253. Victorian Narcos: Drug Dealers Lead Britain to War (Ep 7)

With Jahangir sliding into more of an opium and alcohol fuelled slumber with each passing day, Nur Jahan took the reins of the Mughal Empire. In this she demonstrated her political prowess, but she wa...

17 Apr 202438min

Nur Jahan was born on a roadside as her well-to-do parents fled from Safavid Persia for the tolerant court of the Mughal emperor. Her first marriage was respectable although unremarkable, but then her...

15 Apr 202443min

Börte came from a powerful nomadic tribe and in many ways her marriage to Genghis Khan set him up to become the great conqueror we know. They married young and when they were twenty, he brought his ne...

10 Apr 202447min

Sold as a slave to the great Abbasid Caliph, al-Khayzuran quickly rose to the very top of the pyramid. Through marriage and motherhood, she became wife of the caliph and then Queen Mother and in both ...

8 Apr 202443min

The Empress Theodora is often unfairly remembered for the salacious stories that have been told about her when she was forced to work in a brothel. She was far more than that. She used her power to im...

3 Apr 202455min

Placed by her mother into a brothel when she was just a child, Theodora was born into the most brutal of worlds. It was a Constantinople riven with division, whether due to theology or circus factions...

1 Apr 202441min

Born in poverty at a time when the Roman Empire was in danger of cracking up and disintegrating, Helena was set for a life of obscurity as a stable hand, bar maid, and, according to some, a prostitute...

28 Mars 202456min

With Julius Caesar dead, Cleopatra turned to another of Rome’s dominant figures. She became entwined with Mark Antony, the ruler of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, but even with their enormous c...

26 Mars 202441min