History of the Netherlands

They both lived during the Dutch Golden Age, grew up in Leiden, were taught by the same painter, shared a studio, received all the praise, and painted the rulers of their time. And yet, Jan Lievens is...

3 Juni 202446min

In the 1440s a goldsmith from Mainz called Johannes Gutenberg developed a movable type printing press which catalysed the European printing revolution. It heralded a technological leap in communicatio...

23 Jan 20241h 6min

We meet Simon Gronowski, a 92 year old jazz pianist, lawyer and Holocaust survivor. At the age of eleven, Simon was locked in a cattle wagon with his mother and around 50 other people after a month’s ...

27 Dec 202338min

We chat with author and academic Christine Kooi, whose book Reformation in the Low Countries 1500-1620 was released last year by Cambridge University Press. As its title suggests the book encompasses ...

20 Nov 20231h 13min

We dig up the bulbs of the past, trim the stems of historical myth and hopefully emerge with a lustrous vase of understanding as to where the tulip came from, how it became infectiously vogue in the D...

10 Okt 202352min

Long time listeners will be aware that, alongside being passionate about the history of our boggy swamp, we also carry a deep love for the game of cricket. The venn-diagram intersection between those ...

18 Sep 202326min

At the end of episode 49, we said that we were going to move away from the political part of the story of the History of the Netherlands for a while to instead focus on some of the other important soc...

4 Sep 202358min

Just as much as Dutch and Flemish culture today have been defined by their ability to seek consensus through compromise, so too have they defined by a willingness to angrily, and often violently, take...

19 Juni 20231h 13min