
Lady Jane Grey: life of the week
Think of Lady Jane Grey, and your mind probably goes straight to her legacy as the Nine Days’ Queen. But what do we really know about her life? She might have been a young girl catapulted into the lin...
18 Touko 48min

The peacemakers of WW2
Politicians and generals today talk a lot about the need for exit plans to be established if conflict erupts between nations. In the middle of the horrors of the Second World War, Britain's diplomats ...
17 Touko 41min

The long shadow of the Black Death
When the first wave of the Black Death finally subsided, what sort of world did it leave behind? How did societies adapt in the decades that followed? And what lessons did this medieval catastrophe ho...
16 Touko 37min

The secret plot to end Scottish independence
How did the union of England and Scotland come to fruition? From failed Scottish colonies to anti-independence espionage, Marc Mierowsky's book A Spy Amongst Us reveals how union wasn't inevitable, an...
14 Touko 34min

How did communism conquer China?
How did a tiny band of guerrillas come to rule a quarter of humanity? And was the outcome of the Chinese Civil War really the ‘heroic’ popular uprising that the People’s Republic portrays? In this epi...
12 Touko 44min

Olaf Tryggvason: life of the week
From thrall to king; from pagan to Christian: Olaf Tryggvason was one of the titanic figures of the Viking Age, whose story straddles the line between fantasy and fiction. Speaking to James Osborne ab...
11 Touko 46min

The death of Adolf Hitler
What do we really know about Adolf Hitler’s death? In this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, historian and author Caroline Sharples tells Charlotte Vosper about the reporting that surrounded Hitler...
10 Touko 35min

Fear and faith: coping with the Black Death
For those who lived through it, the Black Death left a legacy of fear, loss and uncertainty. But how did people cope with such overwhelming catastrophe? And what do contemporary records reveal about t...
9 Touko 45min



















