Travels Through Time

Sarah Bakewell: Petrarch and Boccaccio (1348*)

Today the bestselling and prize-winning author Sarah Bakewell takes us back to the mid-fourteenth century. This was a time of great hardship when politics was violently fractured and when the plague was ripping across Europe. But at this singular moment in Western history two figures of genius, Petrarch and Boccaccio, started their pioneering literary work. In doing so they became, as Bakewell explains, ‘the first of the great literary humanists’.
This is the starting point of Sarah Bakewell’s new book, Humanly Possible, a broad and sweeping history of humanism. In this episode she takes us back to these uncertain first moments, when first Petrarch and then Boccaccio started to hunt for ancient manuscripts and to distil their learning into ambitious literary works of their own.
Sarah Bakewell’s new book is Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking*, Enquiry and Hope. It will be published next week.
*In homage to this freethinking, we’ve given Sarah a little more leeway (three years instead of the usual one) than usual this week.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 1348. Parma.  The Black Death spreads around the Italian peninsula as well as much of the rest of Europe. The writer Francesco Petrarch, living in Parma, does not catch it, but many of his friends die, including "Laura", the woman who inspired many of his most beautiful love sonnets.
Scene Two: 1349. Parma, Padua and Florence.  This first outbreak of the disease recedes (though not for long).  Driven by a pervasive sense of loss, Petrarch - now mostly living in Padua - starts gathering copies of the letters he had written to friends over the years. 
Scene Three: 1350. Florence. Petrarch and Boccaccio meet. Petrarch is passing through Florence, visiting the city of his exiled family's origins for the first time in his life.
Memento: A cutting from one of Petrarch experiments with one his laurel bushes.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Sarah Bakewell
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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Nandini Das: The first English embassy to India (1616)

The relationship between England and India is a deep and complex one. In this episode the academic and author of Courting India, Nandini Das, takes us back to a significant moment at the very beginning of this relationship. She tells us all about Sir Thomas Roe, the courtier who led the first English embassy to India.
Roe's mission was an exciting and a daunting one. Stories about the riches of India had long been exchanged in England and, when he stepped ashore in Surat in 1615, he was able to see the might of the great Mughal Empire for himself. In contrast, England was regarded by many as an island of little consequence.
But, as Das explains, there was one figure that Roe was desperate to impress. This was the richest man in the world, the fourth Mughal emperor, Jahangir. In early 1616, after arriving in Ajmer, he would get his chance.
Nandini Das is professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the English faculty at the University of Oxford. Brought up in India, she was educated at the Jadavpur University in Kolkata, before moving to England for further study. Her book, Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire is out this week.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 10 January 1616, Mughal imperial court (durbar), Ajmer. The first meeting between Roe and the emperor, Jahangir.
Scene Two: 24 May 1616, imperial private audience chambers, Ajmer. Roe desperately clings on to his English identity and has a problem with a runaway Englishman who wants to enter Mughal service.
Scene Three: 18 December 1616. In the Mughal imperial procession (lashkar) across Rajasthan, following the emperor Jahangir. Roe
Memento: A miniature portrait, belonging to Thomas Roe.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Nandini Das
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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[From the archives] Ariana Neumann: When Time Stopped (1944)

In this deeply moving episode from 2020 the New York Times bestselling author Ariana Neuman told her father's extraordinary story for the very first time. Hans Neumann was a young Jewish man from Prague who managed to outwit the Nazis and survive the Holocaust.
Ariana Neumann grew up in the Venezuela of the 1970s and 1980s. This was a land of possibility and progress. Her father Hans Neumann - a hugely successful industrialist and patron of the arts – epitomised both these characteristics.
But while Hans was outwardly a paragon of success and strength, there were parts of his private self that were unsettling to his close family. He would wake at night screaming in a language his daughter did not understand. He hardly ever mentioned his childhood in central Europe. He never said that he was Jewish. ‘Life,’ he would tell his daughter, ‘was to be lived in the present.’
On his death in September 2001, Ariana discovered a box of papers and photographs that her father had left her. They became the starting point for a personal investigation into her father’s European family and an unspoken history of horrific persecution and enthralling survival during the Holocaust.
This episode of Travels Through Time was recorded on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. During the course of this conversation Ariana guides us back to the drama and tragedy of the year 1944: a defining year for the Neumann family of Prague.
To see Hans’s doll, Zdenka ring and the Jan’s identity card – some of the objects discussed during the course of this conversation – please visit our website.
When Time Stopped was published internationally in February 2020. It was an instant New York Times Bestseller.
Show notes:
Scene One: June 23 1944, Red Cross Visit to the Camp of Terezín, CZ. The place is beautified. Thousands are sent to Auschwitz to ease overcrowding and a charade is enacted to fool the International Red Cross inspectors.
Scene Two: September 29/30 1944, The arrival of transport EI in Auschwitz, Poland.
Scene Three: October 9 1944, Berlin Germany. Hans Neumann has been hiding in plain sight and using a fictitious identity. He receives a summons (issued October 5th) to appear in the Nazi District Court in Prague. Going back to Prague and appearing in court would, almost certainly, mean death.
Memento: The sound of Otto Neumann humming the folk song Golem.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Ariana Neumann
Producer: Maria Nolan

Nicholas Spencer: The Great Debate (1860)

This week we tackle the fascinating and complex relationship between science and religion, in the company of the academic and writer Nicholas Spencer.
Spencer takes us back to a dramatic moment of conflict that began at the end of the 1850s with the publication of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of the Species. This book ignited a fierce debate about his new theory of natural selection and of humanity’s place in the world.
The feud would become increasingly bitter over the year that followed. It would ultimately lead to the famous Oxford debate between T.H. Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”) and Bishop “Soapy” Sam Wilberforce in June 1860.
Spencer guides us through all this history, taking us back to meet Darwin himself. He gives us an insight into Darwin's personal life, his relationships with his wife and family and the effect losing his beloved daughter Annie had on his faith in God.
Nicholas Spencer is a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London and director of the think tank Theos, which investigates the place of faith in society. His new book is, Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: Charles Darwin receiving a letter from clergyman and novelist Charles Kingsley, in November 1859, congratulating him on The Origin of Species, an advance copy of which he has just read.
Scene Two: The publication of the most controversial book of the age – not On The Origin of Species but Essays and Reviews, in March 1860, igniting a passionate debate about Biblical texts.
Scene Three: The famous Oxford debate between T.H. Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”) and Bishop “Soapy” Sam Wilberforce in late June 1860.
Memento: One of Charles Darwin’s notebooks, written when he returned from his voyage on the Beagle, as his theory of evolution began to take shape in his mind.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Nicholas Spencer
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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Christopher Hadley: Roman Roads and the Invasion of Britain (51 AD)

Nothing symbolises the might of imperial Rome like their roads. Expertly engineered and perfectly cambered, they were the arteries of the great empire through which merchants, armies and information flowed.
In this episode we will follow one of those lost roads back in time to the very beginning of the Roman occupation of Britain, in the company of the writer Christopher Hadley. He takes us back to 51 AD, a turning point in the invasion, when Caratacus, King of the Catuvellauni Tribe and leader of the British resistance, was defeated and capitulated to his Roman adversaries.
Christopher Hadley is a journalist and author. His acclaimed first book, Hollow Places, was a Times Book of the Year. The Road, A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past was published recently.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: Somewhere on the English/Welsh border - Caratacus’ last stand.
Scene Two: Somewhere in northern England - Cartumandua hands Caratacus over to the Romans.
Scene Three: Somewhere in Rome - Caratacus appears before the Emperor Claudius who grants him clemency.
Memento: A rare Caratacus coin.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Christopher Hadley
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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Don Hollway: The Year of Three Battles (1066)

1066 was the year that England’s destiny was decided. In this superbly analysed episode, the author Don Hollway takes us back to the scenes of the three great battles that changed the course of history: Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.
***
The drama of 1066 began in its very first week, with the death of the old king, Edward the Confessor, on 5 January. The following day the powerful earl Harold Godwinson was crowned in Westminster Abbey and the dynamic was set for the clash that followed.
Harold’s claim to the throne was famously put down to a deathbed wish from Edward. But this was complicated by an earlier promise Edward had seemingly to Duke William of Normandy. While King Harold looked nervously towards the Channel that summer, for signs of a Norman invasion, another grave threat was developing in the north.
In September 1066 the news reached London that Harald ‘Hardrada’ the Viking king had landed with a great army of invasion near York. The month that followed would be one of the most dramatic and decisive in English history as a trio of battles were fought in the north and south.
In this episode, Don Hollway, the author of The Last Viking: The True Story of King Harald Hardrada takes us back to these three battles. While they were fought on different terrain and in different parts of the country, he points out, they all had one key point in common: the failure of a shield wall.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 20 September 1066. The Battle of Fulford, just south of York in the north of England.
Scene Two: 25 September 25 1066. Stamford Bridge, east of York.
Scene Three: 14 October 1066. Hastings on the south coast, or more precisely Senlac Hill, a few miles inland.
Memento: Harald Hardrada’s raven flag or Harold Godwinson’s ‘fighting man’ flag.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Don Hollway
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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[From the archives] Rebecca Wragg Sykes: Neanderthals (Eemian)

Here is another gem from our archive. In this fascinating episode the archaeologist and writer Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes takes us back further than we’ve ever been before, 125,000 years, to meet our extinct kindred: the Neanderthals.
We visit the vibrant wild woodlands of Britain, a hornbeam forest on the European continent and a German lakeshore. Rebecca describes the world as it was in the interglacial age known as the Eemian and tell us how the Neanderthals lived, worked and loved in this warm woodland environment.
The subject matter and scenes that feature in this episode come from Rebecca Wragg Sykes's new book, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.
For much much more visit: tttpodcast.com
Show Notes:
Scene One: Britain, 123,000 years ago. A catastrophic flood breaks the ridge connecting Britain to the rest of Europe. The island becomes a wasteland for many thousands of years.
Scene Two: A hornbeam forest in Germany, during the Eemian. We meet the weird and wonderful animals that populated the continent at the time.
Scene Three: Neumark lakeshore, also during the Eemian. Tiny remains of organic material provide insight into the kinds of tools the Neanderthals were making and using.
Memento: One of the spears used to kill deer at the Neumark lakeshore.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Producers: Maria Nolan
Titles: Jon O
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
Podcast Partner: ColorGraph
 

James Hall: Michelangelo and Leonardo in Florence (1504)

In the early sixteenth century, some of the world’s most famous works of art were being created, many of them in Florence and Rome. In this episode, the acclaimed art historian James Hall takes us back to 1504, just as Michelangelo was finishing his monumental statue of David, the first of its size in the modern era.
His great rival, Leonardo da Vinci, also in Florence at this time, was on the committee to decide where the statue should be placed. The original idea of hoisting it hundreds of feet into the air to the top of the cathedral was sensibly shelved, and discussions got underway to find a less complicated location.
For more about this episode, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
James Hall is a research Professor at Southampton University and has published widely on an eclectic range of art history subjects. His stunningly illustrated new book The Artist’s Studio, A Cultural History is available now.
Show notes
Scene One: 1504. Michelangelo completes his monumental sculpture of David.
Scene Two: 1504. Leonardo da Vinci sits on a committee to decide where to locate the marble David. He and Michelangelo bump into each other in the street and have an argument about Dante.
Scene Three: 1504. Leonardo and Michelangelo are commissioned to paint large battle murals in the Great Council Hall of Florence. They are given separate workplaces but never finish the commissions.
Memento: Michelangelo’s bronze life-sized statue of David which disappeared sometime after 1504.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: James Hall
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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Tania Branigan: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (1966)

In this episode the Guardian journalist Tania Branigan takes us back to the opening phases of the ‘Cultural Revolution’, Mao Zedong’s attempt to purge Chinese society of its impurities.
Over the course of a few fraught months in the summer of 1966, the transformational movement that would last for an anguished decade, began.
***
In Britain 1966 is remembered as a glittering time. It was the year of the World Cup, of Pet Sounds, Revolver and Andy Warhol. But as Western culture flowered, far away in China something very different was happening.
All these years on, today’s guest, Tania Branigan points out, the Cultural Revolution remains a difficult event to properly comprehend. It moved through different stages. It was riven by contradictions. Its range was vast, touching people from all parts of society, from top to bottom, east to west.
And yet at the heart of much of the action lay the figure of Mao Zedong. By the mid-1960s Mao was regarded as an aging figure. Despite his glorious revolutionary past, it was not certain just what his future would be. But during the spring and summer of 1966 it became increasingly clear that Mao’s political ambitions were not at an end.
Tania Branigan is the author of Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution, which has recently been released by Faber.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: April 16-24. Politburo standing committee (ie China’s top political body) meets in Hangzhou.
Scene Two: 16 July. Chairman Mao swims the Yangtze near Wuhan.
Scene Three: 18 August. Song Binbin pins the red armband on Mao in Tiananmen Square.
Memento: The first big character poster, painted in Beijing, that set off the Cultural Revolution.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Tania Branigan
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
See where 1966 fits on our Timeline

Marion Turner: The Wife of Bath (1397)

It is difficult to hear the stories of medieval women, but one voice rings down the ages, clear as a bell. Alison, the Wife of Bath, is Geoffrey Chaucer’s most famous creation: irrepressible, hilarious, insightful. She is the star of The Canterbury Tales with her outrageous stories and touching honesty.
An inspiration for a huge range of writers – from William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood and Zadie Smith – she is the sparkling subject at the heart of Marion Turner’s new book, The Wife of Bath: A Biography.
In this episode Turner takes us back to 1397. We visit Chaucer’s world in London and Oxfordshire. We hear the extraordinary story of John of Gaunt and his beloved mistress Katherine Swynford. Along the way we meet some real-life Alisons. These were women who ran businesses, travelled extensively, and lived independently, including one who was mayoress of London, not once, but twice.
Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include the prize-winning biography Chaucer: A European Life.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: January 1397. The English Parliament and the legitimatisation of John of Gaunt's children with Katherine Swynford.
Scene Two: End of 1397. Chaucer has been gifted a new grant of a yearly ton of wine from the King.
Scene Three: Summer. Margaret Stodeye heads off to St Paul's Cathedral to declare a vow of chastity.
Memento: Chaucer's handwritten draft of the Canterbury Tales.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Marion Turner
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
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