Latest Episodes
Most Recent
The Rest Is History Club
Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening, weekly bonus episodes, and more!
More Episodes
"Enough of the Princeps, what remains to be described, is the monster..."The Roman emperor Caligula endures as one of the most notorious figures in not only Roman history, but the history of the world...
· 1 hr 7 min 46 sec
The Roman historian Suetonius’ biography of the controversial Emperor Tiberius is one of his most shocking and salacious, condemning Tiberius to infamy. But was Tiberius really the perverted monster S...
· 1 hr 52 sec
The Roman historian Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars, written during the early imperial period of the Roman Empire, is a seminal biography covering the biographies of the early emperors of Rome, du...
· 55 min 41 sec
How did a Russian spy manage to infiltrate the upper echelons of London and New York society? Was Anna Chapman really an old fashioned Russian honeytrap or was she underestimated by the world's press?...
· 14 min 31 sec
The story of Wojtek - the bear who took on the Nazis - amidst the death and devastation of the Second World War, and more specifically Poland's heroic resistance, is a flicker of redemption amidst an...
· 1 hr 1 min 15 sec
The Nazi invasion of Poland is one of the most harrowing episodes of the Second World War, which saw terrible scenes of abuse take place. Though long threatened, Poland was in no way prepared to face...
· 1 hr 2 min 36 sec
By the 11th of April 1939, Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were in the process of drawing up a plan of attack for Poland, the Poles having resisted Germany’s attempts to make them hand over Danzig and turn...
· 1 hr 4 min 44 sec
Following the Munich agreement of September 1938, Nazi troops marched into Czechoslovakia and ruthlessly claimed it as a German protectorate. Still, even following his annexation of Czechoslovakia, Hi...
· 1 hr 1 min 3 sec
On 17th September 1938, in Munich, one of the most extraordinary meetings in history took place. Neville Chamberlain launched an extraordinary and unprecedented diplomatic coup. Boarding a plane, he s...
· 59 min 19 sec
Throughout the course of the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party has overwhelmingly, terrifyingly seized power in Germany. Now, Hitler’s vile ambitions have turned to Czechoslovakia. On the 12th of Septe...
· 1 hr 3 min 15 sec
Ludwig Van Beethoven, like his precursor and possible acquaintance Mozart, is one of the most famous figures in Western musical history. With his wild hair and furrowed brow, his was a genius marked n...
· 1 hr 6 min 16 sec
In 1756 a musical prodigy was born in Salzburg, Austria: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Thanks to the efforts of his exacting father, Mozart's genius was exhibited and celebrated in some of the greatest cou...
· 1 hr 9 min 22 sec
“And from that moment on, he was addressed as emperor and Augustus!”The coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800 AD, is one of the landmark moments in all world history. More than three centurie...
· 1 hr 5 min 47 sec
“Here was a program to wet the ambitions of warlords as well as scholars, and to send men into battle beneath the fluttering of banners, the hiss of arrows, and the shadow of carrion crows…”The year i...
· 55 min 51 sec
The Frankish king, Charlemagne the Great, is one of the titanic figures of European history, simultaneously renowned and shadowy. His rise to supreme power is a staggering story of warring religious e...
· 52 min 31 sec
By 711 Europe and the Frankish warlords were facing a graver threat than ever before. Bands of Northern African, nominally Muslim raiders had begun a steady incursion throughout the West, loosely unif...
· 1 hr 1 min 41 sec
Following the death of the legendary Frankish King Clovis, his son Clothar I divided the mighty realm his father had hacked out from the warring warlords of Europe between his four sons. But peace was...
· 1 hr 2 min 12 sec
The Rise of the Franks - a mighty host of warlords; forefathers of the western world and forgers of medieval civilisation, under the totemic leadership of history’s most glorious King: Charlemagne. It...
· 53 min 54 sec
In as early as 5000 BC the vast and spectacular city of Uruk - replete with towering walls, glistening temples and complex irrigation systems - lay sprawled across the face of Southern Mesopotamia. No...
· 52 min 53 sec