During the Battle of Trafalgar, the men on the gun decks of HMS Victory felt the heat of fire from above and from below; they dodged enemy cannon balls shot from just 2 metres away. HMS Victory was the flagship of Nelson's fleet during that historic clash with the French and Spanish on the 21st o...

With Putin's war in Ukraine raging on, the threat of a nuclear conflict feels as real as ever. But since the Iron Curtain fell, our understanding of what to do in the event of a nuclear strike has waned. In this episode, we look to the past to discover the extraordinary things that the British go...

*Trigger Warning*

This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and cruelty against animals.

The Romans were - and still are - infamous for the brutal gladiatorial contests they held in their ancient amphitheatres. But often what made their games so spectacular were the exotic animals ...

Shrouded in mystery, the Nuragic culture was an enigmatic Bronze Age Civilisation that lived on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. With their name deriving from the Island's iconic fortress-like Nuraghe monument - they have not only defined Bronze Age history, but even the very land from which...

A Stuart time capsule has emerged from beneath the sand after 320 years. In early December 1703, barometers across South-Eastern England plunged as a cyclone made landfall in Britain leaving a path of destruction in its wake. In London, the roof of Westminster Abbey was ripped off and hundreds of...

As two of humanity's great religions, Islam and Christianity have shaped much of the world's history. Empires across the globe have risen and fallen under their influence, and there have been many occasions for them to go head-to-head on the battlefield. So what have been some of the greatest mil...

Looking back at the past few weeks, it seems like banks are collapsing left, right and centre; but what exactly does this mean for us? Are these inconsequential blips on the financial radar, or will they herald the beginning of a major banking crisis? On today's episode, Dan is joined by Charles ...

Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the legends of Thor, Odin and Asgard are familiar to millions today. Yet the histories of these myths are far richer than modern popular culture often implies. From Yggdrasil to Ragnarok, the seemingly unending tales of heroism, betrayal and intrigue found...

Over 100 miles further than the northern reaches of Britain, past Orkney, are a remote group of islands that make up Shetland.

It’s one of the best kept secrets of prehistoric Scotland, containing evidence of the lives that were lived there some 5,000 years ago with Viking archeology as well as ...

While rifling through a stall at a flea market in Leningrad- now St Petersburg- composer and music producer Stephen Coates came across something unusual. It looked like a vinyl record, but when he held it up to the light, he noticed he could see the pattern of human bones on it. It was a bootlegg...

This is everything you ever wanted to know about fascism. Are the British government's new proposals to stop refugee boats arriving fascistic? Were the 2021 insurrectionists at the Capitol building fascists? Is Muslim persecution in India today fascism in action? They're certainly attacks on demo...

Can we trace the 'British sense of humour' back to the Georgian period? It was an age of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, the French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars so the satirists of Georgian Britain had plenty to work with. In the late...

Glencoe in the Scottish highlands is a beautiful landscape with a dark past. While folks from all over the world travel to this beautiful valley to hike, in 1692 it was the site of a treacherous massacre that had repercussions for Scotland and England into the next century. Scottish government tr...

Ares is the god of war and bloodlust in Greek mythology.

One of the twelve Olympian gods, Ares was often depicted as a fierce and bloodthirsty deity - both feared, and revered by the Ancient Greeks. But despite being a major figure in the Greek pantheon, Ares has often been overshadowed by more ...

Given his incredible career, you'd perhaps expect the name of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus to be better known. Born in North Africa in 145AD, he rose to power after distinguishing himself as a military commander at a time of great instability in the Roman Empire. Finally bringing the Year of t...

In a suburb of North-West London, among housing estates and residential streets lies a secret bunker, you may never have heard of it but it's one of the most important World War Two sites in Britain. Here, deep underground, the RAF built its Uxbridge headquarters where it commanded the defence of...

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi was one of the most influential 20th Century European thinkers that you've never heard of. He was a pioneer of European integration, advocating for the free movement of people across European borders, a common currency and a single passport. Unsurprisingly, his ideas attr...

There are descriptions of suffering early in this episode that some listeners may find distressing.

As hospitals and institutions across the European frontline were taken over to serve the war effort in the 1940s, what happened to psychiatric hospitals, housing some of the continent's most vuln...

Everyone lies from time to time but some lies have had particular influence on world events and even been a major factor in shaping history.  In the Middle Ages, how did an outlandish book called The Travels of Sir John Mandeville create misconceptions about foreigners? And how did falsehoods pro...

What made for the ideal woman in the Middle Ages? In her new book The Once and Future Sex, Dr. Eleanor Janega looks at what beauty, sexuality, work and social status meant for medieval women. Despite the expectation of their primarily being mothers, they were also industrious farmers, brewers, te...

All Quiet on the Western Front is the 2022 film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's famous anti-war novel. Told from the German perspective, it presents a gruelling depiction of life and death in the First World War, emphasising the despair and disillusionment of the soldiers who fought in it. T...

Wales in the Medieval period had a thriving bardic tradition and one poet is particularly fascinating. Gwerful Mechain lived in the second half of the fifteenth century. She left a body of work that is mostly religious, but sometimes very rude and irreverent.

In today’s episode of Gone Medieval,...

Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid the size of Mount Everest slammed into our planet, triggering the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and countless other species unable to adapt to the sudden environmental catastrophe that followed. What exactly happened on that fateful day, and what about ...