A History of England

When Harold Wilson formed his second government, he immediately faced a major crisis inherited from Heath’s administration: the coalminers were on strike, a state of Emergency (Heath’s fifth in four y...

6 Jul 202514min

How did Heath end up calling an election on the question of who governed the country? Especially as the choice he seemed to be offering was between him and the minders. This episode traces the impact ...

5 Jul 202514min

Ted Heath’s government had to deal with two problems drawn from Britain’s postimperial standing: • adapting to its loss of global status, by negotiating, at the third time of asking and for the first ...

22 Jun 202514min

After talking last week about his government’s achievements in the social sphere, this episode looks at the difficulties Wilson faced in economics and foreign affairs.One way Wilson explored to addres...

15 Jun 202514min

According to the English poet Philip Larkin, the sixties saw the invention of sexual intercourse. While that may not be quite the case, it was certainly a time when a lot of people decided that it was...

8 Jun 202514min

The Wilson government got off to a pretty sticky start, with the new Prime Minister learning, more or less as he arrived at Downing Street in October 1964, that the trade deficit for the year was like...

1 Jun 202514min

Here we’re focusing on the changes that took place in Britain after Supermac (Harold Macmillan) stood down as Prime Minister.A lot of how that went depended on the Opposition formed by the Labour Part...

25 Mai 202514min

Last time we looked at the continuing disintegration of the British Empire. In this episode we look at two other key aspects of Macmillan’s foreign policy, Britain’s relations with the US and with pot...

18 Mai 202515min