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The greatest sea explorer of all time, James Cook was born to a humble Yorkshire family, and first stood out for his talents as a cartographer for the Royal Navy in Newfoundland. He would go on to lea...
· 52 min 11 sec
The setting for so many of the Arabian Nights, like the stories of Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, or Aladdin, Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age had a shimmering image, a dimens...
· 51 min 6 sec
Baghdad was a place of fabulous sophistication and teeming multitudes, where terrible things could happen, but great wonders could also be found… During the Islamic Golden Age, it was the most global...
· 53 min 13 sec
“No city in the world will ever rival it for prosperity...“ Baghdad, originally a Christian village in Iraq, was chosen by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur as the site for the new capital of his empire, a...
· 47 min 4 sec
A story of great myth and of huge historical significance, the foundation of Baghdad is a fundamental episode in the development of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate, the first great Islamic empire, stretc...
· 53 min 3 sec
The Mitfords were the most glamorous aristocrats on the London scene in the 1920s, with at their head Diana, the most beautiful woman in London, who would eventually marry Oswald Mosley. However, her...
· 55 min 22 sec
“You will never catch Sir Oswald admitting to anti-semitism - all he does is embody it!”Following the violent scenes at Kensington Olympia, the British fascist movement is in decline. Britain is swirl...
· 47 min 3 sec
The fascists in Britain have found a leader known across the country: the sinister yet complex Oswald Mosley. Following stints as an MP for both the Tories and Labour, Mosley, a veteran of the First W...
· 56 min 31 sec
The cultural roots of fascism swirled around Britain at the turn of the 20th century, as medieval nostalgia, an obsession with hygiene, anti-semitism, and concern for the environment grew in the wake...
· 56 min 20 sec
The U.S. have given up on ousting the socialist President Allende through democratic means, and shift to a more militaristic approach, in the form of General Pinochet. Once known as the ‘dull dog’, a...
· 52 min 34 sec
In the midst of the Cold War, the 1973 coup against the socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende, led by General Pinochet with the support of Richard Nixon, remains a seismic episode in Latin Amer...
· 46 min 29 sec
In anticipation of the U.S. release of PAX, here’s the book’s introduction for you to enjoy, read by its author, our very own Tom Holland…Available in the United States and Canada from 26th September;...
· 41 min 50 sec
“Are you not entertained?!” The emblem of Rome, the Colosseum was the unsettling but glamorous home of Roman violence, used for gladiatorial bouts, naval reenactments, and by the emperors to re-stage...
· 55 min 53 sec
“To be a boy at one of these schools was to be alternately tyrant and slave.”More gruesome even than the Battle of Hogwarts, 18th century British Public schools were hotbeds for violence and uproar, d...
· 57 min 17 sec
Eclectic traditions, obscure codes and cryptic ancient languages: the world of Harry Potter has captivated the imagination of children from all backgrounds for decades. A fantasy series inspired by a...
· 1 hr 4 min 20 sec
“Let us advance courageously, to change the backward condition of our country, and turn it into a modern and powerful socialist state!” Deng Xiaoping, a man purged by Mao and his followers twice befor...
· 58 min 38 sec
The father of sadism and a prophet of totalitarianism, the Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat and writer, an uncompromising and unashamed libertine with the eerie ability to corrupt those around...
· 58 min 17 sec
In a swirling world dominated by miniskirts, feather boas, posh photographers, youth culture, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, London has been transformed, and avant-garde “boutiques” have taken over are...
· 55 min 2 sec
The Sixties is one of the only moments in history when Britain could claim to be the epicentre of world fashion, and in this episode Tom and Dominic delve into this cultural boom, from the boxy, milit...
· 52 min 24 sec
“The mutual affection and harmony between the two had reached a degree never seen between a husband and wife…” The Taj Mahal, built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz...
· 48 min 52 sec