2017 was the 70th anniversary of the Partition of the Indian Raj which caused such an epidemic of bloodshed. Yasmin Khan, Associate Professor of History at Oxford University, and author of 'The Great Partition' draws on her research and family recollections to deliver the powerful story of partit...

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...

The Battles of Imphal and Kohima was a crucial turning point in the attempted Japanese invasion of India during World War Two. By October 1942 Singapore, Hong-Kong, Malaysia and Burma had all fallen to the Japanese; the Imperial army looked unbeatable. Yet it was then, when morale was at its lowe...

On 29 December 1940 London experienced one of its worst nights of the Blitz. German bombers dropped tens of thousands of bombs, destroying more of London than the city's famous Great Fire of 1666. The following morning, a photographer took a picture through the smoke and fire of Saint Paul’s Cath...

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...

Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were two talented, courageous, and strikingly attractive women who fought convention to become the only female test pilots in Hitler’s Germany – eventually being awarded the Iron Cross for their services to the Luftwaffe. Both were brilliant pilots, both...

Andrew Roberts shares a selection of items from his Winston Churchill collection, documenting the fascinating life of one of Britain's most iconic figures.

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.

After the Great War of 1914-18, European powers were desperate to avoid another conflict of that scale. But just 20 years later, they found themselves plunged into catastrophe on an even greater scale. The outbreak of World War Two has been blamed on the policy of 'appeasement' - with the Great P...

On Christmas Eve 1914 many sectors of the Western Front in France and Belgium fell silent. Troops from all sides put down their weapons and sang carols, exchanged gifts and buried their dead in No Man's Land. The following day the truce continued in many, but not all areas, and troops gathered in...

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...

At the end of May and the beginning of June 1940, over 370,000 Allied soldiers found themselves at great risk, surrounded by German forces on all sides & with their backs to the Channel. The eyes of the World fixed their gaze on the small Allied perimeter that remained, around the beaches of Dunk...

Winston Churchill, wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain and its empire during the Second World War, is one of the most recognisable figures of world history. The man dominated Whitehall and Westminster, but many of his most vital decisions during the war years were taken away from the public e...

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

Narrated by Tom Selleck: Sunday, December 7, 1941 was a beautiful morning on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. A few sailors and soldiers were already up and playing a game of football near Pearl Harbor. Others were sleeping in their barracks or aboard ships after a late night of partying in Honolulu....

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.

75 years ago this week Dresden, in Saxony, known as the ‘jewel box’ because of its stunning architecture was obliterated by British and American bombers. The flames reached almost a mile high. Around 25,000 people were thought to have been killed. The novelist Kurt Vonnegut was there. It was he w...

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

Last year audiences around the world were astounded by Sam Mendes' incredible World War One epic, 1917. This autumn, Dan Snow was invited to take a look at a recreated World War One trench network in the UK, built by military historian Taff Gillingham. In homage to 1917, we decided to film this w...

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...

This documentary looks into the history of militarised policing in the United States and how it has influenced the mindset and mentality of US policing today. Featuring Collette Flanagan, founder of ‘Mothers Against Police Brutality’, Dr Howard Henderson, Professor Julian Go, Alex Vitale, Sara Mo...