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The French Revolution is one of the great seismic events of global history. A devouring conflagration of bloodshed, violence and utopianism, it changed France and then latterly the whole of Europe for...
· 57 min 51 sec
“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”In the early days of August 1914, the British press has become increasingly vocal about the prospect of war br...
· 1 hr 9 min 52 sec
“We have been forced to draw the sword”.Following the expiry of Austria’s Ultimatum on Saturday 25th July 1914, the Kaiser and the Tsar - friends and cousins, long desirous of peace between their two...
· 57 min 29 sec
On the 24th of July 1914, in London, the Liberal British Cabinet met to hear the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, read them the Ultimatum handed to Serbia by the Austro-Hungarian Empire the day bef...
· 55 min 45 sec
On the 20th of July 1914 the heads of state of two great European powers - France and Russia - met in St Petersburg. Little did they know, though they may have suspected, that the Austrians were simul...
· 54 min 40 sec
In the wake of the cataclysmic assassination of Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June 1914, in Austria, the long percolating question of what to do about Serbia, reached a climax. At last, they had been...
· 47 min 8 sec
By the end of July 1914, the world hovered on the edge of a cataclysmic world war; Austria was at war with Serbia, Russia with Germany, and an ultimatum had been handed to Belgium. The July crisis had...
· 50 min 40 sec
Archduke Franz Ferdinand has arrived in Sarajevo for a military inspection, alongside his wife, Sophie, on the 28th of June 1914. Unbeknownst to them, six assassins, including Gavrilo Princip, line th...
· 1 hr 2 min 34 sec
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one of the most important men in the world. But he was a lonely man, not helped by the fact that, in spite of custom and tradition...
· 1 hr 2 sec
Gavrilo Princip, having been sent to school in Sarajevo, has become mixed up with the wrong crowd, and is now entangled in a secret Serbian nationalist organisation, the Black Hand. Hoping to be more...
· 57 min 1 sec
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to one of the world’s greatest empires, in June 1914, set in motion a series of events that would culminate in the First World War, where more than...
· 1 hr 6 min 45 sec
To coincide with the re-release of Dynasty in audiobook, now with Tom Holland himself narrating, we have the book’s introduction for you to enjoy. Dynasty, the sequel to Rubicon, is a dazzling portrai...
· 33 min 58 sec
From the turn of the 20th century, election campaigns - though still replete with politicians behaving badly - have evolved. They have become less mass-participation events or festivals, and receded,...
· 56 min 0 sec
"Good God I am shot! I shall die!"The colourful kaleidoscope of British elections from 1265 to their early 20th century incarnation, has seen some of the most critical, shocking, and downright farcica...
· 54 min 44 sec
The image of Saint George astride his horse, sword and spear in hand, slaying a dragon, is one of the most iconic iconographical spectacles of all time. But what was the historical truth of this deepl...
· 52 min 7 sec
"When dragons flew to war… everything burned. I do not wish to rule over a kingdom of ash and bone."Dragons - the most compelling of mythical beasts - are one of the most vivid creations of all human...
· 54 min 16 sec
To coincide with the re-release of Rubicon in audiobook, now with Tom Holland himself narrating it, we have the book’s introduction for you to enjoy.Rubicon is a story of incomparable drama. This was...
· 25 min 31 sec
In 972AD a princess of the Byzantine Empire was sent by her uncle, the Roman emperor in Constantinople, to marry the son of Otto the Great - Emperor of the Latin West. A tantalising and formidable fig...
· 55 min 26 sec
"His clothes seemed to melt into each other with the perfection of their cut and the quiet harmony of their colour. Without a single point of emphasis, everything was distinguished"The suit has long s...
· 1 hr 34 sec
In 1870 the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann - a man of remarkable energy, desperately fascinated with Helen of Troy - discovered in Turkey the burnt remains of what he claimed to be the legen...
· 51 min 4 sec