Alexander the Great: life of the week
Stretching from Greece to India, Alexander the Great’s empire was one of the largest in human history, and he’d conquered it all by the time he was 30 years old. So how did this young king of a small ...
15 Jun 54min
What myths do we tell about royal women?
Have royal women's stories been misconstrued? Speaking to Charlotte Vosper, Kate Williams argues that many of them have been, tracing the lives of a whole host of queens – from Hatshepsut to Queen Vic...
14 Jun 50min
Cleopatra’s death – and cultural afterlife
The final chapter of Cleopatra’s life is shrouded in mystery. Did she really take her own life? Was an asp involved? And why don’t we know where her tomb is? In this final episode of our four-part Sun...
13 Jun 38min
Masters of disinformation: how British spies played dirty in the Cold War
They 'haunted' an Indonesian general with a talking ghost and planted fake hippies in a Bulgarian youth festival. But did they change the course of the Cold War? Rory Cormac introduces Spencer Mizen t...
11 Jun 34min
Churchill's toughest decision
In the summer of 1940, the Royal Navy attacked a French fleet moored off the coast of north Africa, killing almost 1,300 sailors. Winston Churchill described his decision to greenlight the operation a...
9 Jun 35min
Henry Paget: life of the week
Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, lived a life of extravagance, luxury and theatre – and for this, he was the subject of much intrigue in the late 19th century. In this episode, Michael Hall spea...
8 Jun 43min
The hidden history of female sexual pleasure
How did women in the past experience sex and pleasure? Kate Lister reveals that this is a rather complicated question. Instead of simply lying back and thinking of England, women have long fought for ...
7 Jun 48min
Why Cleopatra was more than a bewitching beauty
We often think of Cleopatra as using her feminine wiles to secure, and maintain, power. But was that really the case? And what other skills and qualities did she have? In this third episode of our fou...
6 Jun 41min
