How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?

This is the famous question posed by Lin Manuel Miranda in his smash-hit Broadway show Hamilton that's ...

Andrew Blick is Director of History & Policy and Lecturer in Politics and Contemporary History, King's College London. He is the co-author of Premiership: The Development, Nature and Power of the Office of the British Prime Minister.

In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate, Fred Wetzler broke out of Auschwitz. Under electrified fences and past armed watchtowers, evading thousands of SS men and slavering dogs, they trekked across marshlands, mountains and rivers to freedom. Vrba's mission: to reveal to th...

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time when the close friendship or petty feuding between monarchs could determine the course of history. The Capetians of France and the Angevins of England waged war, made peace, and intermarried. The lands under English control once reached to within a...

All Saints’ Church in the village of Brixworth, Northamptonshire is one of the oldest, largest and most complete Anglo-Saxon churches in England. Founded in the eighth century, it has been described as “the finest Romanesque church north of the Alps.”

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

Modern humans thrived in the Americas for thousands of years before the first European colonists arrived, but how and when did they get there?

What's more, did their arrival spell disaster for indigenous megafauna such as giant ground sloths and wooly mammoths, or was there another culprit behin...

Max Hasting's new bestseller on Vietnam is out, and Dan met him to discuss Domino theory, whether it was possible for the US to win the war and the effect the war had on those who fought in it.

Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, often cited as the basis for the King’s reputation as a scheming murderer. But what do the Bard’s history plays tell us about the period they are set in and how that era was viewed in Shakespeare’s time? Are there allusions to Elizabet...

Dr Stephen Harrison is a lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. His research interests focus on the archaeology of Early Viking Age Ireland and Britain.

Sarah Parcak is 2016 TED Prize winner, Space archaeologist, Professor, scientist, Egyptologist, TED Senior Fellow, and National Geographic Fellow.;This is the final of the 4 part series timed to coincide with the upcoming broadcast of ' The Vikings Uncovered ' on BBC1 and PBS.

To coincide with the upcoming broadcast of ' The Vikings Uncovered ' on BBC1 and PBS next week, Dan takes us behind the scenes and talks about his extraordinary experiences making the show.

Dr Thomas Birch is a Research Associate at University College London Qatar.;This is part 3 of the 4 part series timed to coincide with the upcoming broadcast of ' The Vikings Uncovered ' on BBC1 and PBS.

Doug Bolender is a research assistant professor in the Anthropology Department and the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at University of Massachusetts Boston.;This is part 2 of the 4 part series timed to coincide with the upcoming broadcast of ' The Vikings Uncovered ' on BBC1 and PBS.

What reasons drive many more people nowadays -young ones especially- to seek a green, urban ‘haven’ to grow vegetables?

In many British towns and cities, allotments are a fact of life. A piece of land that one rents, usually from the local council. This much everyone knows.

We now also know t...

Cleopatra VII was part of a dynasty of Macedonian rulers founded by Ptolemy, who served as general under Alexander the Great during his conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C. Cleopatra served as the dominant ruler in all three of her co-regencies and was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Th...

The roots of the word ‘Nomad’ dates back to an extremely early Indo-European word, ‘nomos’. After towns and cities are built and more people settle, ‘Nomad’ comes to describe people who live without walls and beyond boundaries. Now, the word is used by settled people - for some with a sense of ro...

The Royal Marines are the UK's Commando Force and the Royal Navy's own amphibious troops. The Commandos have become a byword for elite raiding skills and cutting-edge military operations. They are globally renowned, yet shrouded in mystery.

Former Royal Marine Monty Halls joins Dan to shed light...

Dr Rory Cox @drrorycox is a Historian of Just War Doctrine and the Ethics of War, and a Lecturer in Late Mediæval History and Associate Director of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. He is also the author of John Wyclif on War and Peace.;The Military Response t...

Dan talks to Giles Milton about D-Day and what his research has uncovered about the untold stories of this landmark event.

Norwich Castle was designed by William the Conqueror to be a royal palace. But no Norman kings ever lived in it. Instead it became a gaol and then - in the Victorian era - a museum, which is today packed with archaeological finds that lift the lid on life in Anglo-Saxon East Anglia.

In this edit...

Born in Brooklyn, New York in January 1899, Alphonse Gabriel Capone would go on to become perhaps the most infamous gangster in American history. During the Roaring Twenties, Al Capone ruled an empire of crime in the Windy City of Chicago: gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, bribery, narcotics, ...

Ben Wilson is a Historian. He is author of Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy (2013) and Heyday (2016).

When Donald Trump announced that the USA would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel the decision hit the headlines. Then again for the last 3000 years Jerusalem has rarely been out of the news. In this episode we hear from historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of 'Jerusalem: the biogra...

Dan talks to Mike Martin about the reasons humans fight, why they are willing to die for their countries, and how ideology can lead someone to blow themselves up.