The Shortest War in History
On 27 August 1896, the British Empire went to war with the Zanzibar Sultanate for approximately 38 minutes! It is the shortest war in history. It came about after the death of the pro-British Sultan H...
26 Aug 202123min
WW2: The Great Imperial War
Most consider the Second World War to have been fought between 1939-1945 but, as you'll hear in this podcast, Richard Overy believes that the conflict was much broader than this. The Second World War ...
25 Aug 202128min
Ancient Afghanistan: The Land of a Thousand Cities
Stretched along the north of the Hindu Kush mountain range and the south of the Oxus river, the history of the ancient region of Bactria envelops some of the most intriguing periods of the ancient wor...
24 Aug 202150min
The Fall of the Soviet Union
In August 1991 there was an attempted coup in the Soviet Union as communist hard-liners sought to re-establish the dominance of Soviet rule in Russia and its satellite states. The coup attempt collaps...
23 Aug 202129min
National Security in Trump's White House
H. R. McMaster is both a soldier and a scholar and has served at the highest level in government as National Security Advisor to President Trump. He served in the US Army for more than 30 years achiev...
22 Aug 202135min
The Witches of Lorraine
Between 1570 and 1630, there was intense persecution and thousands of executions of suspected witches in Lorraine, a small duchy on the borders of France and the Holy Roman Empire. In some cases, susp...
21 Aug 202142min
80th Anniversary of the First Arctic Convoy
As the Soviet Union reeled from the shock of the German invasion in 1941 it asked for aid from Britain and its allies and the arctic convoys was a key part of the response. Desperate to keep the Sovie...
20 Aug 202126min
What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?
History is vital for contextualising current events but as Professor Paul Miller argues in today's episode of the podcast it cannot tell us all we need to know about the present especially in the case...
19 Aug 202125min
