305: The Fall of the Roman Republic

Warning! This one isn’t for the faint-hearted... A naked, torch-carrying man, who would walk backwards around a funeral pyre, with his fingers covering his anus. The armed woman who worked a loom made...

9 Aug 202355min

“There’s a lot of severed heads at this villa!” The great TV sensation of the summer returns on The Rest Is History, as Tom and Dominic are once again joined by Tom’s daughter Katy, to navigate an inc...

6 Aug 20231h 3min

A woman of immense influence on medieval Christendom, Catherine of Siena was one of the first female Doctors of the Church, who married Christ in her own bedroom. Living through a time of great anxiet...

2 Aug 202351min

Mount Vesuvius' eruption in the autumn of AD79 remains one of the deadliest and best-known in history. The plume of super-heated volcanic gases spewed skyward formed a cloud 21 miles high, with the vo...

30 Juli 202346min

Charles de Gaulle was a war hero in the First World War, and, having refused to accept his government’s armistice with Nazi Germany, became the voice of the French Resistance during the Second World W...

27 Juli 202341min

May 1968 saw underlying tensions reach a climax in France, resulting in a period of civil unrest coloured by rioting, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories. Join Tom and Do...

24 Juli 202346min

A city which played a fundamental role in the Dutch Golden Age and in the birth of the Dutch monarchy, Amsterdam has also stood in the avant-garde of European liberalism since the Second World War. Jo...

20 Juli 202355min

A city built on water, Amsterdam has often set the tone of European modernity. It first gained prominence as a miraculous centre for pilgrimage, and then stood out for its relationship with the Reform...

17 Juli 202341min