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Reflections on Day One of Chalke Hist Fest
Our new Books Editor reflects on his first visit to Chalke
Chalke Hist Fest - Monday Driving through Fovant and past the Badges, we were all set for a sunny if gusty day. The roads seemed unusually busy for mid-afternoon in the Wiltshire villages. Quickly setting up tent on the flat top of the chalk down, the immaculate PVC...
CHF 2025: Day 1
A sunny start to the world’s greatest history festival.
CHF 2025: Day 1 Whoever gets first billing at Chalke sets the tone for the week-long festival. Last year it was Giles Milton and Stalin (Russia must have been top of mind in 2024 for some reason!). This year it was the English Civil War. In REVOLUTION &...
Episode 224
How Kublai Khan made China the first Maritime Superpower
China is a great and longstanding empire. Now acclaimed historian and author of Emperor of the Seas describes Kublai Khan and the part he played in its maritime mastery.
How Kublai Khan made China the first Maritime Superpower Two dominant impressions came to mind when I began to write a book on Kublai Khan. One was the opium-inspired poem Kubla by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describing the Mongol emperors summer capital of Xanadu. The...
Mary, Queen of Letters
A new book examines Mary Stuart’s encrypted documents and here the author writes about letters and their use by Mary during captivity.
Mary, Queen of Scots has traditionally been perceived as a queen who let her emotions overcome her reason, as someone who let her heart rule her head. It’s a dismissive attitude that is often used to compare her, unfavourably, to Queen Elizabeth I, who is seen instead...
AoH Book Club: Roger Moorhouse on Killing Hitler
With the 80th anniversary of the July Plot having recently taken place, Roger Moorhouse returns to discuss his book, Killing Hitler, an account of the plots to kill the Nazi leader. He met with our editor to talk Georg Elser and Claus von Stauffenberg.
AoH Book Club: Roger Moorhouse on Killing Hitler How many plots were there against Hitler? A book came out a long time ago that talked about 42 plots against Hitler. That book didn't even include some of the ones that I talked about. I talk about 15. They vary in...
Ghosts of the English Civil War
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms have percolated into ghost stories, as the author of an innovative new book argues.
Ghosts of the English Civil War Open the pages of almost any anthology of English ghost stories and, sooner rather than later, you will encounter the figure of a grim-faced Roundhead, a forlorn Cavalier or a pretty maid ravished by some rambling soldier, or...
The Tunnel Under the Channel
Delays and cancellations are a common feature for rail travellers in Britain. But today’s delays are nothing compared with the delays in creating a railway under the Channel to connect Britain with the Continent of Europe - a process that took more than 200 years.
The tunnel under the English Channel - the seaway the French call La Manche - was ready for its first trains when a Frenchman looked set to derail the whole enterprise. Florent Longuepee, a right-wing Paris city councillor, wrote to the British government requesting...
Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, by Alice Loxton
In this wonderfully entertaining book, written with assured flair, historian Alice Loxton takes the age of eighteen as a unifying theme for telling the story of Britain.
Views on age and life’s milestones have changed over time. In the last century average life expectancy exceeded what we would call middle age for the first time and in the process changed perspectives. Empress Matilda, one of the subjects of Eighteen, married Henry V...