Dan Snow's History Hit

Sex in Pandemics

12 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I invited Kate Lister to join me after the enormous popularity of her last appearance on the pod. But this time we talked about how our sexual habits ...

Nelson's Statue

11 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Afua Hirsch is a writer, broadcaster, barrister and human rights development worker. She has previously worked as Social Affairs and Education Editor ...

Why Study History?

10 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

My guests this week were Marcus Collins and Peter Stearns. They've just released a wonderful new book, 'Why Study History?' - a guide for prospective ...

How and Why History: Attila the Hun

09 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Known as the Scourge of God, Attila the Hun was one of the greatest Barbarian rulers in history. Renowned for his brutality, sacking and pillaging the...

The Field of the Cloth of Gold

08 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

500 years ago this week marked the start of one of the most extraordinary diplomatic gatherings in history: The Field of the Cloth of Gold. In 1520, E...

Political Thinkers in the Modern World

07 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was thrilled to be joined by David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and host of the widely acclaimed 'Talking Politics' podca...

What Really Happened on D-Day

06 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was joined by Giles Milton to learn about D-Day and find out what his research has uncovered about the untold stories of this landmark event.Subscri...

Untold Stories of War

05 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was delighted to be joined by James Rogers - a war historian, fellow of the London School of Economics, and presenter of History Hit's Untold Histor...

Racial Injustice in America

04 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 P...

A Story of Slavery and Restitution

03 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was delighted to be joined by Caleb McDaniel, History professor and author of the Pulitzer prizewinning book, “Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Stor...

Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

According to John Evelyn, the great diarist, Charles II was ‘addicted to women’. Charles' court is infamous for tales of licentiousness and promis...

Fighting Nazism at the Grand Prix

31 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Neal Bascomb joined me on the podcast to tell a remarkable story of the fight against Hitler - on the Grand Prix racetrack. We delved into the high-sp...

A History of Building Britain

30 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was thrilled to be joined by Andrew Ziminski, a stonemason living and working in Somerset. He's just released his first book documenting the fascina...

Dunkirk Veterans

29 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan meets some of the surviving Dunkirk veterans on the famous Little Ships which helped to rescue them from the beaches. The Little Ships of Dunkirk ...

The Fall of France

28 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

80 years ago this week, one of the most extraordinary evacuations in military history was under way: 'The Miracle of Dunkirk'. But how, and why, did t...

Muslim Soldiers of Dunkirk

27 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

May 28, 1940: Major Akbar Khan of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps marches at the head of 299 soldiers along the beach at Dunkirk - the only Indian...

Coronavirus: Intelligence Failure

26 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The greatest threats we face are climate breakdown and pandemic disease. This was the assessment of security advisers before the Covid outbreak and th...

The Miracle of Dunkirk

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 B...

Getting Inside the Mind of Hitler

24 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

No man knew Adolf Hitler as intimately as his trusted physician, Theodoor Morell. As part of Hitler's inner social circle, he assisted the leader in v...

Akbar the Great

23 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

One of the greatest rulers of the 16th century was Akbar the Great, a man whose power and influence extended over much of the Indian subcontinent afte...

The Shadow King: Henry VI

21 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Henry VI came to the throne in exceptionally difficult circumstances. The untimely death of his warlike father, Henry V, placed the crown upon his hea...

Celebrity

20 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

History and Human Nature

19 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's a belief which has dictated the writings of Machiavelli and Hobbes, Freud and Dawkins - that humans are fundamentally selfish and governed by sel...

The Brontës and War

19 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast I was joined by Emma Butcher, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English Literature at the University of Leicester. Emma took me on a...

The Habsburgs

17 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It was an honour to be joined by Martyn Rady to discuss one of history's most thrilling families, the Habsburgs. Ruling for almost a millennium, their...

Winston Churchill

14 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

80 years ago this week, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and his calamit...

Pandemics: Science and History

12 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was thrilled to be joined by the legendary Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at Oxford University and bestselling author of 'The Silk Roa...

Migration in Medieval Europe

11 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was delighted to be joined by Miri Rubin of Queen Mary University, London. In a terrific new book, Miri has scooped up a seemingly modern topic - mi...

Europe's Tragedy: The Thirty Years War

10 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe. It killed nearly a quarter of all Germans and transformed the map of the modern world. Pro...

Coffee

09 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Coffee. Most of us are addicted. We need it on Monday mornings, post nights out, during nights out, in fact every morning. And afternoons. August...

VE Day: 75 Years

08 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For most of us, VE Day conjures up black and white images of carefree servicemen and women dancing and beaming in Trafalgar Square, of Churchill greet...

How should we remember WW2?

07 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The question of wars and how we remember them has always fascinated me. With WW1 we seem to remember the enormous, tragic loss of life - captured so b...

Pandemics through History

05 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I have hooked up with the Timeline Channel on youtube to do History Hit Live three times a week. Sometimes I'll share the audio as a podcast on this f...

Mudlarking

04 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lara Maiklem has scoured banks of the Thames for over 15 years in pursuit of the objects that the fast moving river water unearths. The Thames is one ...

One Family: 200 Years of Continuous Military Service

03 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 Tyr...

Moscow's Communist Dorm

29 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1931, an enormous apartment building was completed in Moscow. Challenging the Kremlin for architectural supremacy on the Moskva River, it was ...

Globalisation in 1000 AD

27 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Globalisation. It's a word we often associate with the politics, society and economics of our own lifetimes. But Valerie Hansen, an esteemed professor...

Florence Nightingale

26 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For soldiers of the Crimean War, perhaps the greatest adversary they faced was the Selimiye Barracks in Scutari, a makeshift hospital for wounded men....

Australia, Anzac and History

25 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was thrilled to have Mat McLachlan on the pod, one of Australia's foremost history presenters and writers. Using his encyclopaedic knowledge of Aust...

The Death of Hitler

24 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Did Hitler shoot himself in the Führerbunker, or did he slip past the Soviets and escape to South America? There have been innumerable documentaries,...

The Black Death

22 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast, Dan Snow is joined by Professor Mark Bailey, High Master of St Paul's School, London and Professor of Later Medieval History at the U...

A Curious History of Sex

21 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sex. There's a lot of it about. We talk about war, chaos and atrocities on this podcast a lot although, thankfully, few of us have first hand experien...

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

19 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 thous...

Working Motherhood

16 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Helen McCarthy, lecturer in modern British history at the University of Cambridge, joins Dan to discuss the complicated past of working motherhood....

The Aftermath of WW1

15 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast I was joined by Margaret MacMillan, professor at St Antony's College, Oxford University and author of 'Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Co...

British Ship Building

14 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Dan chats to British naval historian and maritime artist, Richard Endsor, about seventeenth century ship building. It was the develop...

Apollo 13

13 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was joined by Kevin Fong, who took me through one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of exploration. Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed ...

The House of Byron

12 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Brand has written a brilliant book about the Byrons. Not just the great romantic, poet and adventurer, George Gordon Byron, but his parents and ...

The Prime Minister Hospitalised: Lloyd George's Influenza

10 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In September 1918 David Lloyd George, the charismatic wartime Prime Minister, visited the city of Manchester, attended a vast public gathering and the...

How Pandemics Made the Modern World

09 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Frank Snowden is currently on lockdown in Rome, experiencing at first hand life in a pandemic. For years he has written about the great wave...

Loot? Spoils? Artefacts? What to Do with Our Museums

08 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Our museums are full of stuff taken, bought, stolen and gifted from foreign countries. It feels like we face a reckoning. What shall we do with it?I t...

Death by Shakespeare

06 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Poison, swordplay and bloodshed. Shakespeare’s characters met their ends in a plethora of gruesome ways. But how realistic were they? And did they e...

The Battle of Okinawa

03 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The last great battle of the Second World War was fought on the island of Okinawa. After 83 blood-soaked days, almost a quarter of a million people lo...

Origins of the Spanish Flu

02 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features military historian Douglas Gill who has extensively researched the origins of the Spanish Influenza as it emerged in 1915 and 19...

Valkyrie: The Warrior Women of the Viking World

01 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was thrilled to have Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir on the pod. We talked about Viking women, old Norse-Icelandic sagas, mythology and poetry. Wh...

Battle of Britain 'What Ifs'

30 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Jamie Wood and Professor Niall Mackay at the University of York are mathematicians who love history. Sensible dudes. They released a paper which s...

A Strange Bit of History

29 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We were delighted to have comedy royalty on the podcast. Omid Djalili talked to me about one of his earliest stage creations, first performed at the E...

How AI is Safeguarding Maritime Heritage

26 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There are more historic artefacts on our ocean floor than there are in every museum in the world put together. Over thousands of years ships carrying ...

The Real Thomas Cromwell

25 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone is Thomas Cromwell obsessed at the moment. The man who rose to be the most powerful member of Henry VIII's court, his Lord Privy Seal, Princi...

Britain's Fightback

23 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 b...

How the Earth Shaped Human History

22 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Great leaders? Industrial change? Revolutions? If you thought these were the things that shaped history, think again. Back by popular demand, I was th...

Mystery of the Alexander the Great Coin Hoard

19 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Off the coast of the Gaza Strip fishermen have been discovering coins of extreme rarity and importance. They date from the brief reign of Alexander th...

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History

17 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan chats with journalist and author Ed West about Ed's conservative views, which make him an anomaly among his peers. They explore why conservatives ...

How to Fight anti-Semitism

16 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Dan meets New York Times journalist and writer Bari Weiss, who grew up near and attended the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsberg, Pen...

Jan Stangreciuk: Veteran. Hero. Guinea Pig.

15 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 inju...

Division. Corruption. Incompetence: A History of Spain

13 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Paul Preston doesn’t pull his punches. His magisterial new history of modern Spain is called 'A People Betrayed'. He is the greatest livin...

The Human Tide

10 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I was thrilled to chat to Paul Morland, a historian who uses population to explain almost all the major global shifts and events of the last two centu...

Coronavirus - Lessons from History

09 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 outbre...

Britain in the 1980s

08 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dominic Sandbrook is one of Britain’s most prolific historians, working his way through a series on Britain since the Second World War. His most rec...

Coronavirus is NOT the plague

05 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It came from Asia via the Middle East and Italy. But, says 17th Century historian, Rebecca Rideal, the parallels with the Black Death, The Plague, are...

Champagne Riots

04 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Gibb is a Master of Wine. A ninja who can sniff out a Merlot from a Margaux at 50 paces. I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about wine other than I lik...

The Discovery of the Universe

03 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The universe has always been there, kind of, but it took intelligent life on earth billions of years to start to grapple with its nature. Carolyn Coll...

The First President

02 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

George. Where did it all go wrong?George Washington could have had a comfortable career as a loyal member of HIs Majesty's Virginia militia and coloni...

The Bombing War

01 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

75 years ago this Spring, the aerial assault on Germany was reaching a crescendo as city after city was devastated by British and American bomber flee...

The Irish War of Independence

27 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Guernsey: Voices of the Occupation

26 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Channel Islands. Dan went to meet four people who remember the war years on the islands ...

‘One of Our Greatest Living Historians’

24 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Natalie Zemon Davis is a legend. One of the most influential and versatile contemporary historians. A pathbreaking scholar of early modern European so...

Churchill's Cook

23 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Annie Gray is a wonderful historian and broadcaster. Her latest project is a biography of the woman who cooked for Churchill. Georgina Landemare was o...

Georgian Musings on Homosexuality

20 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eamonn O'Keeffe is a young Oxford Researcher in the midst of a PhD. He stopped off in Wakefield Library to look at a journal Yorkshire farmer Matthew ...

The Boundless Sea

19 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We are a land animal. But millions of us have taken to the sea to live, fight, travel, eat, escape and seek fame and fortune. I am obsessed with the s...

The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz

17 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This is the most remarkable father and son story I have ever come across.We are still marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz here...

West Africa before the Europeans

16 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Toby Green has been fascinated by the history of West Africa for decades after he visited as a student and heard whispers of history that didn’t app...

Suicide at the Fall of Nazi Germany

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There is almost no end to the dark secrets that emerge from the smashed ruins of 1945 Europe. Dr Florian Huber has spent years researching the fascina...

The Adventuress

12 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1930s Lady Lucy Houston was one of the richest women in England and a household name, notorious for her virulent criticisms of the government, ...

A Very Stable Genius

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig are both Pulitzer Prize winning journalists at the Washington Post.They've written a new book with yet more revelation...

Dresden. 75 years on.

09 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

75 years ago this week Dresden, in Saxony, known as the ‘jewel box’ because of its stunning architecture was obliterated by British and Ameri...

The British Republic

06 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Lay, editor of History Today, has written a great book about the rise and fall of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate (1653–1659), England's sole ex...

Flu pandemics. Then and Now.

05 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

'We are very very vulnerable' says the brilliant science author and journalist Laura Spinney. Her fantastic book 'Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 ...

Confronting a Nazi past

04 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Derek Niemman and Noemie Lopian work together. Two people from very different backgrounds, they tour the world telling people about their family stori...

Night of the Bayonets

29 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Max Eisen: Surviving Auschwitz

27 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Max Eisen was only 15 when he and his family were taken from their Hungarian home to the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Second World...

UnRoman Britain

26 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How far did Roman culture and politics penetrate into Britain during the Roman occupation of Britannia?Miles Russell, archaeologist and writer, argues...

The Anglo-Zulu War

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Saul David - historian, broadcaster and author of several critically-acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction - comes on the show to discuss the mos...

Hunting the Bismarck

20 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In May 1941, the Royal Navy pursued Nazi Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck, in the greatest chase story in the history of naval warfare. Bism...

The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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...

'Seducing and Killing Nazis'

15 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During the Second World War the Netherlands fell to advancing German forces in just a few hours. The Dutch found themselves under Nazi occupation. Man...

How History Inspires Environmental Activism

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The world faces a unique environmental challenge. The scale of response to this looming catastrophe can be overwhelming. But economist and activist An...

The Commando Raid that Changed the Course of WW2

12 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1942 the British launched a small raid on the Channel Island of Sark. A cast of characters who gave their colleague Ian Fleming ideas for a...

Sam Mendes on 1917

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast Dan talks to Golden Globe winning film maker Sam Mendes about his new World War One film 1917.Based in part on an account told to Mend...

The Persian War

08 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 5th century BC the world's first super power, the Persian Empire, went to war against a ragtag collection of cities and statelets on its wester...