In July 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed from Corunna to conquer England. Three weeks later an English fireship attack in the Channel—and then a fierce naval battle—foiled the planned invasion. Many myths still surround these events. The genius of Sir Francis Drake is exalted, while Spain’s efforts...

Nicholas Crane is a geographer, explorer, writer and broadcaster. He has written and presented four notable television series for BBC Two: Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town. The Making Of The British Landscape: From the Ice Age to the Present is out now.

Dan talks to Matthew Carr about the history of the Pyrenees, a mountainous frontier that has seen conflict and co-operation from Roman times until the present day.

One of the greatest military commanders in history - it's no wonder Hannibal and Rome so frequently fought.

In the second episode of our Hannibal mini-series, Tristan is once again joined by Dr Louis Rawlings from Cardiff University to examine Hannibal's movements and clashes post-Trasimene.

Lo...

Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. In his new book, 'The Holocaust: A New History', he combines eyewitness testimony, a large amount of which has never been published before, with the latest academic research, to create the first accessi...

England, 1351. In the aftermath of the Pestilence, Gerard Fox - a young knight robbed of his ancestral home, his family name tarnished - sets forth to petition the one man who can restore his lands and reputation. Fox's road entangles him with an enigmatic woman, a priceless relic, and a dark fam...

Dan chatted to George Morton-Jack and Dr Priya Atwal about the neglected role of the Indian Army during World War One, and how they are working to shed new light on the vital role that these servicemen played.

We celebrate abolition - in Haiti after the revolution, in the British Empire in 1833, and in the United States during the Civil War. Yet, over the approximately 100 years in which there were various moments of emancipation, these processes often provided failed pathways to justice for people who...

From an age in which women’s lives were obscured and poorly recorded, one shines brightly from the darkness. Eleanor of Aquitaine - born 900 years ago - has been the subject of scandal and legend for almost a millennium. Nevertheless, she played a central role in the pivotal events that defined n...

The Kindertransport was a rescue effort, where the United Kingdom took in around 10,000 Jewish children from Germany and Eastern Europe, and in many cases they were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. Herman Rothman and Henry Glanz are two survivors of the Kindertransport, ...

In May 2020, four unique Roman artefacts were unearthed near Ampleforth, North Yorkshire by two amateur metal detectorists. A bronze bust that is thought to depict Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, a beautifully crafted horse, and a one of a kind figurine of the Roman god Mars, to name a few.

But w...

The Japanese term Kirishitan, referred to Roman Catholic Christians in Japanese and is used in Japanese texts as a historiographic term for Roman Catholics in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries.;Stephen Turnbull is a British academic, historian and writer. He is a specialist in eastern military...

The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes), or simply the Knight's Cross (Ritterkreuz), and its variants were the highest awards in the military and paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II.;The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded for a...

The Ottoman Empire was gigantic; at one point it reached the walls of Vienna to the Persian Gulf and beyond. It was established at the end of the 13th century with its centre in what is now modern Turkey. It held swathes of Europe for centuries right up to the First World War.

In this episode, P...

Dr. Anna Keay is the Director of the Landmark Trust and author of 'The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth'. James, Duke of Monmouth, the adored illegitimate son of Charles II, was born in exile the very year that his grandfather was executed and the English monarchy a...

Arthur Spencer was a navigator during World War Two, completing two tours of operations with 97 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa and RAF Bourn. He was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for providing air support for the Resistance in Italy. Dan met him in his house to discuss the life during the war, the h...

Towards the beginning of the Second Punic War on 21 June 217 BC, a Carthaginian force under Hannibal launched a vicious ambush on a Roman army commanded by Gaius Flaminius.

The resulting battle, at Lake Trasimene in Italy, saw a complete capitulation of the Roman forces - with thousands of legio...

Vladimir Putin has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm. He invades his neighbours, most recently Ukraine, meddles in western elections and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. But who is the man behind the headlines?

For years, Philip Shor...

Dan talks to contributors in two different continents, Olivia Windham-Stewart from the Museum of British Colonialism with contributors Susan Kibaara and Mary Njoroge in Kenya. They discuss the caesuras in British colonial history, and what can be done to correct them.

Alexander Betts is the Leopold Muller Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs, and the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. His research is on the politics and political economy of refugees, migration and humanitarianism, with a geographical focus on...

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, a profound transformation took place in the ways that the English language was spoken and words were pronounced. This “Great Vowel Shift” saw a change in the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels, resulting in spellings of words that ofte...

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...

The first of Greenland’s Viking settlements were established in the tenth century. But by the fifteenth century, they had all but vanished, their fate confounding generations of archaeologists. But new research has revealed that it was the trade in walrus ivory that was behind both their prosper...

Known as the Eternal City, ancient Rome was one of the greatest civilisations in human history, but how did it come about?

With a turbulent history of Kings, civil wars and imperial desires - Rome has an incredible history. But who founded it? Were Romulus and Remus real brothers fighting for th...