The Battle of Vimy Ridge was a military engagement fought primarily as part of the Battle of Arras, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France, during the First World War. Paul Reed is a military historian, battlefield photographer, and author. He's often on television talking about World War I a...

Dan Snow's History Hit is revisiting its very first episode, on the Battle of Waterloo with Dan's dad, veteran broadcaster Peter Snow.

Dan talks to Frank Dikötter, an eminent professor on Chinese history, who has written a new book about dictators around the world. They discuss what dictators need to do to control power and whether there is anything different about the people who become dictators. Producer: Peter Curry

In August 1485, King Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth. In 2012, having been lost for over 500 years, the remains of King Richard III were discovered beneath a car park in Leicester.

Joining Dan on the podcast today is the very person who led that successful search to locate the g...

Simon Hall joined me on the pod to talk about Fidel Castro’s trip to New York in September 1960. Based at Harlem’s Theresa Hotel, Castro met with a succession of political and cultural luminaries, including Malcolm X, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nikita Khrushchev, Amiri Baraka, and Allen Ginsberg. We dis...

We revisit Dan's interview with Peter Snow to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and learn more about this conflict which changed the face of Europe. Producer: Peter Curry

Dan chats to Volker Wiedermann, a German writer and literary critic, about the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The Republic, established in the aftermath of the First World War, was an unlikely formation and was quickly attacked from all sides, especially as it tried to propagate radical ideas about go...

Clare Balding is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist and author. She currently presents for BBC Sport, Channel 4, BT Sport and the religious/spiritual programme Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2.

On 19 December 1644 the English Parliament banned Christmas. EXACTLY 376 years later to the day, Boris Johnson announced that this year the celebration of Christmas would be radically curtailed due to the upsurge in Covid infections. This might be the only thing that Boris Johnson and the 17th Ce...

Whitechapel Bell Foundry was formally founded in 1570, and continued casting bells until 2017. It cast the Liberty Bell and Big Ben. In this episode, Dan talks to Adam Lowe who is part of a campaign to get the Foundry back into action. Thumbail Image: No Swan So Fine (CC)

Dan talks to Richard van Emden about his new book - Missing: the need for closure after the Great War. The backbone of the book is based on the best single story of World War One that he has found in 35 years of research. It is the story of one woman’s relentless search for her missing son’s body...

What does it take to reinvent the world's oldest living language? China today is one of the world's most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, left behind in the wake of Western technology.

Jing Tsu is a cultural historian, l...

John Barton joined me on the pod to discuss the history of the Bible. Tracing its dissemination, translation and interpretation in Judaism and Christianity from Antiquity to the rise of modern biblical scholarship, Barton elucidates how meaning has both been drawn from the Bible and imposed upon it.

My guests this week were Marcus Collins and Peter Stearns. They've just released a wonderful new book, 'Why Study History?' - a guide for prospective students and parents to enthuse the reader and answer the crucial questions that a college prospectus might conveniently miss out. They joined me o...

In this part of our #RAF100 season Dan learns from Ian Castle about the conception of the RAF.

In this podcast, Dan Snow is joined by Professor Mark Bailey, High Master of St Paul's School, London and Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia to delve into the topic of The Black Death. They discuss how it emerged and spread throughout the world, what impact it ha...

Over Britain’s first century of mass democracy, from the Great Depression to the pandemic, politics has lurched from crisis to crisis. How does this history of political agony illuminate our current age of upheaval?

Phil Tinline is a leading producer and presenter of historical narrative documen...

Dr Helen Farr is leading a team looking at prehistoric wrecks in the Black Sea. Dan chats to her about how the Black Sea's anaerobic waters have preserved ancient ships for many centuries, including a Greek ship very similar to one on an urn in the British Library.

The Williamson Tunnels are a labyrinth of tunnels in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool, England, which were built under the direction of the eccentric businessman Joseph Williamson between 1810 and 1840.

Ken Oatley, as one of the people who took part in the bombing of Dresden, talks about what it was like, and what he feels about having done it. He was also one of the last men to hear Guy Gibson alive, and he took part in numerous raids. In this podcast, he talks to Dan about his wartime experien...

The second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki is less well known than the one a few days earlier on Hiroshima, but was it more influential in forcing the Japanese to surrender? To find out who exactly ordered it and why I talked to Harvard's Frederik Logevall. He discusses the debates that rag...

75 years ago this Spring, the aerial assault on Germany was reaching a crescendo as city after city was devastated by British and American bomber fleets. History Hit TV have just launched a major documentary to mark this anniversary featuring veterans and historians like Max Hastings and Victoria...

In 1989, Beijing's Tiananmen Square became the focus of large-scale demonstrations as mostly young students crowded into central Beijing to protest for greater democracy. On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing into the crowds of protesters. The events produced on...

I was thrilled to be joined by Natalie Haynes. Natalie is the is the author of 'A Thousand Ships', a retelling of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective. In this podcast we discussed the classical accounts which have contributed to our modern understanding of that legendary war and its ter...