Christian Lamb has had a remarkable life. The daughter of an admiral, she served in the navy during the war and went on to become an expert in horticultural history. Dan visited her the day after her 100th birthday to learn about her wartime experiences.

Henry Hemming talks to Dan about the life of William Stevenson, a British operative who worked hard to pressure Roosevelt into declaring war on Nazi Germany, and ensuring that American troops were directed against German forces in mainland Europe. The tactics adopted were akin to those used today...

Dr Helen McCarthy, lecturer in modern British history at the University of Cambridge, joins Dan to discuss the complicated past of working motherhood. They consider how women have been excluded from the world of work as well as attempts to break into it, and how these developments have informed o...

Professor Frank McDonough has just written a monumental history of the Third Reich. He is a world leading expert on the domestic side of Hitler's Germany. In this podcast Dan asks Frank why and how Hitler was able to establish and sustain his rule within Germany.

Clare Balding is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist and author. She currently presents for BBC Sport, Channel 4, BT Sport and the religious/spiritual programme Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2.

Simon Hall joined me on the pod to talk about Fidel Castro’s trip to New York in September 1960. Based at Harlem’s Theresa Hotel, Castro met with a succession of political and cultural luminaries, including Malcolm X, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nikita Khrushchev, Amiri Baraka, and Allen Ginsberg. We dis...

Dan talks to Frank Dikötter, an eminent professor on Chinese history, who has written a new book about dictators around the world. They discuss what dictators need to do to control power and whether there is anything different about the people who become dictators. Producer: Peter Curry

In September 1918 David Lloyd George, the charismatic wartime Prime Minister, visited the city of Manchester, attended a vast public gathering and then collapsed. He spent the next week and a half confined to the Manchester Town Hall in a hastily assembled private hospital ward. He needed assista...

In the second half of the twentieth century, western Europe was shaped by a revolutionary political force: democracy. Or at least that's what Martin Conway has argued in his major new history. On this podcast, Martin - a teacher from my university days - interrogated the years following the Secon...

Jonathan Fennell has written a new book discussing the 'citizen armies' that made up the core of the British and Commonwealth armies, and Dan talks to him to find out more.

Margaret MacMillan joined me on the podcast to discuss the ways in which war has influenced human society. We discussed how, in turn, changes in political organisation, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight.

Patricia Clavin, Niamh Gallagher and Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid joined me on the pod to discuss the history of the partition of Ireland.

75 years ago today, on 15 August 1945, Victory over Japan Day marked the end of one of the most devastating episodes in British military history, and the final end of the Second World War. It's estimated there were 71,000 British and Commonwealth casualties of the war against Japan, and the death...

Tom Bower joined me on the podcast to discuss the history and legacy of the Nuremberg Trials.

Suzie Boniface discusses those who were harmed by the nuclear tests conducted by the British atom bomb, as controversy surrounds the first British atomic test in 1952, and the subsequent testing program. Those who worked on the sites were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and they have nev...

Ed Caesar joined me on the podcast to tell the story of World War I veteran Maurice Wilson, Britain's most mysterious mountaineering legend.

80 years ago, ships were gathering in Kent to begin the rescue of the British Expeditionary Force. Britain faced the prospect of the worst defeat in British military history and the loss of her entire military forces in Western Europe. Churchill called it "a colossal military disaster", admitting...

In 1940 the Polish resistance decided it needed to send an agent to Auschwitz concentration camp. They were desperate to find out what was going on in a place that even by that stage of the war had an evil reputation. Historian Jack Fairweather tells the story of Witold Pilecki the Pole who volun...

Victor Gregg, was taken prisoner as the Allies retreated during the Battle of Arnhem, and was taken as a POW to Dresden, where he was alive during the Dresden firebombing. He tells Dan what he's learned over his extraordinary life, from his wartime experiences to how he looks at the world. Produc...

70 years ago today, on 25th June 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea. The three-year conflict which followed took the lives of four million people including nearly 100,000 British troops. For many veterans, it is widely considered 'The Forgotten War'. So I was delighted to be joined by ...

Dan talks to the producers of a new documentary about a battalion cut off during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Mark Fastoso and John King.

For most of us, VE Day conjures up black and white images of carefree servicemen and women dancing and beaming in Trafalgar Square, of Churchill greeted by jubilant crowds in Whitehall, and of course, lots and lots of bunting. But was it really like this? In this podcast, you'll hear the speech g...

Robert Harris joined me on the podcast to talk about Nazi Germany and the story of the V2 rocket.

I was delighted to be joined by James Rogers - a war historian, fellow of the London School of Economics, and presenter of History Hit's Untold History series. One of James' films explores HM Factory Gretna, a munitions factory built by the Ministry of Munitions in response to the Shell Crisis of...