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During the "Ancien Regime", royal executioners held an unholy status, and would strike up fear in the crowds as they walked the streets of Paris. But with the Revolution, the role of executioners in s...
· 57 min 44 sec
“You have shaken off the yoke of your despots, but surely this was not to bend the knee before a foreign tyrant…”It’s January 1792, and one of the largest factions in revolutionary France, the Gironde...
· 1 hr 3 min 2 sec
Welcome to Season 2 of The French Revolution!Revolutionary fervour threatens to engulf the streets of Paris, as demonstrators have gathered on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the remova...
· 1 hr 5 min 5 sec
In the aftermath of Boudicca’s uprising, the Romans felt they could not withdraw from the British Isles. They sent their most competent fighters and leaders to suppress the indigenous Britons in the s...
· 1 hr 1 min 47 sec
“Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon by a woman...”Few figures have statues de...
· 56 min 23 sec
Viewed as an idiot by those around him, Claudius felt the need to prove himself. In the century since Caesar had invaded Britain, the mythology surrounding the island had taken hold in Roman imaginati...
· 58 min 52 sec
Julius Caesar saw the Britons as brutal savages. Yet the Romans romanticised their lack of civilisation, deeming them as untainted by Mediterranean luxury. In 55 BC, after sending scouts along the Ken...
· 50 min 48 sec
After lying in state in an open casket, Evita’s corpse is taken down to a secret laboratory in the basement. And as the Argentinian Victor Frankenstein, Dr Ara, busily embalms her body, her ghost cont...
· 57 min 22 sec
The workaholic mother of a nation, Evita’s health deteriorates and she faints at a public event. A self-proclaimed martyr, she seems to be willing to die for Perón and Perónism, and her supporters see...
· 47 min 56 sec
“There is only one man who can lead any worker’s regime.”Together, Eva and Colonel Perón built a political movement powered by operatic rhetoric. Perónism promised genuine benefits for the working cla...
· 50 min 4 sec
An admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, Colonel PerĂłn rose through the ranks during the 1943 military coup in Argentina. Following a disastrous earthquake in 1944, PerĂłn crossed paths with Eva at a fundra...
· 54 min 30 sec
“Don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is I never left you.” Few political figures have been both hailed as a saint and immortalised through an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The mythology of Evita Peró...
· 43 min 14 sec
It’s August 1944: the Liberation of Paris is underway, and France appears to slowly be extricating herself from Nazi control. But, on the French western shores, in Saint-Malo, the deafening sounds of...
· 1 hr 1 min 17 sec
“I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman, and beards are foreign and breed vermin. Also depend upon it, they will lead to filthy habits.”Europe has had a love-hate relationship with facial hai...
· 53 min 41 sec
What did Marcus Aurelius, Jesus, and Ragnar Lothbrok all have in common? Apart from their notorious and symbolic deaths, all three men boasted luscious beards. Throughout history, beards have posed qu...
· 48 min 2 sec
St Crispin’s day, 1415: Henry V stands victorious, after a tremendous defeat of the French forces at the Battle of Agincourt. He is just about to make a historic speech which will be retold by Shakesp...
· 57 min 6 sec
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”.The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 endures as perhaps the most totemic battle in the whole of English history. Thanks in part to Shakespeare’s masterful Henry...
· 56 min 10 sec
On the 11th of August 1415, King Henry V of England - an austere, pious, thoughtful and terrifying warlord in only his late-twenties - set sail for France. He embarked in the largest ship ever built o...
· 53 min 38 sec
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Once more, we'll close the wall up with our English dead […] And upon this charge, cry God for Harry, England and St. George!”Such was Henry V’s call to arms...
· 58 min 46 sec
The year is 1403, and the Usurper King, Henry IV, faces a seemingly insurmountable challenge to his rule. He has been brought the news that his old friend, Harry “Hotspur” Percy, has betrayed him, and...
· 59 min 9 sec