Walking around Second World War fortifications, Patrick Bury is able to draw on his time in the infantry to tell the stories of the battles that occured over them. During his time working on Nazi Megastructures, Paddy accessed the lived history of the important structures built to protect and str...

75 years ago this spring a fascinating but forgotten battle was fought in the dying days of the Second World War. A group of Georgians rose up against their German overlords on the Dutch island of Texel. Thousands of Georgians served in the Soviet forces during World War II and among those who we...

Odette Sansom, was the most highly decorated woman, and the most decorated spy of any gender during World War II. She was awarded both the George Cross and was appointed a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. Her wartime exploits and later imprisonment by the Nazis were celebrated in the years after...

James Rebanks joined me on the podcast to tell the history of his family farm in the Lake District hills. This was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. We talk about how it has transfor...

Paul John Darran joined the army 1980. He was ninth generation of his family to do so. The story begins with his ancestor John Carberry joined the Tyrone militia in Ireland in 1795. He later transferred to the regular army and fought in the Peninsula with Wellington. he was killed during the noto...

This episode features military historian Douglas Gill who has extensively researched the origins of the Spanish Influenza as it emerged in 1915 and 1916 in northern France. Douglas has worked alongside leading virologist, and previous guest on Dan's podcast, John Oxford, to track the initial case...

After service as a Royal Marine and as an intelligence officer for the UK security services, Paddy Ashdown was a Member of Parliament for Yeovil from 1983 to 2001, and leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 until 1999. Later he was the international High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovi...

Dan sits down with Paddy Ashdown to talk about German attempts to kill Hitler.

Dan talks to Kavita Puri, a BBC journalist and broadcaster, about the Partition of India and its repercussions and consequences for the people it affected.

Nick Lloyd, PhD, FRHistS, is Reader in Military and Imperial History at King's College London based at the Joint Services Command & Staff College in Shrivenham, Wiltshire. His new book, Passchendaele: A New History is out now.;Producer: Dan Morelle;Subscribe, rate and review on iTunes and be sure...

Alexandra Churchill is an author, researcher and historian who has contributed to and appeared on numerous television documentaries, including Timewatch (BBC2), Fighting the Red Baron (Channel 4) and Titanic with Len Goodman (BBC1). Her first book, Blood and Thunder: The Boys of Eton College and ...

Dan attends the Menin Gate for the 100th anniversary commemoration of The Battle of Passchendaele.

Craig Nelson is the author of New York Times bestseller, 'Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon' as well as several other books, including 'The Age of Radiance', 'The First Heroes', 'Thomas Paine' and 'Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness'.

Dan talks to Peter Devitt from the RAF Museum about the the RAF pilots from the Caribbean who fought in the Second World War, and what some of them found when they came back to Britain later.

Dan talks to Joanne Freeman about the history of polarisation in the USA, giving an extraordinary insight into the tone of American politics' early days.

Clare Makepeace @warhist is a warfare Historian. Writing on experiences of British servicemen in World War One and World War Two. Clare Makepeace's new book is entitled Captives of War: British Prisoners of War in Europe in the Second World War (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Moder...

Catherine Belton joined me on the pod to discuss the remarkable story of Vladimir Putin's rise to power. After working from 2007-2013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, Catherine's career has offered an exclusive insight into workings of Putin's Kremlin. Her new book 'Putin's Pe...

The protests on the streets of America are a product of 400 years of violence, slavery, coercion and injustice. I took a crash course with Harvard's Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad on the history that has led to this moment. He stripped me of my illusions about America but also explained why he ...

Frances Welch has written for the Sunday Telegraph, Granta, The Spectator and the Financial Times. She is author of Rasputin: A Short Life.

Charles King joined me on the podcast to talk about a group of cultural anthropologist who fundamentally transformed conceptions of 'normality' in the early twentieth century. We talked in particular about the work of Margaret Mead.

Sarah Lonsdale joined me on the podcast to tell the stories of radical women who challenged the status quo in the interwar years.

In this episode, Dan speaks to award-winning political correspondent and commentator, Svenja O'Donnell, about her remarkable grandmother's personal story of migration, sexual violence and murder during the fall of the Third Reich. Svenja's beautiful, aloof grandmother Inge never spoke about the p...

Richard Sorge is one of the greatest spies in history. Famously he reported to Stalin that the Germans were going to invade Russia, and famously Stalin ignored him. He then reported that the Japanese weren't going to invade Russia, and this time, the Russians listened. Siberian troops were redepl...

Calder Walton talks to Dan about Russian interference in past elections.