200,000 years ago in what is now Tibet, two children left a set of hand and foot prints on a travertine boulder, still identifiable today and is thought to be the earliest example of cave art.

In today’s episode, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Sally Reynolds from the University of Bournemouth, w...

Listen to the excitement in Dan's voice as he takes us around Portsmouth and explains the history of aircraft carriers by actually going on the soon-to-be HMS Queen Elizabeth! If you love this episode half as much as Dan did, you'll have a great time and learn a lot

Danny Boyle joins Dan to discuss his 14-18 Now project, Pages of the Sea, which marks 100 years since the Armistice.

Jan Žižka is the legendary Czech national hero who led Hussite forces against three crusades and never lost a single battle. His rise to military greatness is now told in the feature film titled Medieval, starring Ben Foster and Sir Michael Caine - the most expensive Czech film ever made.

In thi...

Poison, swordplay and bloodshed. Shakespeare’s characters met their ends in a plethora of gruesome ways. But how realistic were they? And did they even shock audiences who lived in a time of plague, pestilence and public executions, a time when seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the...

Professor Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek Culture emeritus University of Cambridge and author of many books, most recently, Democracy: A Life.

Sasha Swire joined me on the podcast to talk about her diary, written during the Cameron years. Her husband was an MP and junior minister at the time.

Diane Ducret is a French writer and essayist. In this captivating episode, she discusses the wives of some of the most reviled dicators in history and questions the impact they had on the men they loved.

Historian of modern Europe Sir Richard Evans reveals whether there is any truth that Hitler, at any stage in his public career, showed support for Zionism.

Stephen Frears is an Oscar winning film director. Frears has directed British films since the 1980s including My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen, Philomena and Florence Foster Jenkins. His most recent film, Victoria and Abdul depicts the real-life relationship b...

Dr Emma Liggins is an expert on Victorian Gothic literature. She joined me on the pod to examine how great female writers of the 19th century - such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontes - responded to the impact of fatal diseases on their home lives. How did their literary perspective influence t...

4/4. Dan descends the very same stone steps into Tutankhamun's tomb that Carter did, 100 years earlier. From within the chamber, Dan and Egyptologist Alia Ismail give a sense of the awe Carter and Carnarvon would have felt, of the riches and sarcophagi that housed the mummy of Tutankhamun. Meanwh...

Vikings are often depicted as fearless warriors, but they were not immune to the harsh realities of northern weather. They not only survived in countries such as Greenland and Iceland but thrived. How did they adapt to the unforgiving ice and snow?

In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarm...

Chloe Hadjimatheou joined me on the podcast to talk about the death of James Le Mesurier, the man who co-founded the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defence force who filmed themselves pulling survivors and bodies from the rubble of bombed out buildings.

In this special, sponsored episode, Dan talks to Dr Rachel Barrie, the first female Master Blender, about whisky, taxes, and the Glendronach distillery. Thumbnail image credit: Akela NDE (CC).

Join Dan as he explores an underwater archaeological site in the Solent with Garry Momber from the Maritime Archaeology Trust. They visit the oldest known boat-building (and beefburger-eating) site in the world.

Medieval England’s relationship with the Jewish community was complex and, at times, brutally violent and cruel. In 1290, the entire population of some 3,000 Jews was expelled from the country by King Edward I.

In this edition of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Dr. Dean Irwin, whose research...

Professor Paul Preston doesn’t pull his punches. His magisterial new history of modern Spain is called 'A People Betrayed'. He is the greatest living authority on Spain and he is not a fan of how that country had been governed. In this podcast he tells me a sorry story of corruption, war and brut...

3/4. How much do we know about Tutankhamun, his short life and even shorter reign? Dan unravels the complicated legacy of Tutankhamun's predecessor Akhenaten who changed the very fabric of Egyptian society, leaving his son Tutankhamun to change it back. In life, the boy pharaoh was plagued by hea...

Gary Sheffield is Professor of War Studies, University of Wolverhampton, and a specialist on Britain at war 1914-45. Douglas Haig: From the Somme to Victory is Gary's latest book.

75 years ago this week Dresden, in Saxony, known as the ‘jewel box’ because of its stunning architecture was obliterated by British and American bombers. The flames reached almost a mile high. Around 25,000 people were thought to have been killed. The novelist Kurt Vonnegut was there. It was he w...

Dan meets some of the surviving Dunkirk veterans on the famous Little Ships which helped to rescue them from the beaches.;The Little Ships of Dunkirk were 700 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate in England to Dunkirk in France between 26 May and 4 June 1940 as part of Operation Dynamo, helpin...

Zeus, the chief deity, is the Olympian god of sky and thunder. He is king of all other gods and men, and the key figure in Greek mythology.

His tale is one of overthrowing fathers, eating babies and seducing women, both mortal and divine, by changing his own form. He's one of the most complex fi...

Tutankhamun is one of the most famous names in ancient history. Known as the 'Boy King', he ascended the Egyptian throne at the age of 9 and ruled for just under a decade. In this time, there's evidence of his sporting activities, his religious restoration, and even his penchant for an ancient Eg...