The Queen's body has been taken to Westminster Hall in London, where she will lie in state for the public to visit and pay their respects. Over the past week since her death, we've seen a number of ceremonies and protocols enacted across the country to mark the end of her reign and life. These ar...

I was thrilled to chat to Paul Morland, a historian who uses population to explain almost all the major global shifts and events of the last two centuries. Using the power of sheer numbers, Paul has the answer to all the big questions - why China is going to get old long before it gets rich, why ...

Dan talks to Joanne Freeman about the history of polarisation in the USA, giving an extraordinary insight into the tone of American politics' early days.

Lord Jonathan Sumption is coming to the end of his magisterial multi-volume history of the Hundred Year's War. He believes it was essentially a French civil war into which the English and other external powers jumped into. In this podcast Jonathan talks Dan through the entire conflict, its causes...

Peter Stothard joined me on the podcast to discuss the assassination of Julius Caesar. Many men killed Julius Caesar. Only one man was determined to kill the killers. From the spring of 44 BC through one of the most dramatic and influential periods in history, Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, the ...

I was thrilled to be joined by David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and host of the widely acclaimed 'Talking Politics' podcast. Together we discussed how the great political thinkers of the past 400 years impacted the worlds they lived in, and whether they are still rele...

Rebecca Earle joined me on the pod to talk about spuds. She took me through the story of this a starchy tuber's dramatic career, which has been at the heart of the development of the world we live in today. Jumping from an Enlightenment super-food, to symbol of the British Home Front and even a c...

Roger Moorhouse discusses the Polish campaign of 1939 comprehensively, separating the myths from reality and outlining the abject horrors that the Poles suffered under the twin occupation of the Nazis and the Soviets. Producer: Peter Curry

Neanderthals are stereotypically viewed as thoughtless savages - but is this an accurate depiction or was there more to Neanderthal society?

Discovered only 160 years ago what can they tell us about the Palaeolithic past? In this episode, Tristan is joined by archaeologist and author Rebecca Wra...

Clare Makepeace @warhist is a warfare Historian. Writing on experiences of British servicemen in World War One and World War Two. Clare Makepeace's new book is entitled Captives of War: British Prisoners of War in Europe in the Second World War (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Moder...

Catherine Belton joined me on the pod to discuss the remarkable story of Vladimir Putin's rise to power. After working from 2007-2013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, Catherine's career has offered an exclusive insight into workings of Putin's Kremlin. Her new book 'Putin's Pe...

Dan made a stupid comment on twitter. Irish history twitter melted down. So we did a pod on why. 100 years ago the Irish War of Independence was being fought in Ireland as the UK government sought to keep Ireland within the Union while the Irish independence fighters seized control of much of the...

Dan sits down with Tom Holland to discuss Rome's first five emperors - the Julio-Claudian dynasty. From Augustus to Nero, they are some of the most colourful characters in history. But how much of what we know of these figures is actually true? Beware this podcast contains very strong language.

The emergence of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France - with its pointed arches, flying buttresses and stained glass windows - triggered an explosion of cathedral-building across western Europe. But behind every great cathedral lay human stories of competition, triumph and tragedy.

In toda...

Shribani Basu is a journalist and historian. She is the author of 'For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914-1918', 'Victoria and Abdul: The Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant', 'Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan' and 'Curry: The Story of Britain's Favou...

Simon Winder's eclectic histories have ranged all over the Germanic countries, and he has concluded his Germania trilogy with Lotharingia, a book about the kingdom of Lothair, which was located mainly in the modern low countries, and stretched all the way to the Roman borderlands. Lothair I, a gr...

Sacha Coward joined me on the podcast to discuss queer history. We talked about Luisa Casati, Queen Anne, the Gay Liberation Front, and other stories of non-heteronormative relationships.

Dan Jones is world-famous for writing swashbuckling factual history. But now he’s turned his hand to historical fiction with a debut novel Essex Dogs. It’s the first of a trilogy set in the Hundred Years War, in particular during the Crécy Campaign when England conducted large-scale raids through...

The protests on the streets of America are a product of 400 years of violence, slavery, coercion and injustice. I took a crash course with Harvard's Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad on the history that has led to this moment. He stripped me of my illusions about America but also explained why he ...

I was thrilled to be joined by H. W. Brands. He's authored 30 books on American history and his works have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. On the 70 year anniversary since the start of the Korean War, he took me through the remarkable course of events which saw an immense...

Richard Holdsworth is Director of Preservation and Education at The Historic Dockyard Chatham @DockyardChatham.;Subscribe to our mailing list to keep up to date with everything History Hit, click here.;Producer: Dan Morelle;Subscribe, rate and review on iTunes and be sure to follow us on Twitter,...

I was thrilled to be joined again by one of our most popular guests, John Nichol. John shot to international prominence when he served in the first Gulf War. When his Tornado was shot down in 1991 he was captured, tortured and paraded on television provoking worldwide condemnation and leaving one...

Richard Holdsworth is Director of Preservation and Education at The Historic Dockyard Chatham.

Sarah Fraser @sarah_fraseruk won the 2012 Saltire First Scottish Book of the Year for her acclaimed debut The Last Highlander, which in 2016 also became a New York Times ebook bestseller. A writer and regular contributor on TV and radio, she has a PhD in obscene Gaelic poetry and lives in the Sco...