Daniel Todman is a Professor of Modern History at Queen Mary. He has just published his epic study of how during the Second World War Britain fought back from near disaster to triumph. It opens with the fall fall of Singapore Feb 1942 and ends with Britain’s post war experiment in social democrac...

In February 1942, the Second World War came to Australia. The same Japanese fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbor only ten weeks before had set its sights on a new target. The harbour town of Darwin. In two separate attacks on February 19 1942, nearly 250 Japanese aircraft wreaked havoc on the lig...

When the First World War broke out, the suffragettes suspended their campaigning and joined the war effort. Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson headed out to France, setting up two small military hospitals - whilst battling fierce opposition on account of being women. But Flora and Louisa pr...

Daniel Todman @daniel_todman is a Historian at Queen Mary University of London, author of Britain's War, 1937-1941: Into Battle Twitter Instagram Facebook Dan Snow;Producer: Dan Morelle

In this special podcast, Dan talks to Alex Bescoby, a filmmaker and historian of Burma, about his documentary following Burma’s lost royal family - We Were Kings. Alex is currently crowdfunding his latest documentary about veterans from Burma who fought for Britain in the Second World War - Forgo...

Greg Jenner has given my children so many hours of happiness as the historical brains behind the Horrible History tv shows and movie, not to mention the Homeschool History podcast that it would have been grotesquely unfair not to have him on the show and talk about his new book on the history of ...

Rebecca Gibb is a Master of Wine. A ninja who can sniff out a Merlot from a Margot at 50 paces. I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about wine other than I like drinking it. So we had a lot to talk about. She has written a fascinating research paper on the riots that tore through the region of Champagne ju...

During the First World War, many Chinese came to work as labourers on the Western Front, but their story is rarely told. Dan talks to Wenlang Peng about the impact of the Chinese Labour Corps, and what life was life for them.

Joshua Levine was the historical advisor on Dunkirk, directed by Christopher Nolan. He is also the author of Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture.

Annie Gray is a wonderful historian and broadcaster. Her latest project is a biography of the woman who cooked for Churchill. Georgina Landemare was one of the few people able to cope with the demands, eccentricities and public nudity that came with working for the Churchills. Where all the other...

Their finest hour", "we shall fight on the beaches", "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few". These words of Winston Churchill are synonymous with our idea of the British war effort during the darkest days of WWII. Richard Toye joined me on the podcast to take...

Dan sits down with John Bew to talk about Clement Attlee, the British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. Guest appearance by Anna Whitelock

In 1943, Grimsby was hit by a new type of weapon: butterfly bombs, also know as cluster bombs. James Rogers tells Dan about the terrifying experience of being attacked by cluster bombs, and how they've been used around the world since.

Dan talks to Colonel Waddy about his part in World War Two in the first of two podcasts on the Colonel.

Professor Mary Fulbrook's book Reckonings won the 2019 Wolfson History Prize for its unique approach to the Holocaust, and in particular, those who perpetrated the atrocities. Fulbrook claims that the West German justice process was far too lenient on many ex-Nazis, who had condemned thousands or...

In early 1900, Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley and Arthur Conan Doyle crossed paths in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War. Motivated in various ways by notions of duty, service, patriotism and jingoism, they were each shaped by the theatre of war. Sarah LeFanu joined me on the podcast to explo...

Dan talks to Dr Christine Schmidt, a curator if the Wiener Library about the historical parallels for internment, and whether the situation we are in today is comparable.

Derek Nieman and Noemie Lopian work together. Two people from very different backgrounds, they tour the world telling people about their family stories. Author and writer Derek Niemann discovered only a few years ago that the grandfather he never knew had been an SS officer, in charge of slave la...

Professor John Oxford is a virologist. He is one of the world's leading experts on influenza. He is a leader in the study of the great Influenza outbreak of 100 years ago that killed upwards of 50 million people around the world. I talked to him today to ask him, what are the key lessons that we ...

David McGrory joined me on the podcast to discuss Coventry’s Blitz. On the night of 14 November 1940, a Luftwaffe air raid devastated the city of Coventry.

I was thrilled to be joined by Mark Vincent, an expert in criminal subculture and prisoner society in Stalinist Labour camps. Mark has looked at thousands of journals, song collections, tattoo drawings and slang dictionaries to reveal a hidden side of Gulag daily life. In this podcast, he also ex...

Charles Emmerson thinks the crucible of the modern world was not the 1960s but the tumultuous years at the end of the First World War and those that followed. This was when Communism and Fascism became mainstream movements. This was when the borders of the Middle East, and Eastern Europe were dra...

A very special episode for the 75th anniversary of the Dambusters raid. Dan talks to Paul Beaver, Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson MP, and Wing Commander John Butcher, from today's 617 squadron.