Dan Snow’s History Hit The final episode of his Story of England series 5. Story of England: Modern Warfare opens not in England at all, but with the first day of the Somme, the bloodiest day in British military history. He reminds us of the tunnels under Dover Castle, excavated by Henry II and rebuilt after the Napoleonic Wars. The tunnels were the centre of operations for Dunkirk, which assembled with just 2 days notice, and post-war it was planned that the tunnels become the seat of government in the event of a nuclear attack. Wars are no longer a matter of mass mobilization (although Ukraine and Russia are putting the lie to that statement) but instead an issue of nuclear anxiety. A whole network of 1500 nuclear bunkers was built throughout England to house 3 government members each but it was closed down in 1991 with the end of the Cold War. The York Cold War Bunker was heritage listed by English Heritage, and is now open to the public. A rather depressing way to end what was a really good series.
History This Week The Tupperware Queen Who doesn’t have a piece of Tupperware in their cupboard? This podcast tells the story of Brownie Wise, a single mother from Michigan, who rose from selling Stanley cleaning products to one of the Vice Presidents of Tupperware. She was the woman who devised the idea of a party to sell the Wonderbowl, instead of stocking it on supermarket shelves, but her success fostered jealousy within the organization. When she held a frankly rather tacky Tupperware convention on her private island in Florida, a storm brought her undone and she has been expunged from the Tupperware corporate memory. Features Alison Clarke, design history professor at University of Applied Arts – Vienna and author of Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America; and Bob Kealing, author of Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Party Empire.
Strong Songs. I admit it, I am a sucker for Reaction Videos, and since seeing the documentary on John Farnham ‘Finding the Voice’, I’ve been drawn to Reaction Videos on both ‘The Voice’ and his version of ‘Help’. (You can see some of them here The Vocalyst on ‘Help‘ and That Singer Reactions on ‘You’re the Voice’) This episode of Strong Songs is different from other ones because Kirk Hamilton is actually live with Annabel Crabbe and Leigh Sales in a Chat 10 Looks 3 episode recorded at the Enmore Theatre on 17 June 2023. He starts off giving an analysis of ‘You’re the Voice’ in his usual style, looking at the construction and performance of the song, but then it just becomes a Chat10 etc. love fest.
Emperors of Rome Episode LXXXVIII – Severan Stories II continues with Dr Caillan Davenport presenting three scenes from Septimius Severus’ life. Act I – If you build it they will come looks at Septimius’ building projects. There had been a big fire at the end of Commodus’ reign, which cleared the way for lots of building, but he also restored the Pantheon and put his name on it (something that Hadrian had not done) and he built the first triumphal arch since Augustus. Act II – The superfluous senators of Septimius Severus looks at how he got rid of inconvenient people. Act III – I beg of no man looks at the rise of Bulla Felix, a Robin-Hood like character who terrorized Italy. By this time, Septimius was in his sixties, and he wanted to go out on a high. Episode LXXXIX – A Man the World Could Not Hold sees him heading over to Britain in early 208 CE but why? To toughen up his son? To pacify all of Britain? Envoys were sent from Britain to sue for peace, but he wasn’t interested in peace. Instead he wanted to pacify the Barbarians, who were depicted as marsh dwellers, naked, eating magic beans. He left his younger son Getta behind in Rome, and in 209 Septimius and his older son Antoninus went on campaign and defeated the Caledonians. There was tension between father and son, and when he died at York in 211 CE, there was a suggestion that perhaps Antoninus had hurried his death along. Septimius was known as a hard taskmaster, a strategic military innovator and the most successful of the Severin emperors. Episode XC – Herodes Atticus features Dr Estelle Strazdins, (Research Fellow, Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens). Herodes was an Athenian orator who, at a time of Roman interest in 4th and 5th century BCE Greece, was tutor to Marcus Aurelius and Verus and was famous as an orator in his own right. Matt Smith rather disrespectfully describes oratory as a form of rap battle or improv, but we can’t really know as we don’t have any of his speeches. Quite apart from his oratory, he was a philanthropist who gave a lot of buildings to Athens (most famously, the Odeon) but he lost a lot of support when he stiffed Athenians of a payment of one mina per head that had been part of a bequest. He ended up being brought before Marcus Aurelius, and rather unwisely stormed out of the court hearing. Luckily for him, Marcus asked the people of Athens to forgive him, which they did and they all lived happily ever after.
Rear Vision (ABC) I’m embarrassed to admit that I always get mixed up between the real country of Moldova, and the spoof Molvania by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch. But Moldova is for real, and is likely to become more important given the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Moldova and Transnistria—the uncomfortable bedfellows on Ukraine’s border explains why. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west, and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. It had aligned itself with Romania, but was taken by USSR in World War II. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it held its first elections in 1990 and became independent in 1991. Since then, there has been internal tension between Russian-oriented political parties, Nationalists and pro-European parties. Meanwhile, there’s also Transnistria, a self-proclaimed independent region, a part of Moldova that lies along its border with Ukraine. Russian troops are being hosted there. When the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out, there was a fear that Russia would create a land bridge through Ukraine to the pro-Russian Transnistria, but that hasn’t happened (yet).
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 