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The year is 1519. Hernán Cortés and his Spanish comrades have arrived in Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztecs, and have been welcomed by their Emperor Montezuma. But what is Montezuma planning...
· 46 min 24 sec
“Conquer or die! Conquer or die! Conquer or die!”Making a decision that will change the course of history, Hernán Cortés chooses to disobey his orders and head inland in search of the gold-rich empire...
· 50 min 50 sec
Hernán Cortés has set sail from Cuba, eager to find the truth behind the rumours of gold on the coast of Mexico. Ahead lies a world he can barely imagine - a land of pyramid temples, terrifying gods a...
· 54 min 52 sec
The meeting of the controversial Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and the formidable Emperor Montezuma in 1519 was one of the great hinge moments of world history, and the beginning of the end for t...
· 53 min 34 sec
Within the turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte stands out to his military superiors, first by defeating the British at Toulon, then by putting down a royalist mob in Paris when outnum...
· 53 min 52 sec
“I would plunge the avenging dagger, up to the hilt, in the breast of the tyrant!”Born in Corsica a year after the island was given to France by the Genoese, Napoleon Bonaparte grew up in a world of p...
· 48 min 20 sec
Cook has been sent by the Royal Navy to the Pacific to track the transit of Venus from Tahiti, but also with a second, secret mission: once he’s reached Tahiti, he will go on to search for the great s...
· 55 min 45 sec
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