The History Chap Podcast

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Send me a message Join My Supporter's Club Support the show

Send me a message Join my Supporter's Club Support the show

Send me a message Join my Supporter's Club Support the show

Send me a message Join my Supporter's Club Support the show

Send me a message Join my Supporter's Club Support the show

Send me a message 1066, probably the most famous year in English history. The year of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest. And yet, those facts are just the tip of the iceberg in an intriguing year which seems to be more out of a film script than the pages of history. It was a year of 2 great invasions, 3 huge battles, 3 crowned Kings of England. Yes, it was the last time that a foreign...

Send me a message As you will have discovered from previous episodes, once there wasn't a country called England. Nor were there countries called Wales or Scotland either. Just like England, the countries  were divided into a series of squabbling kingdoms. This is the story of how they finally unified into the countries we know today. Join my Supporter's Club Our story ends in 1063 when...

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Send me a message Alfred The Great had dreamed of a united Anglo-Saxon country - England. But he never achieved it in his lifetime. It was left for his descendants to carry out his work towards that goal. And "Project England" had to apply the brakes on more than one occasion. Finally, under Alfred's grandson, Aethelstan, England becomes a united country. This is the story of how Ae...

Send me a message In an age of warrior kings, this is the story of England's forgotten warrior queen. Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, was the daughter of Alfred The Great. Her husband was the regent of Mercia and when he died she took over the reigns of power. Working with her brother, Edward of Wessex, Aethelflaed started to finally push the vikings back in England. Personally overseeing...

Send me a message If you have listened to episode  4, you will understand that in the year 793 there was no country called England. Instead there were a number of separate Anglo Saxon Kingdoms - Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex.  But in 793 that was all about to change. The Anglo Saxon world was about to be blown apart and England brought to its very knees. Within 80 years the Vikings w...

Send me a message This is the story of how the disparate Anglo Saxon communities eventually consolidated into 7 kingdoms covering what we now know as England and how they each vied for supremacy. Back in the 600's, Raedwald of East Anglia becomes "Top Dog" when he defeats the Northumbrians but when he dies, so does the prominence of East Anglia. Northumbria then become the leading p...

Send me a message In 410 the desperate citizens of the Roman province of Britannia sent the Emperor a plea for help against increasing attacks from pirates and the Picts from beyond Hadrians Wall. The Emperor, Honorius sent them a simple reply which basically said  "You are on your own." Britain descended into chaos - "The Dark Ages" The urban sophistication of the Roman years...

Send me a message In AD43, the Romans began their invasion of Britain. For the next 400 years, most of Britain would be a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. A huge wall was constructed in the north to mark the furthest limit of Roman control. It is still there today, Hadrian's Wall. But for all the so-called civilisation that the Romans brought, the Britons weren't convinced. Roman...

Send me a message Britain has had an impact on the world way beyond its size. But it hasn't always been that way. Long, long before the British had established their won worldwide empire, they were a far-flung part of someone else's empire - The Romans. The story of Britain begins even further back than that... To a time when Britain was just part of a north European plain with tribes mi...