: facts and fictions in Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero (2002), the evil mirror-universe version of Confucianism, an impossibly well-endowed “eunuch”, the construction of the Terracotta Army, the politics of archaeology, and how to spent a slave labour dividend. And what to do when you had t...

It is astonishing to me that we went from the first powered flight of a few hundred feet in 1903 to attempting to fly the Atlantic in 1919.  The Daily Mail had offered a prize of £10,000 to cross the Atlantic. The pilots called it the Big Hop. Nowadays we think nothing of it but back then they had open cockpits, primitive navigation tools, unreliable weather forecasting and many other problems. Th...

Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University is on excellent form to talk me through the German Peasant's War of 1524-25. Things I learned: - take Martin Luther seriously (but not literally) - monasteries feed the poor and needy (particularly when they are armed and extremely determined) - the scale of the revolt was off the charts, nothing like it until the French Revolutio...

Today the thing we find mysterious is why WWI lasted as long as it did. Why continue a pointless slaughter. Comparisions with the war in Ukraine suggest an answer! My guess is is Professor David Stevenson and for him the mystery is not why it lasted so long but why it ended when it did. For the German public is was particularly mysterious. Just a few months before the Armistice Germany was all con...

Ed West is a journalist and massively popular substacker - do check out his substack The Wrong Side of History. But he has a sideline in history so I got him on the show to talk about 1066 and the battle of Hastings. Ed is on top form so please join us as he talks about: - why Harold should have listened to his Mum - Harald Hadrada's absolute last poem - what made the Norman's so very ha...

A six-foot-two prince who loved tournaments, outfoxed a revolution, and nearly died on crusade returns to build castles that still dominate the Welsh coast and to bend Scotland to his will until Robert the Bruce strikes back. We follow Edward I’s path from a devoted crusader to the architect of a more centralised, harder-edged medieval state, where finance, logistics, and image mattered as much as...

“With the heart of a serpent and the nature of a wolf, she gathered sycophants to her cause and brought destruction to the just. She slew her sister, butchered her brothers, killed her prince, and poisoned her mother. She is hated by men and gods alike.” Jonathan Clements came back on to talk about his book on Wu Zetian (623–705), the only woman ever to rule China in her own name. Rising from lowl...

As promised in part 1 we started the podcast by talking about some of Napoleon III’s many mistresses.  Women like Harriet Howard, the Brighton bootmaker’s daughter, Virginia de Castiglione, sent by the Italians to seduce and spy on him (and welcomed with open arms!), Marguerite Bellanger and Louise de Mercy-Argenteau. His wife hated his infidelities but at least in the case of Louise she took comf...

From exiled prince to emperor, Napoleon III's rise to power reads like a political thriller too wild to be true. Edward Shawcross tells the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, a man who attempted not one but two comically failed coups before finally succeeding in becoming Emperor of France. This episode explores Louis-Napoleon's bizarre childhood as the imperial nephew raised in S...

Fourteen centuries of enslavement, from the Prophet Muhammad's day to modern Mauritania. Justin Marozzi's fascinating book "Captives and Companions"   has as its subject the complex history of slavery across the Islamic world, challenging simplistic narratives and revealing uncomfortable truths about power, race, and religion. Our conversation touched on how Islam didn't i...

This episode looks at the courtroom drama that helped to shape Asia after World War II with Princeton University's Gary Bass. Far more than a simple account of justice served, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal represents a fascinating intersection of international law, power politics, and competing visions of history that continues to reverberate through East Asian relations today. The tribunal t...

When 50,000 northerners marched under their banners in 1536, England witnessed its largest rebellion since the Peasants' Revolt. The Pilgrimage of Grace wasn't just a protest - it threatened to undo the English Reformation completely and return the kingdom to Rome. Professor Peter Marshall, the renowned Tudor historian, tells the story of this extraordinary episode where religious devoti...

The ever excellent Professor David Parnell (of Belisarius and Antonina fame) came on to talk about the First Crusade. And given his interest in the Eastern Roman Empire we spent a lot of time talking about it from that angle.  When Emperor Alexius I found his thousand-year-old empire crumbling under Turkish advances in the late 11th century, he asked the West for help. He got more than he could ha...

What makes a nation launch an attack it cannot hope to win? Admiral Yamamoto, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, warned Japan's leadership they would have only six months before America would mobilize its entire continent to destroy them. He was right, but his warning was ignored. The episode starts with a discussion about the controversial Yasukuni Shrine and museum, where we gain insight...

How did Japan become embroiled in one of history's deadliest conflicts? The answer lies not in December 1941, but decades earlier. Jonathan Clements returns to unravel the forces that propelled Japan down a path to war with the world's greatest industrial power. Following Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the country emerged with new confidence only to face the humilia...

The transformation of Japan from hermit kingdom to imperial power happened with breathtaking speed. When American Commodore Perry's "black ships" steamed into Tokyo Bay in the 1850s, they shattered Japan's 250-year isolation with technology that seemed to come "from 200 years in the future." This technological gap created a constitutional crisis that would ultimately...

The Hundred Years' War shaped medieval Europe's political landscape for over a century—but what really caused this epic conflict between England and France? In this illuminating conversation, former UK Supreme Court Justice and acclaimed medieval historian Lord Jonathan Sumption cuts through myths and misconceptions to reveal the war's true origins. Contrary to popular belief, the w...

The story of the Opium War is one of history's most consequential yet widely misunderstood conflicts. Professor Stephen Platt joined me to unravel the fascinating web of events that led Britain and China into a collision that would reshape Asia and the global balance of power for centuries to come. Far from being a simple tale of drug dealers backed by imperial force, Stephen reveals cultural...

I spoke to Christopher before about his book the Lion House. That was part 1 of a trilogy on the life of Suleiman the Magnificent. Christopher is back to talk about part 2: The Golden Throne - the Curse of a King . From the intricate power dynamics of the Ottoman court to bloody naval battles in the Mediterranean, "The Golden Throne" recreates the world of Suleiman the Magnificent at the...