Travels Through Time

Murray Pittock: Scotland Reborn (1967)

On 2 November 1967 Winnie Ewing shocked the political establishment when she won the Scottish seat of Hamilton for the Scottish National Party. As today’s guest, Professor Murray Pittock explains, so began a month that would radically re-shape modern British politics.
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For British politics the 1960s was a testing time. While the country experienced its fabled cultural flowering, it simultaneously had to come to terms with its reduced place in the world. Decolonisation was going ahead at pace. Sterling was losing its power as a currency. In geo-politics Britain did not know where to turn: to the United States, or towards Europe and the EEC.
In this episode Murray Pittock shows how Britain was forced to confront all of these issues within the space of one single month. November 1967 opened with a political shock, when the young politician Winnie Ewing won a bi-election for the Scottish National Party. During her campaign she made use of a gripping slogan: ‘Stop the World: Scotland Wants to Get On.’
Here was an early sign of something to come. And as the SNP rose north of the border, more trouble was simmering to the south in Westminster. Soon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, would be obliged to resign. And in Europe, too, Charles de Gaulle was poised to make matters still worse.
Professor Murray Pittock is one of Scotland’s foremost living historians. He is the Bradley Chair at the University of Glasgow, where he is also Pro-Vice Principal. He is the author of many books, the most recent of which is Scotland: The Global History: 1603 to the Present.
Show notes
Scene One: 2 November 1967: Winnie Ewing wins the Hamilton by-election a total surprise, with the victory slogan ‘Stop the World: Scotland wants to get on’.
Scene Two: 18 November 1967: sterling devalued against the US $ by 14%; Chancellor of the Exchequer resigns.
Scene Three: 27 November 1967: UK application to join EEC vetoed for a second time by de Gaulle.
Memento: $1 Silver Certificate banknote
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Professor Murray Pittock
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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Jane Draycott: Antony and Cleopatra (31/30 BCE)

This week the Roman historian and archaeologist Jane Draycott takes us to meet one of history’s most glamorous and infamous couples, Antony and Cleopatra. We join them in a crucial year in the history of Ancient Rome, around 31/30 BCE, when the Roman republic fell away and Octavian – later Emperor Augustus – seized power and founded the Roman Empire, with disastrous consequences for Antony, Cleopatra and their children.This dramatic piece of history forms the origin story of Cleopatra Selene, Antony and Cleopatra’s only daughter and the subject of Jane’s fascinating new book, Cleopatra’s Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen. In this episode we explore the years leading up to the Battle of Actium as well as the battle itself and Antony and Cleopatra’s subsequent suicides. We unravel the truth behind some of the most famous stories about the couple, and explore the nature of female political power in the ancient world. 
 
Show notesScene One: 2nd September 31 BCE. The Battle of Actium.Scene Two: 1st August 30 BCE. Octavian captures Alexandria and the suicide of Mark Antony. Scene Three: 10th August 30 BCE. The suicide of Cleopatra. Momento: Cleopatra’s long-lost mausoleum.
 
People/SocialPresenter: Artemis IrvineGuest: Jane DraycottProduction: Maria NolanPodcast partner: Ace Cultural ToursTheme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard GrigoryanFollow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_Or on FacebookSee where 31/30 BCE fits on our Timeline

James Holland: D-Day with the Sherwood Rangers (1944)

This Remembrance Week the best-selling historian James Holland takes us back to a crucial year in the Second World War. We travel to Gold Beach on D-Day and then into the country lanes of Normandy on the trail of the Sherwood Rangers.
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On the damp and blustery morning of 6 June 1944 the Sherwood Rangers fought their way onto Gold Beach. An armoured regiment, filled with Sherman tanks, the Sherwood Rangers had already had an exhausting war. From Palestine to North Africa, the young men in its ranks had been involved in much bitter fighting. Now, as D-Day began, the regiment began its bloodiest campaign yet.
This week’s guest, James Holland, takes us back to that time. He tells us about some of the Sherwood Rangers’ memorable individuals – men like the charismatic Stanley Christopherson and the awe-inspiring John Semken.
He explains the dilemma that confronted the Rangers as they tried to establish a beachhead on D-Day and he takes us back to a moment of huge personal bravery several weeks later as the Battle for Normandy played out.
Last of all, we see the Rangers on Christmas Day – exhausted, depleted but still with their humour and humanity.
The stories that feature in this week’s episode come from James Holland’s latest book. Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War from D-Day to VE-Day .
Show notes
Scene One: Tuesday, 6 June - Gold Beach, Normandy
Scene Two: Monday, 26 June - Rauray Ridge, Normandy
Scene Three: Monday, 25 December - Schinnen, Netherlands
Memento: Sgt. George Dring’s tank Akilla
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: James Holland
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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Giles Milton: Yalta and the Race for Berlin (1945)

As 1945 began the greatest conflict in human history was drawing to a close. But with the war in the west almost over, a new question was increasingly being asked. It was one to which Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt all had different answers. What was going to happen next?
In this episode the million-copy bestselling author Giles Milton takes us back to some key moments in 1945. At Yalta on the Crimean peninsula and later in the ruins of Berlin, the shape of the post war world – the world we know today – was beginning to take shape.
What is clear now was not so then. Were the Allies really friends or were, as Churchil worried to Anthony Eden, they hurtling towards a third world war? Arriving in Berlin at the start of July 1945, the US army colonel Frank Howley feared much the same. As Milton explains, it was Howley who saw before almost anyone else that the Germans had ceased to be enemies and the Russians had ceased to be friends.
The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Milton’s latest book. Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World.
Show notes
Scene One: 4 February 1945. Yalta. Opening of the Crimea Conference
Scene Two: 2 May 1945. Berlin. Yevgeny Khaldei takes a photograph of the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag
Scene Three: 1 July 1945. Berlin. Colonel Howley arrives
Memento: A little of the Schliemann Gold
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Giles Milton
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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Emma J Wells: Heaven on Earth (1220)

Walking around a cathedral today can be a solemn and an awe-inspiring experience, but what if we could stand inside the same building and travel back 800 years or so? In this episode we do exactly that.
Our guide is Dr Emma J. Wells, a historian, broadcaster and author of Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals.
In this beautifully illustrated book, Emma visits sixteen world-renowned cathedrals ranging from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, to the “northern powerhouse” of York Minster. She describes their origins, the striking and unusual stories attached to them and the people central to their history. 
In this episode, Emma takes me to the high medieval period, when European architecture was falling in love with the gothic style and cathedral-building was at its height. 
Dr Emma J. Wells’s new book Heaven on Earth is out now from Head of Zeus. 
Show notes
Scene One: Canterbury cathedral, trinity chapel, the scene of St Thomas Becket’s elevation and translation into his new shrine.
Scene Two: Salisbury, the ceremonial laying of the first five foundation stones of the new cathedral after its move from Old Sarum.  
Scene Three: Chartres, France, William de Breton described the growing cathedral’s vaults as bringing to ‘look like the shell of a tortoise’ referring to the higher vaults and a longer and wider nave than any other in Christendom.
Memento: To restore the “super-shrine” of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Dr Emma J. Wells
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
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Revolutionary Russia: Orlando Figes (1917)

In the final sentence of A People’s Tragedy, his multi-award winning study of the Russian Revolution, Orlando Figes wrote ominously that, ‘the ghosts of 1917 have not been laid to rest.’
This year, as Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has played out, we have been able to glimpse some of these ghosts: fear, paranoia, grievance. All these emotions have arisen out of a long, complicated and contested history that Figes has attempted to explain for a Western readership in his illuminating new book: The Story of Russia.
In this episode we talk about Vladimir Putin’s use and misuse of history today and we look back to a particularly significant year in Russia’s past. 1917 brought revolution to Russia. ‘It is hard to think of an event, or series of events, that has affected the history of the past one hundred years more profoundly’, Figes writes.
The Russian Revolution is an event that began in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in Feburary 1917 and thereafter was driven forward by Vladimir Lenin's singular character. We scruitinise this event, as ever, in three telling scenes.
Orlando Figes’s The Story of Russia is out now from Bloomsbury.
Show notes
Scene One: March 1917. Tauride Palace in Petrograd (St Petersburg).
Scene Two: 3-4 July 1917. Kshesinskaya Mansion in Petrograd.
Scene Three: 25 October 1917. Smolnyi Institute in Petrograd.
Memento: Grand Duke Michael's abdication manifesto
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Orlando Figes
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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Lucy Wooding: Tudor England (1558)

Having watched the second Elizabethan era draw to a close in recent weeks, it is fitting that in this episode we are going back to the beginning of the first Elizabethan era – the moment when Mary Tudor died leaving the throne to her younger half-sister.
These two queens, the first women to rule England in their own right, were divided by their faith. The greatest challenge facing Elizabeth on her accession was to unite a country which was polarised by religion, having passed from hard-line Protestantism under Edward VI back to Catholicism with Mary.
Our learned guide on this journey is Dr Lucy Wooding whose masterful new book, Tudor England, gives a rich, detailed vision of the period. Wooding's book is not simply limited to the big political moments but takes the reader right into the lives of ordinary people as well.
Dr Lucy Wooding is Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, Oxford. She is an expert on Reformation England, its politics, religion and culture, and the author of Henry VIII.
Tudor England by Lucy Wooding is out now.
Show notes
Scene One: 17 November 1558, London. In the early morning, Mary I lies dying at St James's Palace. By evening, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, has also died – a momentous day for Catholicism in England.
Scene Two: November 1558, a few days earlier. Princess Elizabeth is at a dinner party at Brocket Hall, with the Count of Feria who has been sent by Philip II (Mary’s husband) to sound out the heir to the throne. He concludes that she is, ‘'She is a very vain and clever woman’, who is, ‘determined to be governed by no one'.
Scene Three: Late 1557, The Works of Sir Thomas More, sometime Lord Chauncellor, wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge are published by the printer William Rastell, who was also More’s nephew.
Memento: The reliquary known as the ‘Tablet de Bourbon’, made by one of the great Parisian goldsmiths and acquired as part of a ransom during the Hundred Years War. Worn by Mary I in the portrait by Hans Eworth.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Dr Lucy Wooding
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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Damian Dibben: Venice and ‘The Colour Storm’ (1510)

This week we are off to see some of the Renaissance masters at work with the acclaimed novelist Damian Dibben.
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In the early years of the sixteenth century Venice was not only a place of great power it was a site of huge cultural splendour. In particular a new generation of artists were animating the buildings like never before. And unlike many of the other Renaissance painters, the Venetians were not solely obsessed by line and form; they were equally interested in the allure and possibility of colour. 
In this episode (with a short detour to the Sistine Chapel) we set our gaze on a place that is still affectionately known as the Queen of the Adriatic. In doing so we look at two of its great artists as they work with their cobalts and ultramarines. One of them, Titian, is well known to us. The other, Giorgione, or ‘Big George’, is a more elusive character.
Only a small number of Giorgione’s paintings survive today, but they convey his strange and brilliant originality. Art historians have spent centuries trying to make sense of his enigmatic depictions, which are suffused with a misty light that seems to have drifted straight off the lagoon.
Damian Dibben’s novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages and published in over forty countries. His series The History Keepers was an international publishing phenomenon. His new book is The Colour Storm.
Show notes
Scene One: 1510. Titian, the 22 year old Venetian painter paints his 'Man with a Quilted Sleeve.
Scene Two: 1510. Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This was an incredible feat of artistic brilliance and physical endurance, achieved by a someone who was a true genius but personally difficult and far from pleasant.
Scene Three: October 1510. The death of Giorgione. One of the greatest painters, a vital link in the history of art who would have produced stunning masterpieces had he not died at 33, probably of plague.
Memento: Giorgione’s painting of a knight and his squire, or groom, c.1507
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Damian Dibben
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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Robert Harris: Act of Oblivion (1660)

We start our sixth season with Robert Harris, one of Britain's great contemporary novelists. He takes us back to a tremendously important year in English (and world) history. 1660.
In England the mid seventeenth century was a dramatic and bloody time. It was a age when important questions about the nature of power were posed and the traditions of monarchy were challenged. In 1649 this led to the execution of King Charles I on a cold January day in Whitehall. Almost a century and a half before the French removed Louis XVI, England pioneered a new form of republican society.
This was not destined to last. Oliver Cromwell’s death in September 1658 left the country with a power vacuum. After various alternatives were tested, the decision was finally taken to invite the dead king’s eldest surviving son, Charles, back from Europe to regain the throne for the Stuart family.
Charles II’s entry into London on his birthday, 29 May 1660, was a emotional occasion. But for all the excitement and all the glamour of the year John Evelyn called an ‘Annus Miribilis’, some knotty questions remained. One of the greatest of these was what should be done with the surviving ‘regicides’ – the scores of people who had signed the death warrant of the new king’s father.
This history forms the background to Robert Harris’s exhilarating new novel. In Act of Oblivion he tells the story of a transatlantic manhunt for two of the regicides: the colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe.
Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris is available now.
Show notes
Scene One: 29 May 1660. Charles II returns to London after being exiled and is proclaimed lawful monarch.
Scene Two: 29 August 1660. The Act of Oblivion is passed in Parliament.
Scene Three: 27 July 1660. Colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe, two regicides, arrive in Boston
Memento: Charles I’s death warrant
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Robert Harris
Production: Maria Nolan
Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
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Hello Everyone: Season Six of TTT

Hello everyone, we're back!
Season Six of Travels Through Time begins with an episode with the Number One Bestselling novelist Robert Harris tomorrow. 
Music: “Love Token” from the album “This Is Us” By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan