Travels Through Time

Mike Jay: Radicals (1799)

In this episode of Travels Through Time the author and cultural historian Mike Jay takes us back to 1799 – a year of anxiety, action and excitement on the cusp of a new century.
The 1790s: A Revolutionary Age
Although the 1790s is often overlooked, it was an extraordinary, bewildering and formative decade in European history. The early years of the decade were filled with excitement and energy. People of all political stripes realised that the powerful forces that had been set loose by the French Revolution were set to transform the old societies they knew. By the year 1800 this transformation had indeed happened. But it was not as people had anticipated. Many dreams had “crashed and burned” along the way.
Mike Jay has written extensively on this period of history, examining the powerful confluence of science, politics and culture in a series of books. In this episode of our podcast he takes us back to 1799 to meet three “admirable and flawed” characters whose stories tell us much about the time. These are the political prisoner Colonel Edward Marcus Despard whose battle with the establishment is retold in the new series of Poldark; an inmate of the Royal Bethlam Hospital called James Tilly Matthews; and Humphry Davy, an inspired young experimenter, whose work on the medicinal properties of nitrous oxide – soon to earn its colloquial name “laughing gas” - would pass into legend.
Scene One: New Year’s Day, 1799, Colonel Despard imprisoned without trial in Coldbath Fields, London.
Scene Two: 24 June, 1799, Midsummer Day, James Tilly Matthews and John Haslam in the Royal Bethlem Hospital.
Scene Three: Boxing Day, 1799, Humphry Davy’s famous experiment on nitrous oxide at the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol.
Memento: One of Humphry Davy’s little green bags, used for inhaling gases, as manufactured by James Watt of The Lunar Society.
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Mike Jay
Producer: Maria Nolan
Read a new piece about Edward and Catherine Despard
More from History Today
The Unhappy Mansion by Anna Jamieson on the Royal Bethlam Hospital
Humphry Davy and the Murder Lamp by Max Adams
Myth, Reality and William Pitt the Younger by R.E. Foster
Summer holidays ...
This is the last episode of the first season of Travels Through Time. Season Two starts on the first Tuesday in September. Thank you for listening!

[Live] Diarmaid MacCulloch: Thomas Cromwell (1536)

The Fall of Anne Boleyn
“I think Anne Boleyn’s fatal mistake was to snigger at the King in the presence of handsome young men. And I don’t think she did anything more than that.” - (Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch)
Thomas Cromwell, a self-described “ruffian”, was King Henry VIII’s chief minister in the 1530s. He was clever, driven and ruthless, qualities that have captivated novelists and historians for generations as they have attempted to capture his mysterious essence.
The year 1536 saw Cromwell at the peak of his career. As chief administrator of the realm he had vast and wide-ranging powers, but he also had enemies. Prominent among these was the King’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. In one of the most infamous episodes in all of English history, the spring of 1536 saw Cromwell and Anne in combat for their lives. The story concluded with Anne Boleyn’s execution at the Tower of London in May.
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch and Thomas Cromwell
In this live episode of Travels Through Time, recorded at the Buxton International Festival, we revisit the high-wire act of Henry VIII’s court with Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch of the University of Oxford. Diarmaid is a hugely respected scholar of Tudor England and the Reformation and last year he published his authoritative Thomas Cromwell: A Life.
In three tantalising scenes, Diarmaid guides us through 1536 from Thomas Cromwell’s point of view. He shows us a plot, a rebellion and a triumph: scenes that take us to the very heart of one of the pivotal times in English history.
Scene One: 24 May 1536: Ambassador Eustache Chapuys and Thomas Cromwell debriefing after the execution of Anne Boleyn. The inside story of Tudor politics and Cromwell's quiet alliance with the Lady Mary against Queen Anne.
Scene Two: The moment (no direct information, so supposition necessary) around 3 October 1536 when King Henry VIII was told of the Lincolnshire Rising, after the government had been looking in the wrong place for trouble.
Scene Three: 22 December 1536: Thomas Cromwell sits in his house at the Rolls listening to the sounds of the magnificent procession of the King from Whitehall to Greenwich down Fleet Street. He and the King have apparently yielded to all the demands of the Pilgrims of the North and their leader Robert Aske is due to spend Christmas with the King. In fact, after the remarkable turnaround in November, the King is backing Cromwell and will betray the rebels.
Memento: The keyboard that Mark Smeaton played for Anne Boleyn
Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCulloch is now available in paperback from Penguin
Credits
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch
Recording/Live Mix: Hannah Griffiths
Post production: Maria Nolan
More from History Today
Derek Wilson on Thomas Cromwell: Brewer’s Boy Made Good
Andy Holroyde on Predicting the Fall of Anne Boleyn
Suzannah Lipscomb on Who Was Henry VIII?

Prof. Mary Fulbrook: The Holocaust (1942)

The Holocaust
The Holocaust is the bleakest, blackest, most disturbing moment in our human story. It involved the systematic murder of millions of Jews, minority and vulnerable groups by the Nazis during their reign of terror in Europe in the 1940s. To understand how such crimes could be committed, historians have been forced to engage with this painful past.
Few books have laid the crimes and consequences of the Holocaust as bare as Professor Mary Fulbrook’s Reckonings: legacies of Nazi persecutions and the quest for justice (2018). Fulbrook said that she was driven to write the book – which identifies the crimes and traces their effects on the generations that followed – by ‘an enduring sense of injustice’, that the vast majority of those who perpetrated the Holocaust, or who made it possible, evaded responsibility for their crimes.
The Wolfson History Prize
Last month Reckonings was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, one of the UK’s most prestigious history awards. The judges called it ‘masterly’; a work that ‘explores the shifting boundaries and structures of memory.’
In this special Wolfson History Prize episode of Travels Through Time we talk to Professor Fulbrook about Reckonings, a book that she wrote filled with a sense of ‘moral outrage’. In a twist on our usual format, we examine the Nazi genocide through three human interactions with three crime scenes: a ghetto, a labour camp and an extermination camp.
Scene One: Melita Maschman looks at the Litzmannstadt (Łódź) ghetto in the incorporated Warthegau area of Poland, now part of the Greater German Reich, and later reflects on it in her 1963 memoirs.
Scene Two: Mielec, southern Poland, part of the General Government under the Third Reich. Perpetrators include Walter Thormeyer and Rudolf Zimmermann, later sentenced in West and East Germany respectively; and implications for their families.
Scene Three: Oświęcim (Auschwitz), c. 1943-5, seen through the eyes of a schoolteacher, Marianne B., as recounted in her 1999 memoirs.
More about Reckonings at Oxford University Press.
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Professor Mary Fulbrook
Producer: Maria Nolan
Read More from History Today
Mensturation and the Holocaust by Jo-Ann Owusu
Poland and Holocaust History by Cressida Trew
Hitler and the Holocaust by Alan Farmer

Lesley Downer: Commodore Perry (1853)

"The most momentous event in Japanese history"
Commodore Matthew Perry’s expedition to Japan in 1853 changed the course of the island’s history. Long into the nineteenth century Japan had been regarded by the growing group of Western nations as a hermit kingdom, known for its stubborn resistance to outsiders. Prior to Perry’s Expedition, it was connected to the Euro-centric world of trade and commerce only by a single Dutch outpost near Nagasaki that was visited by a single ship each year.
Throughout this period of isolation, Japan’s rich and intricate society had developed under the rule of the shoguns. But interference from outside powers was increasingly feared and anticipated. The crucial moment came in July 1853 when the United States government despatched Commodore Perry on a speculative mission to forge relations.
Perry’s arrival in Edo Bay
In this episode of Travels Through Time, the writer and historian Lesley Downer takes us back to the moment that Perry’s fleet of ships sails into Edo Bay – modern-day Tokyo. She describes the meaningful coming together of two contrasting worlds: the confusion, the power play and the consequences, in three vivid scenes. The Japanese, as the American’s find out, know more much about the world than they anticipated.
Scene One: Friday July 8/Edo Bay. Commodore Perry’s four ‘Black Ships’ steam right up to the little town of Uraga, at the entrance to Edo Bay, threatening the capital, Edo (now Tokyo).
Scene Two: Monday July 12th/Edo Bay. Kayama Eizaemon, Police Magistrate of Uraga, is taken on a tour of the flagship to celebrate having negotiated Perry’s delivery of his letter and is shown a globe. The Americans assume he doesn’t know the earth is round. He nonchalantly points out New York and Washington DC.
Scene Three: Wednesday July 14th/ Edo Bay. Perry goes on shore to deliver his letter, accompanied by stewards and a squadron of guards playing ‘Hail Columbia.’
This period of history is chronicled in Lesley Downer’s Shogun Quartet of novels.
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Lesley Downer
Producer: Maria Nolan

Dr Peter Caddick-Adams: D-Day (1944)

The D-Day landings
Operation Overlord was one of the critical moments of the Second World War. It began on 6 June 1944 when the Allied forces landed around 150,000 troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.
Today, 6 June 1944 is commonly remembered as D-Day. Within a year of that date Europe was liberated, the NAZI regime was totally defeated and its figurehead Adolf Hitler was dead.
In this episode of Travels Through Time, the lecturer and military historian Dr Peter Caddick-Adams takes us back to May and June 1944.
The D-Day beaches
We watch the final exercises for D-Day going forward across the south coast of England and then we travel across the Channel with the Allied forces to the operational beaches: Omaha, Utah, Sword, Juno and Gold. The events that happened at this time and across these places would change the course of twentieth century history.
Scene One: 2/3 May 1944, Operation Fabius, south coast of England
Scene Two: 15 May 1944, The Thunderclap Conference. St Paul’s School, London. Final briefing for Operation Overlord.
Scene Three: 6 June 1944, Sword Beach, Normandy, France.
More about Sand and Steel by Dr Peter Caddick- Adams: https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1062921/peter-caddick-adams.html
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Dr Peter Caddick-Adams
Producer: Maria Nolan
Reading: Ryan Bernsten (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/50-states-of-mind/id1458481030)

Dr Daisy Dunn: Vesuvius (79 AD)

Early one afternoon in the year 79 AD, a seventeen year-old boy looked out from the window of his villa across the Bay of Naples. He saw a great cloud, ‘both strange and enormous in appearance’, rising from the top of a hill over the luxuriant landscape of Campania. This boy would be remembered by history as Pliny the Younger. The event he was about to witness was one of the most shocking and spectacular to ever take place in the ancient world: the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
The hours that followed that first observation were full of drama and tragedy. Pliny decided against joining his uncle – the naval commander and writer Pliny the Elder – as he embarked on a fateful rescue mission across the bay. He himself was caught up in the mass evacuation as panicking crowds fled the burning mountain.
In this episode of Travels Through Time, Dr Daisy Dunn takes us back to 79 AD and through the events of those days and surrounding months. While doing so she introduces us to both Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, two significant characters who together tell us so much today about life in the ancient Roman world.
Scene One: Reate, June 79 AD, the death of Vespasian, accession of Titus and introduction of Pliny the Elder
Scene Two: Bay of Naples, August/October (timing disputed) 79 AD. Eruption of Vesuvius (survival of Pliny the Younger; death of Pliny the Elder)
Scene Three: Basilica Julia, Rome, 79/80 AD Pliny the Younger becomes heir and adopted son of his uncle and embarks upon his legal career in the Court of One Hundred Men in Rome.
Dr Daisy Dunn’s website: http://www.daisydunn.co.uk
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Dr Daisy Dunn
Producer: Maria Nolan

Dr Lucasta Miller: ‘LEL’ (1838)

"The gambler who lost touch with the dangers"
Although Letitia Landon – or “L.E.L.’s” – name is scarcely known outside specialist circles today, in the 1820s she was one of the brightest stars of the London literary scene. In the fast-evolving publishing world of literary monthlies and quarterlies, L.E.L. burst onto the scene as a true celebrity. She thrived due to the quality of her verse and the mystery of her persona. For several years the question tantalised. Just who was this writer that hid behind the laconic acronym? It turned out, when L.E.L.’s identity was revealed in 1824, that she was – in her mother’s words – “a girl addicted to writing poetry.”
In this episode of Travels Through Time, the literary historian and journalist Dr Lucasta Miller tells us about L.E.L.’s life and then takes us back to 1838 to witness her sad and contested end. It’s a story that ranges from the churches of London to the old slaving posts of west Africa, fusing together contrasting histories in the most unexpected of ways. As with the literary career that had gone before it, the manner of L.E.L’s death was left open to interpretation.
Scene One: 7 June 1838, L.E.L.’s wedding to George Maclean in London
Scene Two: Late August 1838, Cape Coast Castle, west Africa
Scene Three: The morning of 15 October 1838, L.E.L.’s death, Cape Coast Castle
L.E.L. The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron”  https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/107/1070406/l-e-l/9780224079396.html
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Dr Lucasta Miller
Producer: Maria Nolan

Prof. Jonathan Phillips: Saladin (1187)

Saladin and the capture of Jerusalem: Professor Jonathan Phillips (1187)
For the Christian crusaders of the twelfth-century, Jerusalem was the ultimate prize. The holy city had been captured from the Muslims in 1099 as part of the First Crusade to the Holy Land. In 1187, the counter-crusade, led by the Sultan Saladin, was at last poised to wrest it back.
In this latest episode of Travels Through Time, Professor Jonathan Phillips of Royal Holloway University becomes our guide to the bloody events of the high Middle Ages. He takes us to watch Sultan Saladin’s decisive victory at the Battle of Hattin, which culminated in the dramatic capture of the True Cross. Then we look on as Sultan Saladin - one of the supreme military leaders of any age – marches on Jerusalem to complete the return of the sacred city.
What happened next, over the months of September and October, was surprisingly magnanimous. The events of 1187 brought to history not only one of the pivotal moments of the Medieval Age, it also established the reputation that Saladin has enjoyed ever since.
Scene One: The evening of 2 July 1187, the tent of Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem. Guy makes his fateful decision to march out to try to lift the siege of Tiberias. This is the prelude to the Battle of Hattin.
Scene Two: The Siege of Jerusalem, September 1187
Scene Three: Saladin's entry into Jerusalem on 2 October 1187
The Life and Legend of Sultan Saladin by Professor Jonathan Phillips: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/109/1093190/the-life-and-the-legend-of-the-sultan-saladin/9781847922144.html
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Professor Jonathan Phillips
Producer: Maria Nolan

Kassia St Clair: Apollo 11 (1969)

Fifty years ago humankind stepped on the moon for the first time. This is the story of the space suit that allowed them to do it.
Millions of Britons stayed up through the night of 20/21 July 1969 to experience one of the most iconic moments of the twentieth century. They watched on their TV sets, part of a global audience of 528 million, as Neil Armstrong edged down a ladder from the lunar module to become the first human to set foot on the moon. It was a definitive moment in the history of humankind and, for those watching, it became a shared experience like few others.
This latest episode of Travels Through Time begins at the moment Armstrong’s foot presses down onto the powdery surface of the moon. Most people have a vivid image of the scene: the grey lunar surface, the total blackness of space, the white lights and the fluttering Stars and Stripes. But what about the space suits that enabled Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to survive in such a hostile environment?
In three scenes the writer and cultural historian Kassia St Clair takes us from that iconic moment back to the JFK Space Centre and a sewing room floor in Delaware to show how these space suits – quiet wonders of technology themselves – were made, often using traditional techniques.
Scene One: Sea of Tranquillity, Lunar Surface, 2.56am GMT July 21st 1969
Scene Two: John F. Kennedy Space Center, US, 3.30am local time, July 16th 1969
Scene Three: Sewing floor of Playtex (ILC) Dover, Delaware, early months of 1969
Kassia St Clair’s website: http://www.kassiastclair.com/
Social:
Presenter: Peter Moore (@petermoore)
Guest: Kassia St Clair (@kassiastclair)
Producer: Maria Nolan
Audio extracts from the NASA archive. Used under the terms of their media use guidelines for educational purposes.

Andrew Roberts: Winston Churchill (1940)

Walking with Destiny: Winston Churchill becomes prime minister in May 1940
In seventy two hours in the middle of May 1940, Britain’s political leadership was transformed. Out went the undistinguished, dithering government led by Neville Chamberlain, known for its failed policy of appeasement. It was replaced by a new regime of ‘growling defiance’, headed by the pugnacious and polarising Winston Churchill.
This political change coincided with the NAZI ‘blitzkrieg’ invasion of western Europe. In this latest episode of Travels Through Time, the historian and biographer Andrew Roberts takes us back to those tense and dramatic days, 8-10 May 1940. We watch as Chamberlain suffers the humiliation of the Norway Debate in the House of Commons and as he attempts to cling to power in Number Ten Downing Street the following day.
On 10 May 1940 Churchill was summoned to meet King George VI. This event, Andrew Roberts argues, Churchill had foreseen as he destiny many decades before.
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Scene One: The Norway Debate, the House of Commons, 7-8 May 1940
Scene Two: Number Ten Downing Street, 9 May 1940
Scene Three: Buckingham Palace, 10 May 1940
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Andrew Roberts’s website: https://www.andrew-roberts.net/
Churchill: Walking with Destiny: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/284916/churchill/9780241205631.html
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Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Andrew Roberts
Producer: Maria Nolan