On the 26 February 2021, around 38 metres of wall collapsed at Hurst Castle, one of a series of vital coastal forts built by Henry VIII in the 16th century to protect England from threat of invasion by the European powers. Recently, Dan went out on his kayak to assess the damage at the castle whi...

On November 17th 1558, Mary Tudor, Queen Mary I of England, died - the end of a short and still controversial reign. But what if history had been different, what if she didn’t die in 1558, but lived longer to reimpose Roman Catholicism on England and forge a long lasting Anglo-Spanish alliance?
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Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn - the first two wives of Henry VIII - are so often portrayed as opposites. Katherine as the loyal, scorned wife - Anne as the bright, bewitching upstart.

But now Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb returns to Hever Castle to explore what Anne and Katherine were really l...

BREAKING NEWS: The bones of up to 10 soldiers killed in the Battle of Waterloo have been discovered - the largest cache of Waterloo casualties ever found.

Uncovered by a team of Belgium and German academics, it's believed these bones belong to a mix of Prussian, French and British Soldiers all ...

Nicola Tallis comes on the show to talk about the extraordinary Margaret Beaufort: 'Mother of the Tudors' and the ancestor of all subsequent royals.

Sean Cunningham, Head of Medieval Records at the National Archives, answers key questions about Henry VII. From his unexpected rise to the throne to his founding of England's most famous royal dynasty: the Tudors.

How far would you go to save your immortal soul?’

This is the question that plagued Tudor High Chancellor, Sir Thomas More. Lawyer, philosophiser, and advisor to Henry VIII, when the court turned on its head at the arrival of Anne Boleyn. Hounded by prolific characters like Thomas Cromwell, his ...

This story has everything: war, politics, betrayal, scandal, murder and at its heart a cracking forensic science mystery. This is the story of Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat of the Highland, also known as the Fox. In the late 1660s, Simon Fraser was born in a house on the banks of a burn in th...

In this introduction to the English Parish Church, Alice Loxton travels across the country to uncover some gems of England’s heritage. From the whitewashing of the Reformation to Wesley’s hymns to William Morris’ efforts to preserve the past, there is lots to discover. And Alice is joined around ...

The Commonwealth of England between 1649 and 1660 is one of the least talked about, yet most defining, periods in British history. Paul Lay comes on the show to discuss this momentous decade, when Britain was a republic.

In the past few months more than a billion people have faced restrictions unlike any seen before. Shops are closed; the death toll is rising; people across the globe have been forced to rise to an extraordinary challenge. But it is important to remember that humans have experienced pandemics befo...

Redcliffe Caves are a series of man made tunnels beneath the Redcliffe area of Bristol, England. The Triassic red sandstone was dug into in the Middle ages to provide sand for glass making and pottery production. Further excavation took place from the 17th to early 19th centuries and used for sto...

Imagine coming face to face with the extraordinary people who filled the court of King Henry VIII.

Well we can! Thanks to the extraordinary work of the artist hans Holbein the Younger.

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb goes to Buckingham Palace to enter the gallery of the Royal Collection where a bri...

Toby Green has been fascinated by the history of West Africa for decades after he visited as a student and heard whispers of history that didn’t appear in text books. Years later he wrote ‘Fistful of Shells,’ a survey of West Africa and West-Central Africa before the slave trade, and the effect t...

Sir David Cannadine shows Dan around the iconic Westminster Abbey, in the heart of London. With an unrivalled arrange of monuments - ranging from grand royal tombs to the grave of The Unknown Warrior - and spectacular architecture spanning nearly 1,000 years, join the two historians as they explo...

A History Hit treat for the holidays, this special new film reveals an extraordinary Tudor life-story and an amazing creation. We meet the extraordinary Bess of Hardwick and go inside the incredible home she built, a spectacular construction in glass and stone that defined the elegance and grande...

Professional yachtsman Conrad Humphreys and Dan Snow tell the story of Alexander Selkirk, an 18th century sailor whose story, some argue, served as a historical basis for Daniel Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe.

The Palace of Westminster is one of the world's most famous buildings: 'the mother of parliaments'. Since the days of Simon de Montfort parliaments having been meeting at this location in the heart of London. Though plagued by controversy and destruction over its long history the site's significa...

In this film Dan explores the Great Debasement, the infamous policy introduced in 1544 England by Henry VIII to help fund his wars and boost his finances by reducing the amount of precious metal in gold and silver coins and in some cases replacing them entirely with cheaper base metals like coppe...

1665-1666 was not a good time for the people of London. Not only was most of the city engulfed by what soon became known as The Great Fire of London in September 1666, but months before the most infamous outbreak of disease in British history occurred: the Great Plague. Plague arrived in England ...

For more than 900 years, the Tower of London has occupied its place at the heart of English life. At various times a royal citadel, palace, menagerie, observatory, public records office, mint, arsenal and, even to this day, the home of the crown jewels of England, since 1100 it has famously serve...

The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across into Arabia and the north coast of Africa, was home to one of the most extraordinary empires in history: the Ottoman Empire. Along its routes flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. In existence for 600 years, it also saw the swe...