The Royal Marines are the UK's Commando Force and the Royal Navy's own amphibious troops. The Commandos have become a byword for elite raiding skills and cutting-edge military operations. They are globally renowned, yet shrouded in mystery.

Former Royal Marine Monty Halls joins Dan to shed light...

Born in Brooklyn, New York in January 1899, Alphonse Gabriel Capone would go on to become perhaps the most infamous gangster in American history. During the Roaring Twenties, Al Capone ruled an empire of crime in the Windy City of Chicago: gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, bribery, narcotics, ...

On June 17, 1940, the British ocean liner, RMS Lancastria, was sunk during Operation Aerial.

RMS Lancastria had sailed to the French port of St. Nazaire to aid in the evacuation of British and French soldiers, civil servants and British civilians after the fall of Dunkirk. The ship was loaded we...

In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costl...

A history of British monarchs in coins. With a history stretching over 1,100 years, The Royal Mint has forged a fascinating story through the world of historic coins. As the second oldest mint in the world, and the oldest company in the UK, its history is entwined with the 61 monarchs who have ru...

Argentina surrendered to British forces in Port Stanley on the 14th of June 1982. The Falklands conflict was over. In the months after the fighting ended troops and their equipment shipped out, graves were dug and memorials were put up across the islands for those killed in battle. British milita...

The Battle of Mount Tumbledown was an attack by the British Army and the Royal Marines on the heights overlooking Stanley, the Falkland Islands' capital. One of a number of night battles that took place during the British advance towards Stanley, the battle led to British troops capturing all the...

The wreck of one of the most famous ships of the 17th century - which sank 340 years ago while carrying the future King of England James Stuart - has been discovered off the coast of Norfolk in the UK, it can be revealed today.

Since running aground on a sandbank on May 6, 1682, the wreck of the...

Please note that this episode contains descriptions of conflict and torture that some may find distressing.

When the British arrived on the Falklands Islands in 1982, they battled the Argentines. But on the other side, it was a very different story. For the young Argentine combatants, their grea...

On the 4th of June 1942, the US Navy took on the might of Japan's Imperial Navy in the battle of Midway. It was America's Trafalgar! At the end of the fighting devastating losses had been inflicted on the Japanese and the entire strategic position in the Pacific was upended in favour of the Allie...

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, Patrick Thomas, a young Royal Navy telegraphist, boarded the craft in Portsmouth. The boat was part of the first wave on Sword Beach, covering communications for land battles while providing defence from enemy ships and torpedoes. On June 25, it was hit by an acoustic mine...

Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in British history and one of the longest-reigning in the world. To mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, we have brought together some of today’s best historians to discuss the life and times of Britain's long history of queens from the Medieval pe...

From May 31 to June 1, 1921, a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly Black ‘Greenwood District’ of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hundreds of people died or were injured in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921— the event remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. his...

Please note that this episode contains descriptions of combat and some explicit language.

At the Battle of Goose Green the Second Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) fought against various sub-units of the Argentine army and air force— this would be the first and the longest battle of the ...

David Stirling was an aristocrat, innovator and special forces legend that earned him the nickname 'The Phantom Major'. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering. But was he rea...

Longing to go back to the 'good old days' is nothing new. For hundreds of years, the British have mourned the loss of older national identities and called for a revival 'simple', 'better' ways of life - from Margaret Thatcher's call for a return to 'Victorian values' in the 1980s to William Blake...

Berlin’s fate was sealed at the 1945 Yalta Conference: the city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the victorious powers - American, British, French and Soviet. On paper, it seemed a pragmatic solution. In reality, once the four powers were no longer united by their comm...

Various legends, characters and myths are associated with the medieval period. The British Isles is filled with prehistoric monuments - from Stonehenge and Wayland's Smithy, the archipelago of Orkney to as far south as Cornwall, Snowdon and Loch Etive, and rivers including the Ness, the Soar and ...

Please note that this episode contains frank discussions of conflict, mental health and suicide.

Admiral Lord West is the former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In 1982, West commanded the frigate HMS Ardent which was deployed to the South Atlantic for the Falklands War. During the ...

Please note that this episode contains mentions of racial trauma, slavery and violence.

The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of globa...

On the night of February 23 1820, twenty-five impoverished craftsmen assembled in an obscure stable in Cato Street, London, with a plan to massacre the whole British cabinet at its monthly dinner. The Cato Street Conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since Gu...

Bletchley Park, Britain's key decryption centre during WWI, is known for the success of breaking the Nazi Enigma codes - experts have suggested that the Bletchley Park codebreakers may have shortened the war by as much as two years.

David Kenyon is the research historian at Bletchley Park. Recor...

Helen Rappaport joined me on the podcast for the third episode of our lockdown learning series to talk about the Russian Revolution. Join Dan Snow in conversation with historian and bestselling author of the internationally acclaimed, Stalingrad, Antony Beevor, as they tell the action-packed stor...

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK so we’ve got a special episode exploring the surprising way Victorians approached mental health treatment in the 19th century. Oral historian Stella Man from the Glenside Hospital Museum in Bristol tells Dan how the Victorians get a bad rap but ...