The SCANDAL Mongers Podcast

Phil returns to the secret side of WW2 with the incredible story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo. As writer Clare Mulley explains, she was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, and then in Britain she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the '...

This week we look - for the first time - at a novel and Phil is joined by writer Gill Hornby. The Elopement  is the third book in a trilogy exploring the world of Jane Austen’s family and the first in the series -  Miss Austen  - was recently turned into a much praised drama series by the BBC and PBS.  Gill research into the world that Jane Austen memorably described has b...

Mok O’`Keeffe returns as co-host and, together with Phil, explores the complex subject of privacy with Tiffany Jenkins, whose new book Strangers and Intimates makes the case that we need to restore the idea of a truly private life back to the heart of our society. So when does the right to know over-rule our right to privacy? Ranging from the Reformation through Victorian melodramas and the strugg...

Phil is joined again by the lawyer David Hooper, who has a new edition of his book Buying Silence coming out. David is one of the world’s great campaigners for open, affordable justice and a fierce opponent of the practice - common in London - of the legal suppression of free speech. He acted for Vanity Fair in its long and bitter case against Mohamed Al Fayed, in the notorious Boris Berezovsky af...

Phil is joined by campaigner and writer Julie Bindel, the first person to investigate the grooming gang scandal that has so shocked Britain over the last two decades, and which seems to be continuing. A lesbian rights activist and life long campaigner against violence aimed at women and girls, Julie expected that politicians and state agencies would react quickly the the fact that gangs -mostly of...

Our friend Gerald Posner returns to bring his unique insight into the story BEHIND the election of a new Pope - the overlapping financial and sexual scandals that have plagued the Vatican for many decades. Gerald explains why is has proved so hard to reform a famously opaque (and sometimes corrupt) institution - and how a Pope can pursue and punish senior officials caught with their hands in...

This week we enter the demi-monde of the belle epoch to explore the strange and scandalous story of Absinthe, with writer Nina Studer. By the time it was banned in 1915, the famous 'green fairy' had become the green peril, feared for its connection with declining birth rates and its apparent capacity to induce degeneration, madness, and murderous rage in its consumers. As one of history’s most not...

This week we continue exploring the Second World War by revealing one of its most surprising, colourful and sometimes farcical stories - the two year undeclared war between Britain and Vichy France.  Tim Bouverie is Phil’s guest and he tales us through some of the terrific - and little known - stories in his new book  Allies At War .  Although London and Paris are firm all...

Phil begins this episode with his thoughts on the rather shocking news that the UK government has pulled back from the already limited inquiries into the ‘grooming and rape gang scandal’. What’s going on? Then Paul French returns to the podcast to share his hugely impressive knowledge of the Far East - through the story of Hong Kong.  The rise and fall of British rule there is of gr...

Phil’s new book,  1945 The Reckoning , is published on April 24 2025 in the UK, India, Australia and New Zealand and in this special episode he is switching roles with his friend and occasional co-host Mok O’Keeffe. Mok has been reading the book - but Phil has no idea what questions, thoughts and comments he might have. And he’s feeling nervous! 1945 The Reckoning  is full of great...

Phil is promising to open with another reading from his upcoming book  1945 The Reckoning  - but you can always skip! After that we welcome Carolyn Harris back. This extraordinarily well-read Canadian academic is a gifted communicator and an expert on royal women - and she has all the goss about out of history’s most powerful female rulers.  Catherine led a remarkable life - ri...

Phil has been thinking a lot about the British Empire recently, and it is a major theme of his upcoming new book about 1945. And so he was delighted to speak with best-selling writer Sathnam Sanghera. Sathnam has written extensively on how the empire shaped modern Britain - and much of the ret of the world too, upending   the conventional view of imperial history. For example, he tells Phil t...

Not everyone enjoyed Phil’s parody of Meghan Markle’s new Netflix show last week. Are we all being too cruel about her? Mok O’Keeffe thinks we might be. This week he joins Phil in another co-hosted episode and talks about his feelings for Meghan, Harry and the deep divisions at the heart of the royal family. Then Mok’s friend Peter Parker comes onto the show to discuss his two part history of gay...

What's this? Meghan Markle in Phil's Australian Bar? Then Carol Ann Lee joins Phil to discuss her incredible book on Ruth Ellis, on which the new international TV drama is based and in which Ruth is played impeccably by the British-American Actress Lucy Boynton. A CRUEL LOVE: The Ruth Ellis Story (Official ITV Trailer)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijla27WmAA0 As the last women to be executed...

Phil has spent decades analysing royal spin - from the age of Diana to the current TransAtlantic stand off between her two sons. He thinks that the interview Jason Knauf gave this week to the Australian 60 Minutes series is one of the most significant things to happen in terms of ‘Palace Kremlinology’ in many years. The interview did not happen by accident and will have required much pre...

One of Phil’s former colleagues, Quentin McDermott, joins him from Australia to report on the remarkable case of Kathleen Folbigg - one of the greatest miscarriages of justice of our age. After four of her children died under the age of 20 months, Kathleen Folbigg was charged and convicted of their murder in 2003. After 20 year in prison she was freed after scientific discoveries and a new analysi...

For a long time the Invictus Games was one event that even critics of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex admired - but the latest games have drawn criticism for their conduct?  Is it fair? And where do the rebel royal couple now stand? Then Dr Natalee Garrett from the Open University joins Phil to talk about her work on one of the most important royal women of them all - Queen Charlotte. During a...

Phil reacts to the emerging story of a possible new British political scandal. Having come to power partly because Boris Johnson fell foul of Britain’s tough Covid rules, did our current Prime Minister break them too and, if so, should it even matter? Phil’s article from 2022 is also relevant here. https://thecritic.co.uk/im-done-with-po-faced-politicians/ Then writer James Crossland joins Phil to...

This week Prof Alan Lester joins Phil to lift the lid on a little known - but certainly scandalous - slice of British imperial history - the Opium Wars.  There’s much debate today about slavery and how much - or little - it contributed to the wealth of the great European empires. But much less is known about the role that Britain and other empires played in the hugely profitable opium tr...

After the dramatic conclusion of Prince Harry’s case against the Murdoch Empire - which was supposed to be the media trial of the Century - Phil asks whether it was all worth it. Then Carolyn Harris - a renowned expert on royal consorts - joins us from Canada again to talk about perhaps the most famous - or is that notorious? - consort of them all. Weaving dramatic details of war, famine and revol...

Britain's headstrong royal exile is soon to step into the legal ring with the media mogul and his entourage, in Harry's continuing campaign to make senior executives accountable for the hacking and other tabloid scandals in the UK. And pre-trial transcripts obtained by  Vanity Fair  show just how much damage the prince is threatening to do.   Clive Irving has reported on this s...

In our final episode of the year - and the 100th edition of the podcast - Helen Fry returns to share some more remarkable stories from the Second World War.  Helen tells Phil of a long secret intelligence operation designed to extract information from enemy soldiers, sailors, pilots - and some of Hitler’s most senior Generals. Many of these men knew that the British were skilled at playi...

Writer Laura Thompson returns to the podcast, bringing all the insights and cleverness that has made her one of our most popular guests. And this time her subject is 'the heiress', including some of the most celebrated women in high society and literature. In her book 'Heiresses: the Lives of the Million Dollar Babies', Laura tells an incredible story of social change and bad behaviour in high pla...

This week Carolyn Harris joins Phil to talk about one of the most extraordinary royal relationships of all time; between the future George IV and his unhappily married wife Caroline of Brunswick. From a disastrously drunken wedding night, which nevertheless produced a princess, through years of mutual loathing, numerous affairs and illegitimate children (his), rumour of exotic foreign lovers (hers...

Long before she became one of the most famous women in the world - and the love of a man destined to become a King-Emperor - Wallis Simpson had lived an extraordinary life. Perhaps the most incredible part of it was when she went to live in China as the unhappy wife of a drunken US Navy officer and ended up leaving him and entering a world of hedonism, intrigue (both politics and sexual) and all m...