Inside the Viking battle of the genders
What do we know for certain about Old Norse ideas about masculinity and femininity, and can Viking Age mythology provide any answers? In conversation with James Osborne, Dr Jackson Crawford discusses ...
29 Des 202539min
A house of one’s own: Jane Austen’s ‘golden years’
It was at Chawton House, a cottage in rural Hampshire, that Jane Austen experienced one of the most fruitful episodes of her writing career. In this third instalment of our four-part series charting t...
28 Des 202533min
Æthelstan: the king who made England
Æthelstan was crowned in Kingston upon Thames 1100 years ago, in AD 925. He went on to extend his authority far beyond his initial powerbase of Wessex and Mercia to become the first king of England. D...
26 Des 202532min
Did the WW1 Christmas truce really happen?
It’s one of the most romantic images of the First World War: British and German soldiers meeting in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day, 1914, for a spontaneous truce and a game of football. But did it act...
24 Des 202534min
Father Christmas: life of the week
Father Christmas – or Santa Claus – is one of western culture’s most recognisable figures. But from his mysterious origins to quite how he ended up as owner of a North Pole workshop staffed by elves, ...
23 Des 202542min
When was the best time in English history to be alive?
Did you know that Elizabethan Londoners were good kissers? That medieval drinkers used beer to fight off the flames of a raging inferno? And that Jane Austen doesn't paint an entirely accurate picture...
22 Des 202529min
“I am to flirt my last”: Jane Austen’s twenties
We might assume that Jane Austen led a quiet existence, writing dramatic plots instead of experiencing them herself – but that presumption is far from the truth. In this second episode of our four-par...
21 Des 202533min
The secret propaganda war against the Nazis
In September 1939, an unlikely assortment of journalists, politicians, novelists and spies assembled in a Bedfordshire village and set about waging a covert propaganda war on Hitler's Germany. Here, i...
19 Des 202532min
