217. Plague and the decline of the Roman Empire

In Sussex, in 1912, men quarrying in a gravel pit near Piltdown village turned up a human skull. According to Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archeologist with a remarkable track record for findi...

11 Aug 202450min

Twelve months after the dramatic Women’s March on Versailles, the Revolution proper was well into its stride, and while Paris overflowed with a sense of unbridled political freedom, the King and Queen...

8 Aug 20241h 4min

By the summer of 1789 the different sections of the Revolution were at loggerheads, and the recently created National Assembly riven in two. Both factions, the radicals on the left and the more modera...

7 Aug 202458min

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité!” Alongside violence, the French Revolution is a story of principles and values. It is the ultimate intersection of brutality and Enlightenment idealism, as epitomised b...

5 Aug 202458min

“It was violence that made the revolution revolutionary”. The storming of the Bastille is viewed by many across the world as a moment of celebration, when the French people were liberated from the sh...

4 Aug 202459min

In the summer of 1788, a monstrous storm swept across France, wiping out the crucial wheat harvest. With the nation already in the throes of political and financial calamity, this meteorological disas...

1 Aug 20241h 8min

With seismic antecedents such as the Glorious Revolution in England and the American War of Independence, what was it about the French Revolution that saw it become arguably the most important episode...

31 Jul 20241h

In August 1785 a shocking affair came to light which would prove so detrimental to the reputation and standing of the French King Louis XVI, and more especially his already unpopular wife, Queen Marie...

29 Jul 202451min