Travels Through Time

John Sellars: Aristotle (347 BC)

This week we’re heading back to the fourth century BC to take a look at one of the world’s greatest ever philosophers. Indeed, according to today’s guest, John Sellars, Aristotle may be even more than that. He might well be the single most important human ever to have lived.
Aristotle’s philosophical work transformed the people thought about the world around them. During his magnificent career he laid the foundation for science; he pioneered new methods for understanding drama and literature; he founded a new way of thinking about politics, and he invented formal logic.
But how did Aristotle do this? How was he shaped by the intellectual culture of Ancient Greece? What did he owe to his famous forebears, Plato and Socrates?
In this episode John Sellars engages with these questions as he describes the life of this hugely significant philosopher.
John Sellars is a Reader in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Member of Common Room, Wolfson College, Oxford. He is the author of a sleek and stylish new short book, Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher.
For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: 347 BC. Aristotle leaves Plato’s Academy after twenty years.
Scene Two: 344 BC. Aristotle arrives on Lesbos and begins to study animals.
Scene Three: 335 BC. Aristotle returns to Athens, founds the Lyceum and embarks on a dizzying array of philosophical work.
Memento: A papyrus scroll containing one of Aristotle’s lost dialogues.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: John Sellars
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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Simon Akam: The Changing of the Guard (2006)

The British Army can trace its origins back to the Acts of Union of 1707 and its rich history involves conflicts both large and small in all corners of the globe.
But as the twenty-first century dawned, the organisation found itself in a transitional phase and with something of an identity crisis. What exactly was its culture? What, with its resources, could it really be expected to achieve? What was its relevance to modern Britain?
Today’s guest, Simon Akam, sought to confront questions like these in his book Changing the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11. Grounded in his own first-hand experience and supported by hundreds of interviews, in this episode Akam explains the conclusions that he reached and the incredible resistance he experienced as he sought to bring his book to publication.
Simon Akam is a journalist and author. Born in Cambridge, he held a Gap Year Commission in the British Army before studying at the University of Oxford and Columbia Journalism School. He has worked for the New York Times, Reuters and Newsweek. Changing the Guard, published in 2021, is his first book.
Show notes
Scene One: A tent in Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Jamie Loden edits a video.
Scene Two: Autumn 2006. Downing Street with Major-General Jonathan Shaw and Nigel Sheinwald.
Scene Three: 28 March 2006. The creation of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.
Memento: A copy of a tabloid newspaper from 2006.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Simon Akam
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 2006 fits on our Timeline

[From the archives] Diarmaid MacCulloch: Thomas Cromwell (1536)

It’s midwinter, we’re midway through our sixth season and we thought it was time to revisit a favourite old episode. Today we have for you a recording made at Buxton Literary Festival in 2019. It is with the Oxford professor and prize-winning historian Diarmaid MacCulloch. Our destination is the year 1536 and our subject is one of the most complex and fascinating in English political history: Thomas Cromwell.
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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, as we hear in this episode, was the King’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.
Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCulloch is now available in paperback from Penguin.
Show notes
Scene One: 24 May 1536. Ambassador Eustache Chapuys and Thomas Cromwell debriefing after the execution of Anne Boleyn.
Scene Two: Around 3 October 1536 when King Henry VIII was told of the Lincolnshire Rising.
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.
Memento: The keyboard that Mark Smeaton played for Anne Boleyn
People
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch
Recording/Live Mix: Hannah Griffiths
Post production: Maria Nolan

Tim Clayton: James Gillray and a Revolution in Satire (1792)

As today’s guest Tim Clayton explains, 'the late eighteenth-century mixed the extremely crude with the extremely fine in a fascinating sort of way.’ The grand master of this potent concoction was the greatest political caricaturist of modern times: James Gillray.
Gillray worked in raucous, restless times. He began in the wake of the American War of Independence and, having charted each twist and turn of the French Revolution, he died a short time before the Battle of Waterloo.
In this time he pioneered a fearless new brand of political satire. No one was spared. He lampooned King George III; his son the Prince of W(h)ales; the prime minister William Pitt the Younger, and all the prominent cultural and political figures in London life.
But how did he get away with it? What was his true motivation? How clever really was James Gillray? In this episode the historian Tim Clayton takes us back to 1792, a testing year in Gillray's career, to find out.
The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Clayton’s latest book. James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire is out now.
Show notes
Scene One: February/March 1792 London and Hannah Humphrey’s house at 18 Old Bond Street.
Scene Two: 21 May 1792. The Royal Proclamation against seditious writing.
Scene Three: December 1792. The French King is on trial and Gillray releases his series of ‘pro bono publico’ prints.
Memento: A fire screen, painted on both sides by Gillray, as presented by the artist to Hannah Humphrey.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Tim Clayton
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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Harry Sidebottom: The Mad Emperor (218)

We have our fair share of bizarre rulers in the twenty-first century, but the subject of today’s episode makes Putin, Trump and Kim Jong Il seem rather tame. According to the Oxford academic and bestselling novelist Harry Sidebottom, our guide this week, the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus was the maddest and baddest of them all.
Heliogabalus turned Rome upside down as he rampaged over political and religious tradition during his lust-fuelled, four-year reign, contributing to the instability and chaos of the later third century AD.
In this special end of year episode, we get into the spirit of Heliogabalus by allowing Harry Sidebottom to trample on our own tradition of choosing just one year in history to travel back to.
Today we visit three separate years, 218, 220 and 222 so we can hear the full extraordinary story he tells in his new book on the maddest emperor of them all.
The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Sidebottom’s latest book. The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome is out now.
Show notes
Scene One: 1 May 218. Heliogabalus’ grandmother sneaks him out of Emesa (modern day Homs) in Syria to start the revolt that will elevate him to the position of Emperor of Rome.
Scene Two: Midsummer’s Day 220. Heliogabalus holds a huge parade in Rome to demonstrate his new religion.
Scene Three: March 222. Heliogabalus is murdered on the orders of his grandmother.
Memento: Heliogabalus’ horn.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Harry Sidebottom
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
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Josiah Osgood: Caesar, Cato and the Fall of the Roman Republic (46BC)

The rivalry between Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger is one of the most intense in political history. Both were high-ranking figures of great gifts, but their personal feud was a powerful factor in the downfall of the Roman Republic.
Joining us in this episode to tell us more about Cato and Caesar’s contrasting characters and the dramatic historical events they lived through is the award-winning author and Professor of Classics at Georgetown University, Josiah Osgood.
Osgood takes us back to the year 46BC. Here we see Caesar at his peerless best on the battlefield and then, shortly afterwards, we analyse Cato’s shocking and defiant response.
The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Osgood’s latest book. Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic is out now.
Show notes
Scene One: April 6, 46 BC, the Battle of Thapsus, North Africa.
Scene Two: April 10, 46 BC, Utica, North Africa: Cato’s suicide.
Scene Three: September, 46 BC, Rome, Caesar’s Egyptian triumph.
Memento: The sign that was paraded through the streets of Rome during Caesar’s Asia Minor Triumph with the words ‘Veni, vidi, vici’.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Josiah Osgood
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
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Philip Mansel: Louis XIV, The Sun King (1700)

In this episode Philip Mansel takes us inside the court of King Louis XIV at Versailles, probably the most lavish, extraordinary royal palace ever built.
Versailles was a place where the fun never stopped. There were parties, plays, banquets, firework displays and concerts. Life at court was a giddy carousel of extravagance, culture, beauty, wit, sophistication and intrigue.
As the decorated historian Philip Mansel tells us in this sparkling episode, Versailles was the centre of power, politics and pleasure. It was the home of the royal family and the nobility, a hotbed of conspiracy and scandal.
The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Mansel’s award-winning book, King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV.
Show notes
Scene One: 17 November 1700. Louis XIV presents his seventeen-year-old grandson to assembled diplomats and courtiers as Philip V King of Spain, by the will of God and the will of the nation.
Scene Two: 1700. Military review of Louis XIV’s guards, the special regiment of cavalry nobles whom he loved and who formed the foundation of his power.
Scene Three: 1700. A procession in front of Louis at the Palace of Versailles of freed white French slaves, who had been captured by Algerian pirates in the Mediterranean.
Memento: One of the magnificent books from the Royal Printing Press.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Philip Mansel
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
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Paul Hayward: The World Cup (1966)

As the English football team prepare for one of the most important games in their recent history at the Qatar World Cup, one of the nation’s finest sports writers takes us back to the year Gareth Southgate’s players are trying to emulate: 1966.
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England’s performance in the first World Cups was underwhelming. For a nation that prided themselves on having invented the game, on successive occasions in the 1950s and early 1960s the English players were left to watch as West Germany and Brazil lifted the trophy.
1966 brought a chance to change all this. With the tournament being played at home, with a disciplined managed in Alf Ramsey and a fine crop of players including the Charlton brothers, as the summer progressed the supporters’ hopes rose. Here was the opportunity to realise Ramsey's bold prediction from 1963 that England were going to win.
Paul Hayward, who for many years was the Chief Sports Writer at the Daily Telegraph, takes us back to that fabled summer in English sporting history. In doing so he describes what football meant to the English, and how the English had forged a national identity around their beloved sport.
Paul Hayward is the author of England Football: The Biography
Show notes
Scene One: Early summer 1966. England training camp at Hendon.
Scene Two: 30 June 1966. The cusp of the World Cup final.
Scene Three: July. Ashington, Northumberland. Jack and Bobby Charlton return to their home town after the historic victory.
Memento: A vinyl pressing of Revolver signed by The Beatles
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Paul Hayward
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

[Special] The Grigoryan Brothers: Australia

In this special episode the multi-award winning guitarists Slava and Leonard Grigoryan take us back into Australian history in three enchanting pieces of music. Each track features on their acclaimed album, This Is Us, which arose out of a collaborative project with the National Museum of Australia.
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Over the past two decades the Grigoryan Brothers have established themselves as among the finest Australian musicians of their generation. Several years ago, following a chance meeting at a concert in Adelaide, they were invited to begin an unusual collaboration with the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.
To mark its twentieth birthday the museum invited the brothers to select a series of objects from its collections and to use them as the inspiration for a series of original compositions. The project went forward during the Covid 19 Pandemic and in 2021 the resulting album, This Is Us, was published.
The music engages with a broad range of fascinating Australian histories, from ones connected with the Aboriginal and Torres Islander Strait peoples, to the cricketing feats of Donald Bradman, and those of the nineteenth-century astronomers who first scoured the southern skies.
In a departure from our usual format, we did not ask Slava and Leonard to pick one calendar year. Instead we invited them to play three songs and to tell us about the objects that inspired them. 
This Is Us by the Grigoryan Brothers is streaming now. Read more about the project at the National Museum of Australia’s website.
Show notes
Song One: ‘Love Token’ – inspired by the convicts’ love tokens.
Song Two: ‘Stolen’ – inspired by a gate salvaged from a children’s home.
Song Three: ‘Fortunate Wind’ – inspired by an anchor belonging to HMS Investigator
Years: c.1932 / 1950s.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Production: Matt Hiley in Sydney / Maria Nolan in London
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

Elizabeth Wilson: Playing with Fire (1921)

This week, the performer and author Elizabeth Wilson speaks to Artemis from the offices of Yale University Press in Bedford Square. Elizabeth tells us about the early life of a remarkable pianist, Maria Yudina, who rose to fame in Stalin’s Russia.
Maria Yudina was born in 1899 to a Jewish family in Nevel, a small town which now sits close to Russia’s border with Belarus. Legend has it that Maria was Stalin’s favourite pianist. Those who have seen Armando Iannucci’s satirical film The Death of Stalin may remember the opening scene in which a pianist is forced to repeat her live performance so that a recording can be made of it and sent to Stalin. As Elizabeth explains in her new biography of the musician, Playing with Fire, the provenance of this story and whether it is about Maria is unclear. However, there is no shortage of fascinating and true stories about Maria, as Elizabeth shows us in this conversation.
Maria came of age as the February revolution broke out in St Petersburg, where she was studying music. She took part briefly – even accidentally firing a rifle through a ceiling – before being questioned by a teacher from the conservatoire where she was studying. For most of her life though, Maria wasn’t a revolutionary but an intellectual. Her social circle was made up of the leading figures of Russia’s intelligentsia, including Boris Pasternak, Pavel Florensky, and Mikhail Bakhtin. 
In this episode we visit Maria in 1921, the year she graduated from the conservatoire and was appointed as a member of staff aged just 21. It was also a year in which the relationship between Russia’s new revolutionary state and the country’s artists and intellectuals felt uneasy and, at times, destructive. 
 
Show notes:
Scene One: Maria’s graduation ceremony.
Scene Two: Maria’s debut performance in Petrograd, which coincides with the poet Alexander Blok’s death and funeral. 
Scene Three: The end of the civil war and the introduction of NEP.
Memento: A chess set which shows pieces representing 2 sides of the Russian Civil War.
 
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Elizabeth Wilson
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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See where 1921 fits on our Timeline