Richard Maher, author of Sir Charles Wogan: Jacobite Soldier, Royal Agent and Man of Letters, joins Vices & Volumes to tell the extraordinary story of one of Ireland's most overlooked historical figures — a man from Kildare who smuggled a royal princess out of an Austrian palace in a snowstorm, and a researcher who spent eleven years and several trips to Spanish, French, and British archives piecing the story back together.From spiking a courier's drink on an Alpine road to outrunning the British spy network across the Alps, Wogan's 1719 rescue of Clementina Sobieska reads less like history and more like a very well-organised heist. Richard also takes us inside the Archivo General de Simancas — a 16th century castle in León containing 33 million documents — where he found one page written in Wogan's own hand, buried in a year's worth of 18th century military correspondence.We also talk about what it actually feels like to hold a 300-year-old letter written by the person you've spent a decade researching, and Richard's upcoming career break to follow Wogan's trail into a private French archive.Features discussion of Sir Charles Wogan by Richard Maher (2024) and primary sources from the Stuart Papers and Archivo General de Simancas.If you enjoy the show, you can support Vices & Volumes at ko-fi.com/vicesandvolumes — every contribution keeps the books open and the archives visited.

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