205. The Empire at its peak, the country in the pits

We start this week with Hitler announcing that there would be no more surprises, though we immediately question whether his word could always be wholly trusted. We go on to look at the way Hitler was ...

17 Nov 202414min

We’re still looking at 1936, a year packed with so many events that it’s taken two episodes to review the main ones. This week, on the domestic, British front: - The year of three kings, as one died, ...

10 Nov 202414min

This episode is our first look at the exciting year of 1936. It was a time when some British politicians tried to appease one dictator, Mussolini, by taking no action to stop invading Abyssinia, in or...

3 Nov 202414min

Britain and France reckoned they’d secured the support of Italy, in the Stresa Front, for their efforts to contain Hitler. Britain was the first to undermine that pleasant understanding, by signing a ...

27 Okt 202414min

In the mid-1930s, there was still widespread hope across Britain that a major war could be avoided. That could be achieved, many believed, by international negotiation towards disarmament, and by col...

20 Okt 202414min

We start this episode with the unveiling of the statue of Edward Carson at Stormont Castle in Northern Ireland. It rather makes the point that a man who helped organise an armed force against British ...

13 Okt 202414min

It was a terrible time for Labour, down to just 52 MPs and having to choose a new leadership from a narrow pool from which most of the brightest lights, in the view of many but above all their own, we...

6 Okt 202414min

This episode looks at the impact in Britain of continuing trouble in India. There Gandhi had launched his salt march, walking to the sea to make salt, in breach of the British monopoly and the heavy t...

29 Sep 202414min