Ben Monro-Davies is a journalist who has interviewed all the surviving participants of the cabinet meeting in which Margaret Thatcher announced her decision to resign. He and Dan listen to the recordings, and chat about their significance, and the way Mrs Thatcher and others responded to her fall...

Dan talks to aviation historian Ian Castle about the First Blitz, an effort to kick Britain out of a world war.

Tim Cook joined me on the pod to discuss how Canadian contributions are frequently overlooked or diminished in discussions of the War. Most major war histories are written by British or American authors, who give little credit to the Canadians as a separate fighting force.

Chris Bryant joined me on the podcast to tell the story of the gay British politicians who were among the very first to warn Britain about the danger of Hitler’s rise to power and the most vocal in demanding an end to the government’s policy of appeasement.

Was The Great Escape as great as its name suggests? Guy Walters thinks otherwise, and argues that the mass breakout from Stalag Luft III actually helped the German war effort. Dan chats to him to find out more.

Of all the clubs in the world, perhaps the most extraordinary is the Guinea Pig Club, a group of Second World War veterans that suffered terrible injuries and were then treated by pioneering surgeon Archibald McIndoe. Today there are only a handful left. Dan visits Jan Stangreciuk, one of the few...

Ben Gummer @ben4ipswich was Member of Parliament for Ipswich, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General. The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the collective decision-making body of Her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom, composed of the Prime Minister and some 21 cabinet minis...

The use of unmanned aircraft stretches all the way back to the First World War. Dan talks to James Rogers about this fascinating, unknown history.

Dan picks up from where he and Professor Ali Ansari left off as they discuss the history of Iran in the 20th century. Ali Ansari breaks down the White Revolution, the Islamic Revolution and why western negotiators have struggled to agree terms about Iran's nuclear program in recent years. Produce...

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...

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.

Roger Moorhouse discusses the Polish campaign of 1939 comprehensively, separating the myths from reality and outlining the abject horrors that the Poles suffered under the twin occupation of the Nazis and the Soviets. Producer: Peter Curry

Dan made a stupid comment on twitter. Irish history twitter melted down. So we did a pod on why. 100 years ago the Irish War of Independence was being fought in Ireland as the UK government sought to keep Ireland within the Union while the Irish independence fighters seized control of much of the...

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, ...

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...

I was thrilled to be joined by H. W. Brands. He's authored 30 books on American history and his works have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. On the 70 year anniversary since the start of the Korean War, he took me through the remarkable course of events which saw an immense...

I was thrilled to be joined again by one of our most popular guests, John Nichol. John shot to international prominence when he served in the first Gulf War. When his Tornado was shot down in 1991 he was captured, tortured and paraded on television provoking worldwide condemnation and leaving one...

Dan visits one of the greatest objects on planet Earth: USS Texas, the only dreadnought of its kind anywhere in the world. The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. USS Texas was a second-class battleship built by the United States in the early 1890s, the f...

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...

Dan talks to the producers of a new documentary about a battalion cut off during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Mark Fastoso and John King.

David Grann @davidgrann is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and a best-selling author. His first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was published in 2009.

In 1940 the Polish resistance decided it needed to send an agent to Auschwitz concentration camp. They were desperate to find out what was going on in a place that even by that stage of the war had an evil reputation. Historian Jack Fairweather tells the story of Witold Pilecki the Pole who volun...

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.

80 years ago, ships were gathering in Kent to begin the rescue of the British Expeditionary Force. Britain faced the prospect of the worst defeat in British military history and the loss of her entire military forces in Western Europe. Churchill called it "a colossal military disaster", admitting...