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“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
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown…”Henry IV has been portrayed as both a shadowy, obscure figure, and a strong king who was loved by his people. Prior to ascending the throne, Henry, the son of...
· 1 hr 6 min 8 sec
The unexpected evolution of Italian food can serve as a tantalising doorway into some of the greatest moments of Italian history: from medieval monarchs, murdered popes, and the Renaissance, to secret...
· 48 min 33 sec
In Sussex, in 1912, men quarrying in a gravel pit near Piltdown village turned up a human skull. According to Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archeologist with a remarkable track record for findi...
· 52 min 21 sec
Twelve months after the dramatic Women’s March on Versailles, the Revolution proper was well into its stride, and while Paris overflowed with a sense of unbridled political freedom, the King and Queen...
· 1 hr 6 min 52 sec
By the summer of 1789 the different sections of the Revolution were at loggerheads, and the recently created National Assembly riven in two. Both factions, the radicals on the left and the more modera...
· 1 hr 37 sec
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité!”Alongside violence, the French Revolution is a story of principles and values. It is the ultimate intersection of brutality and Enlightenment idealism, as epitomised by...
· 1 hr 42 sec
“It was violence that made the revolution revolutionary”.The storming of the Bastille is viewed by many across the world as a moment of celebration, when the French people were liberated from the shac...
· 1 hr 1 min 24 sec
In the summer of 1788, a monstrous storm swept across France, wiping out the crucial wheat harvest. With the nation already in the throes of political and financial calamity, this meteorological disas...
· 1 hr 10 min 10 sec
With seismic antecedents such as the Glorious Revolution in England and the American War of Independence, what was it about the French Revolution that saw it become arguably the most important episode...
· 1 hr 2 min 21 sec
In August 1785 a shocking affair came to light which would prove so detrimental to the reputation and standing of the French King Louis XVI, and more especially his already unpopular wife, Queen Marie...
· 53 min 58 sec
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