Tom Holland

which only club members can listen to.

No one else.

And we've got a brand new one coming out this February.

So that's going to be the very first one of 2026.

And it is presented by me and the great art critic, Laura Cumming.

Four episodes.

And it's about...

Paintings that shed a particularly fascinating light on history, and it covers a broad range of times and places.

So everything from Velázquez's Las Meninas, described by many critics as the greatest of all paintings, right the way up to Henry Rayburn's Skating Minister.

What do these paintings tell us about the times in which they were painted?

It's really, really fascinating stuff.

And if you are not watching it on YouTube or Spotify, if you're just listening to it as a podcast, don't worry, because we will be sending all our members an email, which will be going into greater written detail about the painting, but also obviously giving you an image of the painting itself.

So you can have a quick look at that, perhaps before you listen to the episode.

Although I have to say that Laura's descriptions of each painting are

are so good that perhaps you don't even need to look at the painting.

So if you would like to sign up to that miniseries and to the other five miniseries that we will be doing this year, which will be covering everything from history's greatest photographs, the Vietnam War, to England's she-wolves, then you know where to go.

Go to therestishistory.com if you are not already a club member and sign up there.

OK, so as we said, Hannibal, for the first time, is weak in cavalry.

So he's therefore weak on his wings.

Scipio, by contrast, has excellent cavalry.