Liberating WW2 Naples: triumph and tragedy

A prophetess who warned Oliver Cromwell against killing the king. A Yorkshire maidservant who gained an audience with the Ottoman Sultan. The religious tumult of the 17th century gave ordinary women o...

2 Jan 34min

Why should you be careful about who's first through your door on New Year's Day? What led people to believe that newts and earwigs were responsible for their ailments? And why do sticks play such a ke...

31 Dec 202541min

‘Evil genius’ is a phrase that could have been invented to describe Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Augustus butchered his way to power in the chaos that followed Julius Caesar's assassination, a...

30 Dec 202544min

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 Dec 202539min

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 Dec 202533min

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 Dec 202532min

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 Dec 202534min

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 Dec 202542min