Who Lit the French Revolution?
How did a kingdom of palaces, privilege and powdered wigs collapse into revolution? What turned hunger into uprising?In this first episode of our series on the French Revolution, Professor Suzannah Li...
13 Jul 54min
Bess of Hardwick: Elizabethan England's Richest Woman
How did a Derbyshire gentlewoman become England’s richest woman after Elizabeth I? Why does she still fascinate us as her 500th anniversary approaches?From four marriages and vast wealth to Hardwick H...
9 Jul 45min
Edmund Halley & His Comet
How did our understanding of the universe begin in a London coffee house? How did a man who had a comet named after him change science forever?From his youthful voyage to St Helena to chart the southe...
6 Jul 56min
The Mayflower and its Pilgrims
Why did the Pilgrims risk everything in search of a new life and religious freedom? Why does their contested history still matter ahead of the 250th anniversary of American independence?In 1620, the ...
2 Jul 48min
Jamestown: From Colony to Cannibalism
**This episode contains graphic explorations of starvation and cannibalism**What happens when a colony reaches the edge of survival?In this third episode leading up to the 250th anniversary of America...
29 Jun 56min
True Crime: Moll Cutpurse - London's Cross-Dressing Criminal
How did one woman scandalise sixteenth century London by refusing to live by its rules?Mary Frith - aka Moll Cutpurse - rejected the expectations of respectable womanhood, wore men’s clothes, smoked a...
25 Jun 47min
Pocahontas & the Virginian Venture
How did the Stuarts turn fragile American outposts into an empire? How did English settlers, Native peoples - including Pocahontas - and London investors shape 17th-century Virginia, and why do these ...
22 Jun 57min
How Guns Changed the World
How did the gun become a fashion item in Renaissance Italy? Why do debates over firearms, self-defence and public safety sound so familiar today?Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and historian Catherine Fle...
18 Jun 47min
