Travels Through Time

Neil Oliver: Skara Brae (2,500 BC)

Today we speak to the archeologist and broadcaster Neil Oliver, a figure familiar to millions in the UK. While Oliver's television work has taken him around the world, he retains a special connection to his Scottish homeland. One historical site, in particular, continues to enchant him: Skara Brae.
Skara Brae on the wind scoured Orkney Islands is the best-preserved Neolithic settlement in all of western Europe. Embedded inside its stone houses and in the surviving monuments are tantalising clues to how our ancient ancestors lived and how they died.
In this episode Oliver takes us back four and a half millennia to around 2,500BC to see Skara Brae as a dynamic, living community. He then explains the mysteries that surround its abandoment and considers the significance of the settlement to us today.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Neil Oliver's new book, A History of the World in 100 Moments is available now.
Show notes
Scene One: A day in the life of Skara Brae
Scene Two: The great mystery of the settlement's abandonment
Scene Three: Where did the people go?
Memento: A sharp stone knife
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Neil Oliver
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Michael Pye: The City at the Hub of the World (1549)

In the sixteenth-century there was nowhere quite like Antwerp. Tolerant, energetic, independent, vibrant; Antwerp sat at the heart of a busy and growing trading network. After the Portuguese moved the spice trade to Antwerp it became a fierce rival to Venice.
It was a place that many came to call. 'the city at the hub of the world.'
Today’s guest is the historian, columnist and broadcaster Michael Pye. For many years Pye has been investigating Antwerp’s distinctive culture and unique place in European history. In this episode he guides us back into the rowdy streets of Europe’s busiest port.
Antwerp was, he points out, a haven for Jews and hard-line Protestants, and a playground for just about everyone else.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order Michael Pye’s book from our friends at John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Show notes
Scene One: September, Charles V’s ceremonial entry into Antwerp with his son Philip.
Scene Two: The King of Sweden sends Jacob Binck to Antwerp to check on the progress of a tomb he had commissioned.
Scene Three: Italian merchant and conman Simone Turchi’s luck begins to run out as his past catches up with him, ending with his public execution.
Memento: A baboon
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Michael Pye
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Susan Denham Wade: The Gutenberg Press (1454)

Today’s exhilarating episode takes us on a trip to the fifteenth-century, to see one of the greatest of all technological inventions at the moment of its creation: the Gutenberg Press.
Until the mid-fifteenth century European society had had a predominantly oral culture. The books that did exist were expensive manuscripts, produced by scribes in scriptoriums, each of them taking weeks or months to complete.
At the Frankfurt Trade Fair in 1454 something appeared that would change this. Among the English wool and French wine, one tradesman was selling a new kind of regularly printed manuscript, produced by a mysterious machine in the nearby town of Mainz.
The flutter of interest these pages generated was more than warranted. In fact, fair-goers were the first people to get a glimpse of Johannes Gutenberg’s magnificent Bible.
This was a book that would catalyse the shift from script to print, changing the world as it went.
Guiding us through this enchanting historical story is the author Susan Denham Wade. The author of A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions, Denham Wade explains the brilliance of Gutenberg’s invention and why it appeared at the time it did.
This episode of Travels Through Time is supported by The History Press. To read a beautifully illustrated, exclusive extract from A History of Seeing, head over to the newly launched Unseen Histories.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our own website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: Mainz, Spring 1454. A middle-aged man delivers a parcel to an office in the Church of St Martin, wrapped in cloth. Inside are 200 printed indulgences. The man making the delivery is Johann Gutenberg.
Scene Two: Summer 1454.  A workshop near a riverbank in Mainz, Germany.  Gutenberg’s printing presses are working frantically on producing the monumental Bible project.
Scene Three: October 1454. Frankfurt’s famous trade fair. The Italian cardinal Piccolomini – future Pope Pius II, but at this point Bishop of Siena – catches a first glimpse of Gutenberg’s Bible. He is amazed at the beauty, accuracy and clarity.
Memento: A handful of original Gutenberg type.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Susan Denham Wade
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Bernard Cornwell: The Battle of Waterloo (1815)

One of the world’s great historical novelists takes us back to one of the most dramatic and consequential moments in European history. Bernard Cornwell is our guide to the Battle of Waterloo.
Waterloo. That single word is enough to conjure up images of Napoleon with his great bicorn hat and the daring emperor’s nemesis, the Duke of Wellington. Over the course of twelve or so hours on a Sunday at the start of summer, these two commanders met on a battle in modern-day Belgium, to settle the future of Europe.
For a battle so vast is size and significance, it still has some elusive elements. Historians cannot agree on when it started. The movement of the troops is still subject to debate. Wellington, who might have been best qualified to answer these riddles, preferred not to speak of Waterloo. His famously laconic verdict was simply that it was ‘the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.’
Few people are as qualified to analyse this tangled history as Bernard Cornwall. For forty years he has been writing about this period of history through his ‘Sharpe’ series of books.
As Cornwall publishes his first new Sharpe novel for fifteen years, we take the opportunity to ask him about the battle that was central to all. Over a brilliantly analytical hour, he walks us through the battlefield, in three telling scenes.
*
Click here to order Bernard Cornwell’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Show Notes
Scene One: Sunday June 18th, 11.10 am.  Napoleon orders his grand battery to start firing
Scene Two: Sunday June 18th, 8.00 pm. Napoleon sends the Imperial Guard to save the battle.
Scene Three: Sunday June 18th, 10.00 pm.  Wellington weeps over the casualties.
Memento: A heavy cavalry sword, carried in an attack at Waterloo
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Bernard Cornwell
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Stephen Greenblatt: The Death of Christopher Marlowe (1593)

Welcome to Season Five! In this first episode we sit down with one of the world’s finest historians. Stephen Greenblatt takes us back to the late sixteenth century to witness the death of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe.
In 1593 Marlowe was the toast of London. Thousands flocked to the theatres that lined the River Thames to see his hit plays, The Jew of Malta, Dr Faustus and Tamberlaine. Then, one spring afternoon, Marlowe was killed in an altercation at the home of Dame Eleanor Bull house in Deptford.
The facts of what happened that day have been contested ever since. Today Marlowe’s death is considered one of the great mysteries in literary history. In this episode of Travels Through Time, Greenblatt takes us back to a time of religious fervour, spies and suspicion, to weigh the evidence.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 30 May 1593. Marlowe meets three others at a house belonging to Eleanor Bull in Deptford, a busy port to the east of the city of London.
Scene Two: 5 May 1593. A placard is found pinned to a church used by Dutch immigrants threatening them with death if they did not leave the country and signed ‘Tamburlaine’.
Scene Three: New Year 1593/4. The Earl of Essex accuses the Queen’s personal physician, Rodrigo Lopez, of plotting to poison her, resulting in his trial and death.
Memento: The political climate of 1593 as a warning today.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Professor Stephen Greenblatt
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Season Five Trailer!

Hello to one and all! Almost two months has whizzed by since we rounded off our fourth season with Maximilien Robespierre’s execution in Revolutionary Paris. In that time we’ve had a good rest, spent lots of time reading and now we’re back to start all over again.
Our new season of recordings will begin this coming Tuesday with a fascinating conversation between Violet Moller and one of the world’s greatest living scholars: the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Professor Stephen Greenblatt.
Thereafter we’ll be off to the Battle of Waterloo, to Sicily and Australia, Ancient Egypt and Modern London, and many other places besides.
New episodes will be released on Tuesdays and to get the first news of them make sure you subscribe to our feeds on Apple Podcasts (UK, US, AU), Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you get your podcasts.
We hope you enjoy this little trailer. See you soon!

Colin Jones: The Fall of Robespierre (1794)

227 years to the day since Maximilien Robespierre went to the guillotine we investigate the circumstances of his downfall.
In this brilliantly analytical episode, Professor Colin Jones, one of the finest living scholars of early modern France, takes us back to one of the most dramatic episodes in all political history: 9-10 Thermidor in the Revolutionary Calendar, or 27-28 July in ours.
As Jones explains, Robespierre began 9 Thermidor feeling relatively secure as he went to sleep in his austere lodgings near the Place de la Révolution. By the time the sun set into the summer horizon, his position was parlous. The next day he would be dead.
The story and characters that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time are drawn from Jones’s forthcoming book, The Fall of Robespierre: twenty four hours in Revolutionary Paris, which will soon be published by Oxford University Press.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 12 midnight 8-9 Thermidor: Robespierre in his lodgings.
Scene Two: Some time in the evening – maybe around 9 pm – in the Place de la Maison Commune (Place de l’Hotel de Ville), a National Guard company discussing what is going on and what decision they should make over who to support.
Scene Three: Robespierre at midnight 9-10 Thermidor: reflecting on the day and his and the Revolution’s future.
Memento: Robespierre’s last letter.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Professor Colin Jones
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Alex Renton: Blood Legacy (1839)

How does a person reckon with a disturbing episode in their family’s past? For the journalist and historian Alex Renton, this question became acute five years ago when he realised the extent of his family’s involvement with slavery. In his book, Blood Legacy, Renton decided to confront this history head-on.
As Renton describes in this episode, his approach is unusual in a British society that either avoids the subject of slavery, or prefers to recast the story in the celebratory terms of William Wilberforce and the Abolition Movement.
The reality, however, is not so comfortable. Renton takes us back to the 1830s, to the very moment slavery was abolished across the British Empire. He explains that during this time pragmatism was at play as well as principle, and that while very many families lost their slaves, they also became spectacularly rich.
Alex Renton is a campaigning journalist working on poverty, development, the environment, food culture and food policy. He has won awards for investigative journalism, war reporting and food writing.
Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery is an account of his own family’s involvement in slavery during the 18th and 19th centuries. 
More about this episode and the subject matter it engages with will be shortly be available on website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: August 1st 1838, Falmouth, Jamaica. William Knibb and his congregation meet to bury a coffin containing a whip, chains and an iron punishment collar. An inscription by the burial reads: 'Colonial Slavery died 31st July 1838, aged 276.'
Scene Two: August 28th 1839, Ayrshire, Scotland. The Eglinton Tournament begins.
Scene Three: 1839, Rochdale. The founders of the Anti-Corn Law League, Richard Cobden and John Bright deliver their first speeches in what would become one of the most successful campaigns of the 19th century. The trade reforms they campaigned for would destroy the sugar island economies and put most of the newly liberated people out of work and into desperate poverty for the next 50 years.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Alex Renton
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Ellen Alpsten: The Tsarinas and Peter the Great (1709)

According to one critic, the world the novelist Ellen Alpsten conjures in her book The Tsarina's Daughter makes Game of Thrones 'look like a nursery rhyme.'
This world - the Russia of Peter the Great - is our destination in this week's episode. Peter the Great is known as the man who struggled in the early eighteenth-century to transform his country into a modern, West-facing nation by defeating the Swedes, founding St Petersburg, and creating a navy.
Yet his much-celebrated achievements should be considered alongside the conditions of the Russian people at this time. Russia was a land whose greatest natural resource were its beleaguered inhabitants. Here were millions of serfs whose disposable lives made anything possible for its omnipotent ruler, the Tsar.
Everything that belonged to a Russian belonged first and foremost to him. And with a nation of slaves at his beck and call, pretty much anything could be achieved through ruthlessness and ambition.   
For the women around him, however, the world was quite different. Kept as private possessions, hidden away in the great palaces and stately homes of the aristocracy, they were seen only by their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Uneducated, isolated, and entirely dependent on the will of the men around them.
Even so, many did manage to lead astonishing lives. It is these women whose stories Ellen Alpsten tells us all about, as we venture back to the year 1709.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: The battlefield outside the Ukrainian city of Poltava
Scene Two: The Red Square outside the Kremlin fortress
Scene Three: A bedchamber in the magical timber palace of Kolomenskoye
Memento: Elisabeth’s St Nicholas amulet, studded with diamonds, which she wore around her neck for protection.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Ellen Alpsten
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Alasdair Cross: The Spitfire and the Schneider Trophy (1925)

This week marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Britain. In that perilous moment of the Second World War, with the Nazi forces gathered just across the English Channel, the British people put their faith in the pilots of the RAF and that most captivating of aeroplanes: the Spitfire.
The Spitfire is widely known as a masterpiece of British engineering. It could fly at speeds of around 400mph and it had enormous dexterity, making it a formidable foe in a dogfight. But where did these qualities come from? In today’s episode the writer and radio producer Alasdair Cross takes us back to 1925’s Schneider Trophy to show us the genesis of this fabled aeroplane.
Alasdair Cross is a successful radio and TV producer and the co-author of The Spitfire Kids: The generation who built, supported and flew Britain's most beloved fighter.
Brought up in the Orkney Islands, an annual summer treat was Britain’s smallest air show, once memorably visited by a powder pink Spitfire. He has worked on many BBC programmes as well as the popular BBC World Service podcast Spitfire: The People’s Plane.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 3 January 1925 - Chamber of Deputies in Rome, Italy- Mussolini makes a speech which effectively makes him dictator of Italy. So begins the new age of the dictators, but also a time of glamour and speed.
Scene Two: 10 March 1925, Supermarine factory, Southampton, UK. Henri Biard flies the Southampton flying boat for the first time. This is the aircraft that establishes the reputation of RJ Mitchell and ensures the longevity and prosperity of the Supermarine company.
Scene Three: 23 October 1925. Baltimore, USA. This is the location for the Schneider Trophy race of 1925.  Mitchell’s revolutionary S4, the precursor of the Spitfire, crashes. Mitchell has stretched too far but will learn an enormous amount from the experience.
Memento: Henri Biard’s flying suit.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Alasdair Cross
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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