Category Archives: Podcasts 2026

The Rest is History Episode 645 The Fall of the Incas: Massacre in the Andes (Part 2) What happened when the Spanish conquistadors lead by Francisco Pizarro came face to face with the ruthless emperor of the Incan Empire, Atahualpa? How did the Incas treat their strange, pale, alien visitors with their horses? And, why did a brutal, bloody fight to the death break out between the two sides after the meeting? In 1532 Pizarro read the ‘Requirement’ which legally bound the Incas to submit to vassalage and established a municipality which made their conquest legal. Pizarro then headed off with 168 men, few of whom were trained soldiers, while the Incas were checking them out from a distance. Atahualpa thought that the Spanish could be useful in the Civil War with his brother. A meeting between Pizarro’s brother, de Soto and Atahualpa agreed to meet the following day. Atahualpa knew that the Spanish were outnumbered and the horses were of great interest to him. After delays, the meeting finally took place in a square. Atahualpa dropped a book (a bible?) and this was the prompt for a massacre which saw many dead and Atahualpa taken captive. There’s shades of Mexico here, and perhaps the historiography has confused Mexican and Inca conquest.

Foundling Episode 4 and 5 The Fallout. SPOILERS Despite her birth-mother warning Jess to consider the effect of her investigations on the later families created by her parents, Jess then searches for her father. She had done a DNA test with Ancestry, but had no success. She then went with a different company and tracked down her father’s family. (It just goes to show how the commodification of DNA testing means that you can’t get definitive results without subscribing to several services- just like streaming. And because it can identify you through your relatives, even if you haven’t submitted your own sample, there’s no escape). Jess encounters Lewis, her father, and his wife Debbie who was completely unaware of any extra-marital relationship between her husband and Jennifer, and their children. His wife is very upset, and so too is their psychologically-fragile daughter Chloe, when she finds out that Jennifer has been her mental health nurse. In best journalistic fashion the podcasters claim that they’re not making insinuations that the discovery had such a drastic effect on Chloe, but they are really.

From Our Own Correspondent (BBC) I love Foreign Correspondent reports, and this weekly program brings BBC correspondents from all over the world. In the episode of 25 April 2026 Kate Adie introduces dispatches from Pakistan, the Turkey-Iran border, Kenya, Ukraine, and Paraguay. Why was Pakistan chosen as the host of peace talks between the US and Iran? It’s a question some in Islamabad have been asking themselves – and has fired-up a sense of national pride. Caroline Davies has watched on as the country gets ready for another round of negotiations. When the war in Iran began, there was a sense of jubilation among some Iranians, who had long-dreamed of the regime falling. Now that seems like a distant reality, and the mood is changing. BBC Persian’s Omid Montazeri has been on the Turkey-Iran border, where he has found attitudes towards the war are shifting. This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, which remains the world’s worst nuclear accident. Jordan Dunbar visited the city of Slavutych in Northern Ukraine, which was purpose built to rehouse workers evacuated from the power plant city of Pripyat – and recounts his search for a DJ legend of the 1980s. In northern Kenya farmers and their families are suffering the effects of consecutive seasons of low rainfall. A new report estimates around 400,000 people are experiencing acute levels of hunger. Sammy Awami reports from Turkana, one of the worst affected areas. And the semi-arid lowlands of the Gran Chaco span an area of around 280 thousand miles across South America – more than half of that is in Argentina, a third in Paraguay and the remainder in Bolivia. It’s the region’s second-largest forest ecosystem after the Amazon – and is also home to a wide range of animal, bird and plant species – as Sara Wheeler discovered.

How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians Episode 4 The Balfour Declaration to the Arab Revolt. In the fourth of ten programmes exploring the origins and tracing the history of the Middle East conflict, presenter Jonny Dymond is joined by Gudrun Kraemer, Professor of Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin (a female voice at last!), author and historian James Barr and Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University. (No Simon Sebag Montefiore this time!) At the end of 1917 the British troops took Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, just 67 words long, expressed support for a Jewish ‘national home’- but not a State. It was largely designed to attract Jewish support for Britain’s war aims. Britain was promising land that it didn’t own to a people who didn’t live there and the majority of Arabs rejected it outright. There was a series of riots during the interwar years because of the purchase of land by Zionists and the influx of Jewish migrants which was changing the demography of Palestine. The Peel Commission report of 1937, held after the Arab Revolt, and its subsequent White Paper partitioned the northern part of Palestine for a Jewish state (first time Britain had been talking about a ‘state’) and limited the amount of Jewish immigration, and the rest of Palestine was to be annexed to Transjordan, another British mandate- an early form of ‘two-state solution’. ‘Independence’ was promised to the Palestinians in ten years, but it was not really independence. The Jewish population saw the White Paper as a betrayal, but Britain saw the quelling of the Arab Revolt as a way of moving more soldiers back to Europe where they were needed in the fight against Germany.

The Book Show In Episode 4: Hamnet:Love Grief and Motherhood Dominic and Tabby discussed Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and the film. I was surprised by how much Dominic enjoyed the book, which he gave a 9/10 (although he wasn’t so impressed with the film, to which he gave 6/10). Tabitha loved it too, giving the book 10/10 and 8.5/10 to the film. I was struck again, hearing them read extracts from the book, how beautifully written it is.

The Rest is History We were watching The Irish Civil War 3-part series on SBS before it disappeared, I realized that I hadn’t finished listening to the Rest is History series on the Irish Civil War. Episode 581 The Irish Civil War: The Killing of Michael Collins (Part 2) features historian and friend of the podcast Ronan McGreevy. The fighting in Four Courts lasted three days, culminating in the Public Record Office being blown up, thus destroying records going back centuries. The fight moved into the streets outside the GPO. There were more anti-Treaty supporters than Free-State supporters in the IRA, but the Free State had the support and the weaponry of the British government. At the June election in 1922 the anti-Treatys only got 20% of the votes. People just wanted peace. The National army began recruiting heavily, and the Irregulars (i.e. the anti-Treaty IRA) were beaten, so they decided to embark on a guerilla campaign. Collins travelled to Cork, his home county, and visited friends and his brother and spent some time at the pub. Returning back from the pub, they traversed the same route – something you never do in a guerilla war. Did it matter that Michael Collins was killed? He was young, and would have brought dynamism to the Free State. Now it turns nasty with tit-for-tat killings, the expulsion of Protestants, and the sacking of the Big Houses. The Irish Civil War only lasted 11 months and 1400 were killed- and was less damaging that the other civil wars in Europe at the time. It the end, it just petered out, but the IRA didn’t go away- as we know.

How Did We Get Here? (BBC) Israel and the Palestinians 1: From Earliest Times to the Romans This is a 10 part series presented by Jonny Dymond. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff University, and historian and author Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’. I was expecting rather more divergence between them, but they tended to agree. The first five books of the Old Testament were set in the Bronze Age around 3000 BCE. ‘The Land’ comprised Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, west of the River Jordan, up to Egypt. They were a People, rather than a Place, and there were other Semitic people there too. The first five books do contain history, but the history serves a theological purpose. By the time we reach the Iron Age, history and archaeology are coming together. King David ruled in 1000 BCE, but there is little archaelogical evidence of a huge temple. There were mixed tribes there, but there was no stark difference between the Jews and others. The Biblical texts talking about Yahweh having a wife were expunged. During Roman times, the right to rule over ‘the land’ was farmed out to client Kings e.g. Herod. In 66CE there was a Jewish riot, and Jerusalem was besieged. In 70CE Titus invaded and destroyed the temple and enslaved the Jewish people. The Siege of Masada in 72 and 73CE was the last gasp of the first Jewish-Roman wars. Now that there was no temple, the Torah became a type of portable temple, and by now they were ‘Jews’ rather ‘Judeans’ (i.e. a geographical identity). However, the early Christians escaped and the Christian community split into two streams, the first headed by James and dominated by Jesus’ family, and the second headed by Paul. In 130-135 CE there was another rebellion against Hadrian, and Judea was renamed Palestine.

Israel and the Palestinians 2: From the Muslim Conquest to the Nineteenth Century. This episode spans the 7th-19th centuries, with historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’, and Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University. By 7th century and the spread of Christendom , Jerusalem had become a pilgrimage site by Christian tourists. Early Islam turned to Jerusalem (in fact, during prayer they literally turned to Jerusalem rather than Mecca) and Muhammed was said to have ascended from the Temple Mount, but actually he never physically went there. Jerusalem fell to the Arabs in 638 and they were welcomed by both Jews and Christians as they brought relief from the taxation and oppression of the Byzantium rulers. There was no sense of contradiction in embracing the Arabs, because the Arabs did not attempt to suppress the Jewish or Christian religions. Meanwhile, back in Europe, in 1095 Pope Ruban believed that the Christian shrines were in danger. 100,000 men answered the call and although Muslims were the target, there was a massacre of ‘infidels’ including Jews. The Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 and killed everyone, but by this time there were only 12,000 crusaders. Saladin fought back and established rule over Greater Syria. The Jews always wanted to return to Zion, but they were in no position to do so because of persecution in Christian countries. In 1517 Selim the Grim conquered the Mamluk Sultanate. Originally Selim was going after the Persians, but then he changed direction and went for the Mamluks instead. There was no sense of ‘Palestine’ at the moment – clan, or city, or religious identity- but not a nation. The Ottomans saw Palestine as being part of Syria, and the ‘Holy Land’ contained Jews and different Christian sects. Suleiman the Magnificent specified that the Jews had to pray in a specified area, and this became the ‘Wall’.

Rear Vision (ABC) Pete Hegseth- war monger or true believer? (broadcast 28 March 2026) Almost as bad as seeing Donald Trump on the war is to see his Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth. I refuse to call him ‘Secretary of War’ because only Congress can change the name of a department. Hegseth was raised in Minnesota and attended Princeton university where he signed up for the Reserve Officers Training Corp. After graduating he worked briefly on Wall Street, before being deployed by the National Guard to Cuba, then Iraq. He was highly critical of the army and the ‘restrictions’ that were imposed on them in both deployments. He returned to New York, and feeling disoriented and lost, he began working with veterans’ organizations: Vets for Freedom and later Concerned Veterans for America, but in both positions there were reports of bullying, rorting and drunkenness. He then worked for Fox News. But then he found God and joined an extreme evangelical group the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches – I’m not sure which is worse really. The guests on this program include Dave Philipps, Military reporter for the New York Times; Jane Mayer, investigative journalist at The New Yorker Magazine; Missy Ryan, Staff Writer at The Atlantic covering national security, foreign policy and defence and Logan Davis, investigative journalist who grew up in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.

The Book Club Episode 2 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: Cloning, Free Will, and Soulmates I read this book many years ago, and absolutely loved it, and so too did Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett in this episode. They comment on Cathy’s flat narrative voice, and her not quite understanding her own story: a feature of many of Ishiguro’s other books. I’d forgotten that it is a story in three parts: their schooling at Hailsham, their post-schooling hiatus in the Cottages, a type of half-way house, and then their adulthood where they are either Carers or Donors. Dominic and Tabitha do not divulge the central heartbreak of the book until after the first break in the podcast, and they give plenty of warning that it is coming. Nonetheless, I’d avoid listening to this podcast until you’d read the book, even though they advertise their podcast as one where you can listen and then pretend that you’ve read the book. Dominic gives it a score of 10/10, while Tabitha gives it 9.

The Rest is History Episode 408 The Nazis in Power: Hitler’s Dream (Part 5) Tom Holland takes the running on this episode (mercifully, he doesn’t introduce it with a song) where he looks at Hitler’s ideology. Were the Nazis idealists? Were they even aware that they are the baddies? They embraced the concept of ‘true law’, a song in the blood of the Nordic race, encompassing the Greeks, Romans and Aryans – including the Indians and Chinese. They framed life in biological terms, with the need to ‘preserve the race’ in the face of collapse caused by miscegenation, especially with Jews. They were not religious: they were particularly critical of St Paul, and rejected the egalitarianism of Christianity. However, Tom warns, the language of ‘race’ was everywhere at this stage in US, Britain and France. There was a fear that Germany would disappear, hence the disapproval of homosexuality which did not produce children. As part of race hygiene, there was widespread compulsory and involuntary sterilization, and then later euthanasia, all presented as part of science and health. The churches began to distance themselves from the Nazis, but doctors and the medical profession remained on-side.

The Rest is Classified Episode 124 Kim Philby: Britain’s Most Notorious Traitor (Episode 4) This is the final in this series of episodes which look at the rise of Kim Philby- they’ll deal with the fall of Kim Philby in later episodes (I hope). 1944 and the end of the war was the most dangerous time on the tightrope for Philby, especially when people began defecting because they might have implicated him. Igor Gouzenko defected in Canada in 1945 and Konstantin Volkov threatened to defect in Istanbul, offering up a huge list of names in exchange for 50,000 pounds. Philby warned the Russians that Volkov was likely to defect, and Volkov was duly ‘disappeared’, tortured and executed. Philby married his long-term mistress Aileen and they went together to Istanbul, but she was desperately lonely and began self-harming. And of course, Philby embarked on yet another affair. By now the Cold War was starting, and there was a new UK policy of sending exiled dissident agents into Soviet area. Philby got his hands dirty by killing two young men who were about to be sent into Georgia and ironically ended up getting promoted to MI6 branch in Washington where he liaised with the CIA- all this “success” at only 37 years of age.

Unholy. Unholy is a podcast hosted by Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 12 and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian, so it has a strong Jewish emphasis. Why History Explains Everything Happening Right Now. You can see this as a YouTube video, but it’s actually just talking heads. He points out that Judaism as we know it today is a post-Temple concept. The Romans assumed that if you got rid of the cult temple, you’d get rid of the people- after all, it had worked with other peoples. But it didn’t work with the Jews because they had texts and so they were were able to reinvent themselves. He argues that you cannot deny a link between the Jews and Israel, but they are not ‘indigenous’ as such. However, the scriptures do link the Jews with specific lands, and there is nothing else comparable to this. In relation to Iran, in 538 BCE Cyrus saved the Jews, and Holland is impressed by the continuity that is now on the Iranian national stage which still retains its pre-Islam identity. He suggests that America is haunted by the rise/fall/decline trajectory of the Roman Empire, which they have chosen as a model. He then talks about the West and secularism, arguing that the West’s rise coincided with the withdrawal from religion by the elites e.g. the influence of Darwinism, and philosophers like Nietzsche. The notion of a secular/religious divide is a Western perspective, compared with Judaism and Islam where religion is seen as part of the polity.

Global Story (BBC) Are We Heading for World War III? An excellent interview with historian Margaret Macmillan, who has done a lot of work on wars and peace, particularly related to World War I. Drawing from history, she explains that wars are often influenced by emotions of leaders – pride, ego, fear etc. and sometimes they start by accident e.g. the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was surrounded by contingencies and ‘what ifs’. A war can spread quickly across continents because of treaties and agreements. In the context of the current US/Israeli/Iranian war, the economic effects will involve countries across the world, but she doubts that China will become involved in a military action. She notes that there is a problem of sunk costs- that once there has been loss of life, it is hard to stop fighting (I’m thinking here of Ukraine). She describes situations when war didn‘t happen- e.g. in the 1983 when Russia shot down Korean Airlines 007 by accident, and another situation where Russia thought that 1983 US-UK war games were the real thing. In this case, the protagonists picked up the phones and gave reassurance. She hopes that we haven’t already embarked on WWIII, although Ukraine thinks that it has. She reminds us that since 1945 there has been a war every year, and she reminds us that because we have become smug about peace, we have not spent enough money keeping our defences up. Really interesting.

The Rest is History Episode 407 The Nazis in Power: The Conquest of Austria (Part 4). From their website:

By 1937, Hitler’s ever-growing ambitions were driving Europe to the brink of war. Ever restless, he knew that Germany must conquer the world, or be destroyed. His first target was Austria, his homeland, whose annexation to Germany would unite German blood under one indomitable Reich. However, in an effort to avoid Nazi rule, the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, called a referendum on annexation, to show the Austrian people’s will against it. Hitler’s reaction was one of rage, and on the morning of Friday, the 11th of March, 1938, he sent an ultimatum to Vienna. At 5.30am the next day, the German army crossed into Austria. It was met by great cheering crowds, and Hitler’s arrival in Vienna was one of true apotheosis… Yet the darkness at the heart of Hitler’s European dream was also emerging, as the Nazis began to detain and repress Austrian minorities, particularly the Jewish population, on an unprecedented scale.

This episode starts with one of Tom’s musical “renditions”, this time of ‘Edelweiss’ from The Sound of Music, although as they point out at the end of the episode, the Von Trapps didn’t actually escape by climbing the Alps, but went to Italy by train, thanks largely to the fact to that they were rich and not Jewish. By now Hitler was animated by a sense of mission, and he saw 1943-5 as the window of action. However, the generals were less enthusiastic about Hitler’s plans for Austria and Czechoslovakia, uneasy about the recklessness of his action and their lack of preparation. But the top generals were sacked for various reasons, and replaced by yes-men. Hitler had attempted to foment a coup earlier in 1933, but he was warned off by Mussolini. But by 1937 Mussolini was more ambivalent, and so Hitler went into action. Hitler’s arrival in Austria was a very emotional occasion for him- we forget Hitler’s emotional, sentimental side- as it was his home country. We are reminded that Austria had always been anti-Semitic, and the round up of the Jews began very quickly.

Empire Episode 343 Lebanon: Hezbollah, Israel and Fifty Years as a Battleground. In this episode Lebanese historian and author of Black Wave, Kim Ghattas talks about the past fifty years of Lebanon’s history. She reminds us that, as a nation, Lebanon is only young, having been created in the breakup of the Ottoman empire after WWI. It was under the French mandate until 1943, and the decision was made to add Sunni and Shia populations within its borders. Lebanon has always looked to outside influences: the Sunnis looked to Saudi Arabia, the Shia to Iran and the Christians to France and the US. In 1982 the Maronite Christians invited Israel in, but Israel went much further than their supposed 40 km incursion. Arafat left and went into exile. Israel got a taste for expansion and developed a doctrine of Greater Israel, overturning the Sykes-Picot agreement, something that Iran was always going to oppose. And we’re seeing the fruits of this today.

The History of Iran: A Primer. This is actually a video, which can be seen on Youtube or here. You could just listen to it if you wanted to, but he has some diagrams to illustrate the various periods and dynasties He starts off by talking about periodization i.e. ancient Persia, then the Arab conquest around 630-40 leading to Islamic/Medieval Persia, then around 1800s with Western Influence in Modern Iran. He follows a string of different dynasties, some lasting centuries, other little more than two-generations. It is a little bit eye-glazing, but I learned a lot: like, for example, just how big that Mongol empire was. So, an interesting, rather pain-free 38-minute skate from 3200 BCE up to 1979 with the establishment of the Islamic Republic. I have no idea who ‘Premodernist’ is: he seems a bit shy about his name.

The Rest is History Episode 404 The Nazis in Power: The Night of the Long Knives (Part 1) I tend to think of the Nazis as all cut from that chiselled, resolute mould, but of course they had factions just like any other group. Ernst Röhm, streetfighter and flagrantly gay, headed the SA, or Stormtroopers which had 4.5 million (million!) paid up members. Röhm was from the faction calling for permanent revolution, and by 1934 he was suggesting that the SA should be the army. He was opposed by the police (who were generally Nazified too), the Army, the Old Order and Hitler’s own personal guards, the SS, who all wanted Hitler to bring everything into order, rather than embark on eternal revolution. Hitler was told (incorrectly) that Röhm and the SA were going to move against him on the one side, and that the Conservatives like Hindenberg and Von Papen were going to also move against him on the other side. So Hitler decided to get rid of all of his enemies at once, with the support of the Army, the police and the SS in the ‘night of the long knives’, which involved the arrests of SA members across Germany. In Berlin, Goering and Goebells went after the Old Conservatives. 85 were killed and Röhm was shot, declining the option of committing suicide. Hitler delivered a two-hour talk to the Reichstag, which passed retrospective enabling legislation to cover the killings. Hindenburg died, and the position of President of Germany was retired, leaving Hitler the only leader. The Army pledged an oath of loyalty to Hitler, and this was all tidied up with a referendum.

The Rest is Classified Episode 121 Kim Philby: Stalin’s Mole Inside MI6 (Ep.1) While listening to a podcast about the Spanish Civil War, all of a sudden Kim Philby’s name popped up. Who would have thought? Kim Philby has gone down in history as Britain’s most notorious double agent: spying for Stalin while running the MI6 counter-intelligence operation against him. His father was an Indian civil servant, and Kim was born in India and named after the Rudyard Kipling book, which ironically enough is about a spy. Young Kim was sent home to England during World War I while his father went to the Middle East where he became an Arabist for the rest of his life. Kim enrolled in history at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1929, then undertook economics. By then the Depression had taken hold, and there was a Labor government in England. Philby became a Marxist as an intellectual decision under the influence of Professor Dobbs. His handler was Arnold Deutsch, who recruited him to Soviet intelligence, although he was to have other handlers over his career.

Short History of… The London Underground (October 12 2025) When we travelled to London, we used the Underground a lot but as a result I had absolutely no idea of the layout of London at all. In the early years of the Underground’s operation, starting from 1863, there was an ongoing danger of ‘choke damp’, a toxic mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. At first there was a multiplicity of private lines, but by 1907 many of them were brought under the umbrella of the Underground Electric Railways . Company, which was financed by the American investor Charles Yerkes (how galling!) In 1933 the decision was made to merge all the lines and buses into ‘London Transport’. Some lines were extended and new stations were designed, influenced by European modernism. The famous Underground Map was designed using the metaphor of an electrical network rather than a geographical representation (hence my confusion when we emerged into the open air!) During WW2 there was resistance at first to the idea of using them as bomb shelters because it was feared that people would stay there, but public pressure saw them opened up, even though it was not always safe underground – although surely safer than at ground level. During the 1960s and 1970s there was more emphasis on cars and highways, and the Underground fell into disrepair, leading to accidents during the 1970s and the fire at Kings Cross station in 1987. In 2000 ‘London Transport’ was transformed into Transport for London (TfL). In 2012 there was the suicide bombing described in John Tulloch’s book One Day in July (my review here). During the London Olympics, most people travelled by Underground, and the Elizabeth Line was opened 160 years after the first services commenced. Pretty amazing really, given that Melbourne has only just opened its fourth Underground station early this year.

Journey Through Time Episode 66 The Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Picasso and the Nazis (Episode 5) As well as a laboratory for totalitarianism, the Spanish Civil War also acted as a proving ground for German military equipment. This was particularly true of the three-hour aerial bombing of the market town of Guernica, carpet bombing at first, followed by incendiary bombing, then strafing the citizens as they ran away – a new form of war that was intended to break the morale of the citizens. The Italians, on the other hand, used Spain as a way of showing their massed manpower to project strength. The Republicans sorely needed a victory, which they gained at Brunete and Teruel with huge casualties, but then they gave up the advantage almost immediately. By this time Stalin’s support of the International Brigade was declining, and Republican observers were beginning to warn of the dangers of Germany and tried to raise funds to bolster the Republican side. The Battle of Ebro was the longest one of the war and again, after initial success by the Republicans, it got bogged down and culminated in four months of futility. In 1938 the International Brigades were ordered out, in the hope that Germany and Italy would withdraw- a rather mad, forlorn hope.

The Book Club I’ve heard the Goalhanger The Book Club advertised on other Goalhanger production (e.g. The Rest is History, The Rest in Politics) but I can’t find it on Podbean. It is hosted by historian and author Dominic Sandbrook and his producer on The Rest Is History, Tabitha Syrett. The first episode is Wuthering Heights: Passion, Violence and Revenge in the Moors. They hadn’t seen the movie at that stage, so they stuck to the book. They point out the nested narrators: the new tenant Mr Lockwood interrogates Nelly, who had worked at Wuthering Heights thirty years earlier, and she is not necessarily a reliable narrator. Despite the visual imagery of the moors, much of the action takes place indoors. It was already historical when it was written, and violence permeates the whole book. The book has doubling throughout, and the repetition of names from one generation to another is very confusing. They give a score at the end. Dominic gives it 7/10 and Tabitha gives it 7.5/10.

Short History Of… I’m interested when an American or British podcast deigns to tackle an Australian topic. The Australian Gold Rush starts with Rev Clarke’s discovery of gold in Australia in 1841 and 1844, and Governor Gipps’ suppression of the news because as a convict society, they feared that ‘we shall all have our throats cut’. However in 1849, after the California gold rush and the cessation of transportation in most states, Gipps changed his mind and instituted an incentive scheme where 10,000 pounds would be awarded for the first discovery. Edward Hargreaves, along with his guide, John Lister, and the two Tom brothers found gold at Lewis Ponds Creek, but Edward Hargreaves took all the glory (and the money). Hargreaves was made a Crown Land Commissioner, and the prerogative of renaming the location which he called the Ophir goldfields. The episode has a lot of emphasis on the effect of the gold rush on First Nations people with the ruination of the environment and the introduction of disease (I think that the diseases had been long introduced before that). Emphasis is also placed on the Native Police as the first law enforcers on the gold fields, something I didn’t know. It then deals with the Gold Rushes in what became Victoria, and the later small gold rushes in the other states.

Witness History The Storming of Spain’s Parliament I don’t know whether it was because the attempted coup occurred on 23 February 1981or whether it was prompted by the death Putsch leader Antonio Tejero hours after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declassified files detailing the seizure of parliament in Madrid. It was the second attempt at a putsch by the civil guard, and 350 members of Parliament were held captive for 18 hours. Eventually King Juan Carlos talked them down, and condemned the coup (although since then there have been questions over when the King was himself involved). It was a vivid demonstration of the fragility of Spain’s democracy which was at that stage only six years old, and it coincided with a change of democratically elected government- obviously a dangerous time!

Short History Of…. The White House. Like many others, I’ve been transfixed with horror at Trump’s circle of adoration in the Oval Office and the increasing tide of gold tat that is encrusting the walls. But Trump is not the only President to make changes to the White House, with Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft constructing the East and West Wings and expanding the Oval Office, and Truman constructing the balcony. Under Jacqueline Kennedy, the White House was actually proclaimed a museum. The original Presidents Palace, based on Leinster House in Dublin, was built between 1792 and 1800, so the paint was barely dry by the time it was burnt and sacked by British troops in the War of 1812. It was a mixed- use building: both the President’s house and workplace. The White House originally had its own staff who worked only at the White House, but today Presidents tend to bring their own supposedly-loyal staff. George H. W. Bush was the most popular president amongst the traditional White House staff, supposedly because he was accustomed to having servants. Interesting… but it still doesn’t make me feel any better about Trump’s decorating taste. At least it can be taken down when he leaves, unlike the East Wing which no longer exists.

The Rest is History Episode 639 Revolution in Iran: Death in the Desert (Part 4) After mocking Jimmy Carter mercilessly over the previous three episodes, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland finally express some sympathy and grudging admiration for President Carter in this episode. After the release of the black and female hostages, there were 52 male hostages left in Iran, and after showing restraint for months, Carter became more hawkish and finally in April 1980 he imposed sanctions on Iran. Cyrus Vance was still urging diplomacy, but that same month Brzezinski (in Vance’s absence) gained Carter’s approval of a military rescue of the hostages. It all sounds very Christian: the commanders assembled in a hangar before taking off, where they prayed, read about the story of David and Goliath and sang ‘God Bless America’. (Sheesh). It was a disaster: there was a dust storm, they encountered civilian pilgrims, and the helicopters malfunctioned, leading them to pile into a smaller number of helicopters. The attempt was aborted. By now, the 1980 Presidential election was afoot, and Iran held out until Reagan’s inauguration, despite and to spite Carter’s obsession and hard work in trying to get the hostages home. And look where we are now, invading Iran again.

Journey Through Time Episode 65 The Spanish Civil War: Orwell V Stalin (ep. 4) The Republicans were not one united group. There were communists, supported by Russia on one side. On the other side were anarchists, who were not part of the International Brigade, who wanted revolution within Civil War. This is the side that Orwell chose, when he joined POUM (Workers Party of Marxist Unification). They began fighting against each other. The communists took over the Telephone Exchange, which was controlled by POUM, and after POUM was defeated, it was seen as the ‘enemy’ and ‘facists’ just as much as the Nationalists were. He was in real danger, and after he escaped he wrote ‘Homage to Catalonia’, which he had trouble getting published. Spain was by now a laboratory for Stalinist repression, as well as a laboratory for fascism.

The Rest is History Episode 638 Revolution in Iran: The Hostage Crisis (Part 3) On 4th November 1979 students broke into the US embassy and took 72 hostages in what they thought would be a short 3-day takeover. At the time Iran was governed by an interim government, but power was increasingly held in the hands of the mullahs, who feared that mooted reforms would undermine the revolution. This was not the first attempt that students had made on the embassy: Khomeini himself called off an earlier protest at the embassy a short while earlier. By now there were few US embassy staff left, and Ambassador Sullivan (who Carter never liked anyway) had been sacked and not replaced. Sullivan warned the US not to let the ailing Shah into the US, but he but he ended up being let in anyway after going first to Romania, then Egypt before dying on 27 July 1980. We need to remember that 1979 was only four years after the fall of Saigon, and the images from that were still strong in public memory. Six embassy staff were able to escape, and the others were split up and sent to separate prisons. They were held captive for 444 days. Khomeini’s initial response was to kick them out, but he later changed his mind when he saw the hostages’ symbolic value. The US thought that they could negotiate their release, but Khomeini and his government didn’t want to release them. Each side saw the other as Evil, with religious overtones of the Great Satan. By this time radical Islam had spread world wide, and there was a sense of Western failure. Carter was facing election and he needed to do something so on 22 March 1980 Carter unveiled his plan to rescue the hostages.

Journey Through Time Episode 64 The Spanish Civil War: A Nazi Training Ground (Episode 3) The Battle of Jarama, on 6-27 February 1937 was an attempt by Franco to dislodge the Republican fighters east of Madrid. The International Brigades, including the Lincoln Battalion, were sent in completely unprepared, with insufficient and mismatched ammunition, insufficient maps and poor communications and the battle was over in hours. Technically the Republicans won, but it was a huge psychological defeat for them. Both sides used the battle for propaganda purposes: the Republicans lauded the ‘noble sacrifice’ while the Nationalists reveled in the German expertise to which they had access and they denied the atrocities committed. The role of foreign correspondents was important: Hemingway supported the anti-Fascist loyalists and their sacrifice, and by this time Kim Philby had arrived and was embedded with Franco as a British journalist but was feeding intelligence to Moscow. The International Brigades rebuilt themselves, but now they had more political oversight. Despite being volunteers, deserters were executed because they were an army. By Spring 1937 there were two competing narratives: one that the International Brigade were being used as cannon fodder versus the idea that ordinary people could stop fascism.

The Rest is Classified Episode 102: Putin’s Secret Army: Criminals and Cannibals (Episode 5) By 2022 Russia was making its plans for Ukraine, and because it was framing it as a ‘special military operation’, Russia found itself having to turn to the Wagner mercenary forces again because they didn’t want to officially call up troops. At its peak, Wagner had 85000 troops in Ukraine, sourced by going to the prisons and offering a pardon to prisoners in exchange for 6 month’s fighting: a good deal if you were facing a long sentence. However, the Wagner troops were used as cannon fodder, or “meat waves” where they were used to exhaust the Ukrainian troops before the better-trained Russian troops came in. By this time, Prigozhin was no longer coy about identifying himself with Wagner or the Internet Research Agency. He had aligned himself with hypernationalists, and was pushing to have full mobilization of Russian Troops.

Episode 103: Putin’s Secret Army: The Coup That Almost Brought Down Russia (Episode 6) By now, Prigozhin’s Wagner group was not the only mercenary army fighting in Ukraine, and the Ministry of Defence (which had never liked him and wanted to distance itself from him) was happy about the competition and not having to rely so heavily on Prigozhin. At the Battle of Bakhmut, Prigozhin’s troops were being used as cannon fodder, perhaps deliberately by the Ministry of Defence. Prigozhin began producing videos criticizing the leadership for incompetence and lack of support. When the Ministry of Defence ordered all mercenary troops to be under the directives of the Ministry, Prigozhin marched back to Russia, calling for people to rise up and join him. They didn’t. The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko (an ally of Putin’s) talked him down, and suddenly it was over. Had the march on Russia been a coup or a negotiating tactic? Two months to the day after the march on Moscow, the jet in which Prigozhin and all his leadership group were travelling plunged to earth, with all on board to die. It was all over, although Prigozhin showed the brittleness of the Russian system, and was the most significant elite challenge to Putin’s power.