Professor Frank McDonough is an internationally renowned expert on the Third Reich. He was born in Liverpool, studied history at Balliol College, Oxford and gained a PhD from Lancaster University. Here he discusses the subject of his book 'The Gestapo: The Myth and Reality of Hitler's Secret Poli...

Rebecca Wragg Sykes joined me on the pod to discuss our perception of the Neanderthals, which has undergone a metamorphosis since their discovery 150 years ago. We discuss how this has changed from seeing them as the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins.

Dan takes a guided tour of the New York Historical Society whilst he was visiting the city.

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...

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

The Foundlings were children whose mothers were destitute or dead, and they were taken in by various philanthropic institutions. One such place, the Foundling Hospital, was founded in London in 1739 by Thomas Coram. It was a children's home established for the "education and maintenance of expose...

Dan talks to Helen Parr, whose new book Our Boys, traces the history of the Parachute Regiment and her own, personal, involvement with it.

Dan Snow and Anita discuss her family's heartrending experience living through Indian Partition. The Partition of India was the partition of the Presidencies and provinces of British India that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (it later split into Pakistan a...

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

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.

In the 5th century BC the world's first super power, the Persian Empire, went to war against a ragtag collection of cities and statelets on its western frontier. It was the start of the Persian War. Thankfully for us this war was recorded in some detail by the world's first historian. Herodotus. ...

The Peterloo Massacre was a critical moment in the reform movement at the start of the 19th century. Thousands of people gathered at St Peter's Fields near Manchester to protest for an expansion of the franchise. The local magistrates summoned yeomanry to dispel what they saw as a riot, but as th...

Chris Naunton joined me on the podcast to talk about the work of the many people who contributed to our understanding of ancient Egypt.

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...

The discovery of the Prittlewell Prince has been lauded as the "UK's answer to Tutankhamun'. The remarkably complete discovery of an Anglo-Saxon prince's burial chamber has given us far more information about the period after the Romans left Britain. Dan chats to two of the archaeologists and res...

There are many mysteries surrounding the deaths of the Romanovs: could King George V have saved them? Could there have been a constitutional monarchy? Did any of them survive? In her new book, packed with original research, Helen Rappaport definitively answers these and other questions.

The Ratline was the route senior Nazis used to escape from Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, and Philippe Sands has just made a new podcast about it. It's an incredible story, based on original research, and here he tells us all about how he went about making it.

Commander Steve Foster relates the extraordinary story of one of the most audacious escape attempts of the Second World War.

Who were the real Peaky Blinders? Did they really exist? Carl Chinn reveals the true story of the notorious gangs that roamed Birmingham's streets during the city's industrial heyday.

Dan talks with Professor Micheal Tarver, Executive Secretary – Southeast World History Association (SEWHA), who gives is a snapshot of Venezuela's history right up to the present day.

Today on the podcast we're going to talk all about the Renaissance. We have all heard of it as a reawakening, a rebirth of European culture but what truly was it and why was it so important and are we going through our own renaissance now? I wanted to really get under the skin of the Renaissance ...

William Sitwell joined me on the pod to discuss the history of the restaurant. Tracing its earliest incarnations in the city of Pompeii, we discuss the events that shape the way we eat today.

Dan talks to Professor Jon T Coleman to discuss Hugh Glass and the real story that formed the basis for the 2015 film, 'The Revenant.'Jon T. Coleman is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. His books and teaching span colonial and contemporary America and integrate social, cultu...

Thomas Penn, author of the Winter King, has released a new comprehensive history of the Wars of the Roses, making the striking claim that we shouldn't view the Wars of the Roses as a conflict between two rival houses, but instead as a civil war inside the House of York. Producer: Peter Curry