Category Archives: Podcasts 2023

The Rest is History Episode 411 The Man in the Iron Mask Have I ever read this? I don’t think I have, although I knew roughly what it was about. I always assumed that it was fiction, but there was in fact a real d’Artagnan and a real Saint-Mars and indeed a real man in the iron mask (although it may have been black velvet, rather than iron which rather changes the scenario somewhat). Tom and Dominic go through several scenarios. Several theories about the identity of the man in the iron mask were prompted by the fact that Louis XIV was rather a miracle baby, born after years of infertility. Was it Louis XIV’s older brother, fathered by a commoner? Or the commoner father himself? Or his identical twin brother born a few hours after Louis (which is often the case with twins), given that according to the beliefs of the time, the second twin born was actually the first conceived? Or was it a political prisoner, who knew too much? A valet for a famous man who knew things that he shouldn’t? Tom and Dominic seem to plump for the latter.

Unraveled (ABC) Firebomb I’ve been listening to this seven episode podcast for some time. It features actor Crispian Chan, who teamed up with investigative reporter Alex Manne to go back to investigate the fire-bombing of Crispian’s family’s Chinese restaurant in 1980s Perth. It was part of a neo-Nazi vigilante movement at the time, although it took the police some time to realize that. The two investigators catch up with men who were involved in neo-Nazi activities in the 1980s, then go in search of the ‘mastermind’ himself, before turning their attention to the rise of neo-Nazis in Australian politics today. This is all terribly drawn-out and could have been encapsulated in two or three episodes, and becomes rather too touchy-feely for me at the end.

The Daily (New York Times) The Mother Who Changed: A Story of Dementia I have dementia in my family history, and I’m frightened by it. This is a fantastic podcast about two middle-aged daughters and their mother with dementia, and the court battle that ensued after their wealthy widowed mother embarked on a most-unexpected relationship with one of the daughter’s former father-in-law, a three-times divorced man with few financial resources. It raises lots of questions about whether loved ones have a responsibility to the pre-dementia person of the past, and the wishes they expressed then, or the happiness of the person who is sitting in front of them now, who may be quite a different person. Really interesting.

Expanding Eyes Episode 96: Shakespeare’s A Midsummers Nights Dream Act One We’re going to see this at the Botanic Gardens on Friday, so I thought I’d listen to Michael Dolzani’s series on A Midsummers Nights Dream. I have seen it before but to be honest, I thought it was a bit silly, so I thought it would be good to listen to a commentary on it first. So far Dolzani hasn’t disappointed. AMSD (my abbreviation) is one of a series of plays written by Shakespeare after the theatres re-opened after the Plague – resonances of COVID!- and it marks a change in Shakespeare’s use of rhyme and run-on in his narrative. Thematically, it is seen as a ‘festive play’ linked thematically with Romeo and Juliet and Richard II. It has four interlinked sub-plots, three of which represent social class distinctions: the ruling class (Theseus and Hippolyta), the well-born elite (the lovers), the working class (the “rude mechanicals”) and the fairies, and these story-lines play out contrapuntally. In this episode he deals with the first two. He points out that Shakespeare gives very rudimentary stage directions and little information about appearance, which is why Shakespeare’s plays can be reinterpreted so freely. The first grouping (Theseus and Hippolyta) is taken from Greek mythology which is a bit anachronistic. Hippolyta is an Amazon woman, taken by Theseus in victory (shades of the Iliad?) and they are about to marry in four days time. The second grouping, still upper class, sees the father Egius insist that his daughter Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, marry Demetrius, whom he has arranged for her to marry. Hermia and Lysander, star-crossed lovers- arrange to run away together (shades of Romeo and Juliet) but Hermia’s best friend Helena is going to spill the beans to Demetrius.

Episode 97 Acts 1 and 2 continued goes on with the other two plotlines. The mechanicals plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen based on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a fore-runner to Romeo and Juliet in that they both die needlessly, thinking the others dead. In Ovid’s story the metamorphosis occurs when their blood stains the white mulberry flower red. Shakespeare is not at all politically correct in his portrayal of the mechanics, making them out as dullards and fools. The name ‘Bottom’, which always amused me as a child, actually refers to weaving. Finally, there is the Fairy realm, where Shakespeare draws on Celtic mythology as well as Greco/Roman mythology, making much of the moon (modern readers/viewers are prompted by the other meaning of ‘moon’ with Bottom). Oberon, king of the fairies, is fighting with his wife Titania, and he decides to pay her back by arranging for her to be victim of a magic potion from a flower called ‘love-in-idleness’ which turns from white to purple when struck by Cupid’s arrow (shades of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe). He finishes this episode by pointing out that AMND is often presented as a puff-piece- and I agree, this is how I have always seen it- but he’s certainly finding a lot of complexity in it.

Episode 98 The Green World AMND is one of Shakespeare’s “Green World” plays, which starts in a building, then goes outside into a forest, then returns inside with all the problems solved. This model was used in Two Gentlemen of Verona, in AMND, then in As you Like It and The Winters Tale. It continues to draw on Ovid’s Metamorpheses. Returning to the play itself, Oberon and Titania are fighting over a young boy. Oberon wants the boy to show his power, whereas Titania feels a sense of obligation to the boy’s mother, with whom she was friends. Puck – more strictly The Puck- is an English, rather than Irish character, and he plays the role of trickster.

History Hit What If Hitler Had Invaded Britain? As you know, I’m partial to a bit of counter-factual history, although this is more a discussion of Britain’s preparedness for a German invasion, featuring Andy Chatterton, author of Britain’s Secret Defences. Nine months after WWII started, Hitler was looking for an armistice, but Churchill was opposed to a truce so Hitler doubled down and planning started for Operation Sea Lion. This plan for a flotilla-based invasion was not put into place because of the power of the RAF. It was common knowledge that there were ‘auxiliary units’ on the coast, who were being trained to sabotage and resist any invasion, but they now know that they were throughout Britain, with their participants sworn to secrecy under the Secrets Act. Despite the fun made of “Dad’s Army”, these were actually trained saboteurs, with the details of their actions informed by the rapid fall of France and the Low Countries. They trained 16 year old suicide assassins, and respectable looking women as part of the resistance. I found myself thinking often of 16 year olds in Palestine….

History Extra Nicholas Winton: The ‘British Schindler’. I recently saw the film ‘One Life’, and this interview is with Edward Abel Smith, the author of The British Oskar Schindler: The Life and Work of Nicholas Winton (a title which the author admits Winston would have hated). He said that he was pleased to see that the film acknowledged Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick who worked alongside Winton. Smith points out that, unlike the Kindertransport (which this was not part of), Winton’s attention was on all children, not just Jewish children. He had a list of 5000 children, and managed to bring out 600, which he viewed as a failure. Once war began, he was a conscientious objector and worked as an ambulance driver. However, he later joined the RAF where he worked as a trainer because of his poor eyesight, and after the work worked on recouping reparations for the Jewish community from the extracted gold teeth- a pretty gruelling job. In the television show that features in the film (it was actually two separate episodes), many of the ‘children’ themselves did not know how or who had saved them.

Not Just the Tudors. As I’m going to see A Midsummer’s Night Dream this coming weekend, I was interested in Transgender Fairies in Early Modern Literature. Dr. Ezra Horbury, lecturer in Renaissance literature at the University of York, talks about the transformation at the end of the 16th century and early 17th century where fairies were transformed from the rather scary threatening folklore creatures into something small, sweet and delicate. This, she argues, was because of the ‘literariness’ of plays for the theatre, which drew on the child actors to play the parts. She discusses the appropriateness of using the term ‘transgender’, suggesting that many historical terms like ‘medieval’ are just as anachronistic. Children were viewed as being of no gender until they were about 7, right through to the early 20th century. She talks about the slipperiness of gender in fairies, and the misogyny and misanthropy in depictions of witches and old people. Much of this podcast went past me, because I was not familiar with the stories she was describing.

History Extra Weimar Germany: everything you wanted to know. I must confess that most of what I know about Weimar Germany is from ‘Cabaret’ and Christopher Isherwood’s books. In fact, I wasn’t even sure why it was called ‘Weimar’ until I learned from this podcast that it was named after the town where where the treaty establishing the government was signed. Its early years were marked by hyperinflation, different political factions and several coup attempts, including one in which Hitler was involved. Things stabilized economically a bit with the Dawes Plan whereby US loans were offered to the republic, but it was still politically volatile with 20 different coalitions, 12 chancellors and eight elections in quick succession. Hitler could quite rightly claim that he couldn’t be any worse than some of the later chancellors. The system of proportional representation meant that radicals could be elected. The Social Democrats did try to stop the Nazis, but President Hindenberg didn’t act even though he opposed their ideas. The army hid behind the Freikcorps, a para-military group similar to the Wagner group in Russia today. The fall of Wall Street had nothing to do with the fall of the Weimar Republic- Hitler didn’t even mention Wall Street at the time. The much-vaunted culture of the Weimar Republic only really existed in Berlin, and by the time it fell, people had generally turned against the Weimar Republic.

I went to see the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ and was interested to know how much of it was factual. Quite a bit, it seems, from this episode Oppenheimer: Destroyer of Worlds. It is an interview with Kai Bird, who along with Martin Sherwin, wrote American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, on which the film was based. The book took 19 years to write. The interview finishes with Bird observing how politicians seek certainty from scientists, and often turn on them when the scientists demur- observe Trump and Fauci over COVID.

The Rest is History The Fall of the Aztecs: The Adventure Begins Dominic Sandbrook (one of the two presenters of this very popular podcast) has just released a children’s book about the fall of the Aztecs, and from the introductory reading, it sounds pretty good. I’ve read and listened to a fair bit about the fall of the Aztecs, but this is well worth listening to. As he points out, when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was the closest thing that we have to meeting aliens. The stories that the Spanish (as the conquerors) tell about it are shaped in the tradition of Alexander the Great, but perhaps they were lying or just misunderstood what they were witnessing. Cortez grew up in Spain during the reconquest of Granada. His family wanted him to be a notary but he travelled to Hispaniola, where Spanish colonization was already underway. Like many other colonists who went ‘island hopping’, he went to Cuba. Cortez was not the first to go to Mexico but when Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, found out that there was gold there (particularly prized because it was portable and divisible), he wanted a functionary who would do what he was told, so he sent Cortez. Big mistake.

London Review of Books The Infected Blood Scandal based on a LRB article by Florence Sutcliffe- Braithewaite. In the 1970s and 80s, thousands of hemophiliacs were infected with HIV and Hep C. from infected blood products. At this time, British doctors already knew that blood could transfer hepatitis, although all the government papers about imported blood products between 1970 and 1990 were (conveniently?) pulped. There was particular concern about blood coming from the United States where private companies sourced donations from prisons (large numbers of former/current drug users) or paid people for their blood. However, new innovations in treating hemophilia at home meant that doctors overlooked or downplayed these threats. After this interview, there is a segment with Tom Crewe, who wrote a 2018 article ‘Here was a plague’ about the AIDS crisis and the perceived difference between ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ victims.

Background Briefing (ABC) has a series on Whistleblowers at the moment, which is pertinent given the David McBride case underway recently. The Whistleblower who helped catch a paedophile politician is about an electorate officer who became aware of several complaints about the Labor politician that she worked for in the early 2000s. It took more than one complaint before she decided to act. Once she did, she lost her job and was reviled by party members even though the politician was jailed for 10 years. The Whistleblower who captured the nation — and the man who unmasked her as a fraud deals with the convoluted and deeply political case of Kathy Jackson, who was embraced by the conservative party as a whistleblower against key members of the Health Services Union, until her successor blew the whistle on her own financial misappropriation.

Expanding Eyes Still continuing on with Homer’s Iliad- I’ve now finished Book 8. Episode 49: The Complex and Enigmatic Characterization of Paris, the character of Big Ajax in Book 7 and duelling. In the previous episode, he looked at Hector and Andromache, and in this one he looks at the contrasting couple, Paris and Helen. Paris is sitting there, polishing his armour, and Helen bemoans that she had ever been born, and that Paris will always be useless. Is she blaming the Gods, or is there an element of truth in this? Book 7 is puzzling: Hector is pumped, challenging any takers- including Big and Little Ajax. But it’s another inconclusive hand-to-hand combat. But, despite all the bloodshed that his actions have caused, Paris still refuses to hand Helen back.

The Emperors of Rome. Episode CVII Sallust I’d never heard of Sallust, but apparently he was a historian who wrote about specific events, rather than the big broad-scale narrative histories that were popular. He followed the traditional political path, but he wasn’t very successful as a politician. He was seen as one of Caesar’s allies, and was made Governor of an African province, but he was charged with malpractice- which was quite common (both the malpractice, and the courtcases brought by political enemies). Caesar intervened, but Sallust’s political career was over, so decided to become a writer. He wrote about the Cataline conspiracy, which had occurred about 25 years earlier. Why? He saw it as a sign of the division in society and although some his chronology is a bit dodgy, it is generally considered to be well-written. His second book was about the Punic war which occurred in 110 BCE, before he was alive. His third work was only fragments. An interesting idea that it is an ancient source for us, but he was writing about his relatively recent past.

Democracy Sausage. This podcast is presented by ex-Age journalist Mark Kenny, now up at ANU. Responsibilities to Protect is fantastic. Ben Saul has recently been appointed as UN rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, and here he talks about the legalities of the Israel/Gaza situation. It seems strange that ‘legal war’ is hemmed in by so many distinctions. This is really, really good.

99% Invisible. This program sometimes features episodes from other podcasts, and that’s what they’ve done here, picking up our very own Marc Fennell’s podcast Stuff The British Stole which is a joint ABC and CBC Canada production, apparently. The Fever Tree Hunt is a bit different from other episodes in that it’s not an artefact or artwork this time, instead it’s the seeds of the Andean cinchona tree. At this time, imperial expansion into tropical areas by the British, Dutch and French empires saw huge swathes of colonists felled by malaria. Despite the Peruvians’ best attempts to stop theft of the tree and its seeds, the European empires were all after it once it became known that its bark was a cure for malaria. In the end, the Dutch got it (although the British had a red-hot go, claiming they were seeking it for ‘botanical research’) and they cornered the market. Ironically, establishing huge plantations has changed the DNA of the plant as the hardiest specimens were all harvested, and it’s not as potent as it used to be. To round out the episode, there is an interview between Marc Fennell and Roman Mars, the presenter of 99% Invisible.

The Ancients Of course, Gaza dominates the news at the moment. I have looked at the devastation of Gaza City and wondered if there were any archaeological or historical monuments or museums there, and whether they are standing. Origins of Gaza looks at its 3000 year history, when it was part of the interconnected Bronze Age world. It has always been a contested landscape, with a string of invasions by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and more. The sand dunes keep moving and uncovering new artefacts and structures- but who knows what there will be left by now.

The Real Story (BBC) Argentina at a Crossroads. I listened to this before Argentina held its run-off election which was won by El Loco, Javier Milei. What a disaster. But what a basket case, too. 40% of the Argentine population lives in poverty, facing 140% inflation, and Milei presented himself, and had the appeal of being an outsider. Over most of the second half of the last century, there was a populist Peronist consensus, even though it shifted shape over time and different parties were in power, sustained by electoral sweetners like pensions, no tax etc. At the moment, Argentina is facing a brain drain amongst its young people: who knows what is going to happen next.

In Our Time. I read Germinal at university, and loved it. One of these lifetimes, I will try to read more of the Rougon-Macquart cycle of books (Lisa at ANZ Litlovers has done so and co-hosted a blog about it). But in the meantime, I listened to Melvyn Bragg (how old is he??) talking with Susan Harrow (Ashley Watkins Chair of French at the University of Bristol) Kate Griffiths (Professor in French and Translation at Cardiff University) and Edmund Birch (Lecturer in French Literature and Director of Studies at Churchill College & Selwyn College, University of Cambridge) on Germinal. Zola began his cycle in 1868, planning to write 10 novels which he saw as a form of documentary on French life in the Second Empire. He worked for Hachette (I didn’t realize it was such an old publishing house), and as well as being personally familiar with the poverty he depicts in some of his novels, he did huge amounts of field research. He chose different aspects of society: banks, markets, mines, the urban poor. Germinal deals with mining and miner’s lives, and in this book in particular he displays a strong sense of the body in such a dehumanizing environment. There has been later debate about whether Zola was a revolutionary or a reactionary, with the guests leaning towards seeing him as a reformist. There have been film and television adaptations of Germinal, which all have different emphases and politics,often reflecting the politics of the time.

Emperors of Rome Episode XCV The First Triumvirate We call the pact between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus ‘the first Triumvirate’ but there was no formal context for such a thing. They were acting extra-constitutionally, drawing on the influence and authority of their armies and the support of senators to ‘go around’ the power of the senate. Julius Caesar had became consul in 59BCE and sidelined Bibulus, his co-consul, and instead formed a pact with Crassus and Pompey that they would support each other. However, Crassus died in Parthia, and lost the standards (something which brought great shame upon him). Meanwhile, Caesar’s daughter, whom he had married to Pompey, died in childbirth, severing the family connection with Pompey. By the late 50s BCE, there were street gangs, no-one wanted to be consul, and the Senate had been burned down. In 49BCE the Senate ordered Caesar to step down from his military command and come home from the Gallic Wars. Caesar defied their authority, and crossed the Rubicon with his army- that’s the significant thing. Episode XCVI Dictator of Rome saw the end of the triumvirate, but both Caesar and Pompey were looking for one-man rule and that THEY would be the one man. Civil war broke out. Pompey went to Egypt, where he was beheaded, but the Pompeyan resistance to Caesar continued. In 49 and 46 BCE Caesar was appointed Dictator by the people (that’s important). In 45 BCE he was made permanent dictator -which was getting a bit close to being a king. The assassination of Caesar can be seen as a triumph for republicanism, but it only triggered another bout of civil war, this time with Mark Anthony and Octavian against the assassins. Caesar was deified (which was very unusual at the time) and in 27BCE, having defeated Mark Anthony, Octavian changed his name to Augustus as princeps and was given tributarian power. In Rhiannon Evan’s opinion, all of this was extra-constitutional, but that was largely because the political system itself led to blockages so that natural change could not occur.

Expanding Eyes I’m up to Books 5 and 6 in the Iliad. My god, there is a lot of fighting in the Iliad. However Episode 48: Diomedes, the Noble Alternative to Achilles. Hector with his wife Andromache and their son Astynanax looks at the human scenes in these books, starting with Hector, and we finally see some love instead of just war. Michael Dolzani gives a bit of background on the writing of the Iliad. Originally an oral text, it was probably written down during the time of Alexander the Great. There were 14 books in the original, although who knows why they are divided up in the way they are.

The Rest is History. 352. Amsterdam: Kings, Canals and Coffee Houses is the second part of Tom and Dominic’s Amsterdam podcast, and yes, they’re still dragging around that Wise credit card, spruiking it at every occasion. They start by revising the first episode, pointing out the paradox that Amsterdam citizens were obsessed with privacy and domesticity and inward-looking, but also that they looked outwards to commercial expansion. They start at the elite Herengract canal, one of the three canals constructed during the expansion of the city in the 17th century. They then move to the huge Royal Palace, which was originally built as the City Hall. The Netherlands were a republic, but they brought back descendants of the House of Orange as their Stadtholder, and when William III of Orange took over power in Britain, it was the merging of two huge commercial cities, London and Amsterdam. During the French Revolution, Dutch republicans welcomed the French until 1806 when Napoleon installed his son onto the throne, and the City Hall was transformed into the Royal Palace. The King returned after the fall of Napoleon, but the building remained the Royal Palace.

They then stop off at the Portuguese Synagogue, built in 1675. Just as Amsterdam turned a blind eye to the Protestants, so too with Jewish emigrants, many of whom came from the Iberian peninsula when the Inquisition started up. By the 1930s, 50% of the Amsterdam population was Jewish. In February 1941 Amsterdam staged the only public protest against the Nazis, when the unions protested both against forced migration to work in German factories, but also the treatment of the Jews. The Jews in the Netherlands had the lowest survival rate in Europe. Although France and Belgium were liberated, it took until 1944 for Holland to shake off Nazism, and 1944 became the Hungry Winter. Their final stop is the Sex Palace in the Red Light district, and although this might seem incongruous, they argue that this is both a reaction against Nazism as well as another manifestation of the blind-eye liberalism that had accommodated Protestants and Jews in the past. But they suggest that this hyper-liberalism has been pushed to its limits with anxiety about drugs, antisocial Hens Night behaviour and Islamic extremism.

The Guardian Podcast Today in Focus. Although the podcasts I received through the Guardian are usually Australian, this episode from 23 October took up a program from the UK Guardian called How a contested history feeds the Israel-Palestine conflict. Although it could have started anywhere in antiquity, this episode starts with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which supported a national homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people. During WWII there was an increase of Jewish immigration to Mandate Palestine, and following the war, Britain handed Palestine over to the United Nations. 56% of Palestine was to go to the future Jewish state, while the Palestinian majority, 66%, were to receive 44% of the territory. But the creation of Israel was contested from the start, with the UN vote recording 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions. War instantly followed the declaration of Independence, and Israel won increasing their borders even further by declaring nearly 78% of Palestine as Jewish, and expelling 700,000 Arabs out of Jewish areas in the Nakba. With the rise of Arafat and the PLO, the world (and they themselves) came to think of them as Palestinian rather than ‘displaced Arabs’. The Six Day War in 1967 was a huge victory for Israel, although Israel was nearly defeated (at first) during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 after which right wing parties took power. The first Intifada during 1987-1993 was violently suppressed. The Oslo Accords did not mention a separate Palestinian state, and they were rejected by a majority of the Palestinian population, and far-right Israelis. They were followed by a second Intifada during 2000-2005. By now there were three types of Palestinians: those who lived in the West Bank; those who lived in Gaza; and those who lived in Israel but did not have the vote.

The Guardian Audio Long Read Justice for Neanderthals! What the debate about our long-dead cousins reveals about us. I have lost track of how many types of human beings there are now- half a dozen and growing. Out of the various types of hominin, Neanderthals were the dominant type between about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago (which is an incredible thought now that 65,000 years of indigenous habitation in Australia seems to be the accepted number.) The first bones were discovered in 1856 and they were named ‘Neanderthal’ in 1863 (‘neander’ was Greek for ‘new man’ ‘thal’ for ‘valley’) . They were commonly represented as slouching but in 2016 the evolutionary biologist Clive Finlayson commissioned forensic artists Kennis and Kennis to create ‘Flint’ and ‘Nana’ which gave them a far more familiar human appearance. However, this podcast argues that archaeologists are making much of very little, with no new discoveries of bones since the 1970s, although from the archaeological evidence they have deduced that neanderthals walked erect, hunted big game and knew how to control fire. DNA has shown that 600,000 Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens had a common ancestor. There has been an explosion in recent publications emphasizing our common humanity, although is this merely projection? Are they like us or different? Does the question of ‘dignity’ which engages so many current Neanderthal-promoters reveal more about us than Neanderthals?

Expanding Eyes After listening to the podcast about Achilles, I decided that I should read The Iliad. I decided to listen to it. The second chapter nearly finished me off and I was listening to a clunky copy of a CD which required me to keep jumping from track to track. So I have settled for listening to You Tube readings of the Iliad, which although not as mellifluous as the CD, are easier listening. I found this podcast where Michael Dolzani, a retired university professor who studied under Northrop Frye, examines various classical and religious texts. He has a series on Homer’s Iliad. They’re good: it’s just like attending a lecture, complete with the rustling of his notes. Episode 44 (actually, there are two Episode 44s, but that’s a mistake) Ep 44: Introduction to Homer’s Iliad starts by talking about the discovery of Troy in present-day Hisarlik Turkey in 1871 by rich amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert, who owned a nearby farm. We don’t know anything about Homer himself (except perhaps a reference to himself as a blind bard?) and we don’t even know if there was a Trojan War, nevertheless Schliemann used Homer’s book to locate where he thought Troy might be. The Iliad was written in Homeric Greek, which is different from the Attic Greek which arose later. It was an oral poem in a society that did not use writing except for business, and it was a performance rather than a text. It was probably written between 750-700 BCE, a time of decline for Greece, which adds to its elegiac tone in looking back to Greece’s better times. Book 1 starts in the middle of the action, with Helen in Troy where she had been taken by Paris ten years earlier.

Episode 46 (there is no episode 45 because episode 44 appears twice) is called The Heroic Code of Honor and the Result of the Quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. The Iliad starts off with the word “Rage”, a contagion which spreads all the way to Mount Olympus. We start off with the crisis of a plague sent down by Apollo after nine years of fighting between the Trojans and the coaltion of forces for the Achaeans, led by Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. Dolzani distinguishes between a ‘shame culture’, where men are driven by the need for status in their peer group, and a ‘guilt culture’, like ours that is driven by individual conscience (although societies combine elements of both). Was Achilles a sook when he lost his war-trophy wife Briseis to Agamemnon, and then got his mother the goddess and sea nymph Thesis involved? Not really. But Thesis getting Zeus to agree to let the Trojans win to sooth Achilles’ hurt feelings but Zeus in a difficult position. Amongst the gods, his wife Hera hated the Trojans because Paris didn’t choose Hera in a beauty triumph and she gave her husband Zeus a hard time when he promised Thesis that he would let the Trojans defeat the Achaeans as payback to King Agamemnon for taking Achilles’ wife. So Zeus couldn’t really let the Trojans win but he could stretch it out and let the Achaeans suffer for a while. And this is why so much of the Iliad is taken up with fighting- something that would have meant much more to Herod’s listeners (many of whom liked hearing about the exploits of their ancestors) than it does to us.

The Rest is History Episode 369 The History Behind Hogwarts: Ancient Schools and Revolting Students looks at the history public (i.e. private) school in England. it’s ‘public’ because they are open to anyone who can pay, and this differentiates them from ‘private’ tuition at home, apparently. It’s a follow up from the earlier episode about Harry Potter. Originally public schools were conducted by charitable trusts. William of Wickham, himself the son of the peasants who ended up in the court of Edward III, started the first one. During 14th century they taught reading, writing and Latin and they were set up as cathedral schools. During the Black Death, when maybe 1/2 of the English population died, William of Wickham was worried that there were not going to be enough priests so he established New College, Oxford, and Winchester. These schools provided an ascetic, monastic environment. They were intended for poor, but clever, students but “special friends” of the school were accommodated as well (i.e. they paid). A century later Royal Patronage was extended to Our Ladye of Eton, and Merchant Taylors School, established in 1561 offered a more rounded education including sports. There were no few girls’ schools, and those that did exist were closed during the Reformation. By 1700s public schools were corrupt, violent and offered a poor quality of education. Drawing on a sense of Tory libertarianism, students rioted, killed animals, hazed newcomers and the system of fagging was a form of abuse. Many of the boys from this environment went on to be ‘Empire Men’ in positions of authority throughout the Empire – who knows what they took with them from their schooling. The episode draws a lot on David Turner’s book The Old Boys: The Decline and Rise of the Public School which sounds interesting (available online SLV).

History Extra: One Day in the British Empire. This new book sounds fantastic- it’s by Matthew Parker and it’s called One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink. He takes 29 September 1923, the day when Britain took over the Palestinian mandate, which made it the day on which the British Empire was the largest that it would ever be (things started to fall apart pretty soon afterwards). He takes the British Empire as a whole, and by consulting newspapers, Colonial Office correspondence received and sent on that day, and novels from right across the empire, he illustrates the diversity and complexity of Empire. What a brilliant idea- I hope that he executed it well. (And I might just have to read it to find out if he did).

BBC Global News Podcast. This is my go-to listening when I wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t usually include it here because the podcast is, as you might expect, too topical and by the time I post this summary, things have moved on. But they had an excellent segment called Gaza Special: Your Questions Answered and it is well worth listening to, even if it’s not the middle of the night.