Travels Through Time

Nick Higham: The Mercenary River (1837)

This week we head to nineteenth-century London, when the city's infrastructure was groaning under the strain of its exponential growth and the question of how to get a clean, reliable water supply was of upmost importance. 
We take running water in big cities like London for granted now, but for most of our history we’ve not had access to it. When did we first start pumping water up from the Thames? How did people wash themselves when they didn’t have bathrooms? Why has water been privatised or nationalised at different stages in its history?
These are all questions that my guest today, Nick Higham, answers in his new book The Mercenary River. 
Stretching from the medieval period to the modern, The Mercenary River charts the technological and scientific breakthroughs that made London’s water what it is today. Nick dives into the murky politics of this most essential of resources, and offers vivid glimpses into how water was used in daily routines. 
This episode is sponsored by ACE Cultural Tours, the oldest and most experienced provider of study tours and cultural travel in the United Kingdom. Find out more via their website at www.aceculturaltours.co.uk or speak to their friendly team on 01223 841055.
Show Notes
Scene One: 1837. A few yards back from the banks of the river at Kew Bridge near Brentford, where the Grand Junction Waterworks is building a new pumping station well upriver from its original Thames intake in Chelsea, which was at the mouth of a major sewer. 
Scene Two: 1837. Cornwall, where the talented young engineer of the East London Waterworks, Thomas Wicksteed, has gone to buy a second-hand steam-driven pumping engine for the East London's intake on the River Lea at Old Ford. 
Scene Three: 1837. Buckingham Palace, where the newly-crowned Queen Victoria is taking up residence and is (presumably) unamused to discover there is no bathroom. 
Momento: One of the minute books of the water companies. 
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Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Nick Higham
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Margaret Willes: In The Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral (1666)

This week we revisit one of the most dangerous and dramatic moments in London's history through the prism of one of its most iconic buildings: St. Paul's Cathedral. 
When we think of modern London, the places that spring to mind are Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and Piccadilly Circus, but the true heart of the city lies far to the east, on Ludgate Hill. St Paul’s Cathedral has been at the centre of London for over a millennium, a hub of religion, politics, news, education, publishing, and of course, shopping. In her beautiful new book, In the Shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral, Margaret Willes looks back on the long and lively history of this extraordinary corner of our capital.
As we discover in this episode, Old St Paul’s, as it came to be known, was a major casualty of the great fire that destroyed most of the city in 1666, paving the way for Christopher Wren’s redevelopment and the magnificent building we know today.
Margaret Willes, formerly publisher at the National Trust, is author of several books, including The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Reading Matters, and The Gardens of the British Working Class. She lives in London.
Show Notes
Scene One: 7 January. The shops are at last opening following the pandemic of the Great Plague, which had died down with the cold weather, unlike the current Covid pandemic. Pepys visits a draper's shop in Paternoster Row and buys himself velvet for a coat and camelot for a cloak. He also looks at fabrics to furnish his wife Elizabeth's closet.
Scene Two: 2 September. Pepys' maid, rising early to prepare the Sabbath dinner, wakes him to tell him a fire had broken out in a bakery on Pudding Lane, just at the north end of London Bridge. What seemed at first a small fire, took hold with very strong winds and spread fast. Pepys crosses the river to an alehouse in Southwark and watches with horror the fire taking hold of the whole of the City. 
Scene Three: 12 November. The aftermath of the Great Fire has become a source of fascination to Londoners. Pepys visits the Churchyard to view the corpse of a medieval bishop which had fallen out of his tomb in the Cathedral. 
Memento: Pepys’ parmesan cheese which he buried in his garden to ensure its survival during the great fire.
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Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Margaret Willes
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Daniel Levy: The Great Fire of New York (1835)

There is nowhere on earth quite like New York City. In this episode the writer and journalist Daniel Levy takes us back to the early nineteenth-century and to a dramatic, catalytic moment in his home town’s development: the Great Fire of 1835.
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‘It is only necessary to sit down with a minute map of the country,’ observed the novelist James Fenimore Cooper in the 1820s, ‘to perceive at a glance, that Nature herself has intended the island of Manhattan for the site of one of the greatest commercial towns in the world.’
Fenimore Cooper was writing as New York entered a crucial moment in its development. It was a time, as Daniel Levy explains, when New York was beginning its magical transformation from being a large unruly community to being a large unruly metropolis. One catalytic event that happened during this time was the Great Fire of 1835.
A fierce conflagration that destroyed almost 700 houses and could be seen from great distances, the fire was a powerfully destructive force. But it also ushered in a new phase in New York’s history, as it finally broke out of its old boundaries on the southern rim of Manhattan Island and started to grow.
As ever, there is much more about this episode on our website: tttpodcast.com
Daniel Levy’s book, Manhattan Phoenix is recently published by Oxford University Press.
Show notes
Scene One: May 12, 1835, 10 am at a church on Houston St. Lewis Tappan and others of the American Anti-Slavery Society set off the Postal campaign.
Scene Two: Late in the day October 5, 1835, 15 year old George Templeton Strong made his first entry in his diary, a journal he would write in until his death in 1875.
Scene Three: December 16, 1835 9pm. The start of the Great Fire.
Memento: One of the old NYC wooden water pipes.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Daniel Levy
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Matthew Green: Shadowlands (1965)

This week we witness the drowning of the Tryweryn Valley, a devastating event which galvanised the Welsh nationalist cause. 
It’s easy to think of history as a gradual accumulation of events, buildings and people – but we don’t spend as much time thinking about its dead ends. That’s exactly what my guest today, Dr Matthew Green, does in his evocative new book Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain. In it, Matthew visits eight villages, settlements and towns stretching from the neolithic period to the twentieth century that fell victim to one form of obliteration or another.
For today’s episode, Matthew chose to travel through time to the beautiful Welsh valley of Tryweryn. Up until the 1960s, the valley was home to the village of Capel Celyn, one of the few predominantly Welsh-speaking communities left in Wales. But in 1955 the inhabitants of Capel Celyn became aware, via an article in their local paper, that their village was to be drowned.
This episode is supported by Faber and recorded at Soho Radio Studios. 
Show Notes
Scene One: 15 August 1965. The Tryweryn Valley, freshly scoured of streets, houses, school, post office, church, farms, graveyards and trees, is filled to capacity after the Capel Celyn Defence committee loses its monumental struggle against Liverpool Corporation and English MPs.
Scene Two: 10 October 1965. The publication of a lurid newspaper interview in which the leader of the Free Wales Army says his organisation fully intends to prevent the opening of Llyn Celyn.
Scene Three: 21 October 1965. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen of Liverpool Corporation attend the grossly insensitive opening ceremony of Llyn Celyn at a tea party in a marquee overlooking the new reservoir. All hell breaks loose.
Momento: The trampled Union jack flag that the Free Wales Army through into the new reservoir.
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Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Dr Matthew Green
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Seb Falk: The Astronomer and the Astrolabe (1327)

In this episode we venture on a journey of scientific discovery and meet one of the most important figures in English medieval science.
Geoffrey Chaucer has gone down in history as the ‘father of English literature’ and his Canterbury Tales are celebrated across the globe as the earliest work of fiction in that language. Less well known, but equally important, is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, the first technical manual written in English, in which he describes how to make and use these extraordinary instruments. Astrolabes were calculating devices, the smartphones of their day, which enabled scholars to make accurate observations of the stars and planets, and to calculate a huge range. 
In this period, scholars were almost always monks, their interest in astronomy and use of astrolabes were partially motivated by the need for accurate timekeeping and working out church dates like Easter. Seb Falk, our guide this week, reveals the wonders of scientific discovery in late medival England in his absorbing book, The Light Ages, A Medieval Journey of Discovery.
In this episode he takes us back to the early fourteenth century to a seminal year in the life of Richard of Wallingford, one of the best-known scholars of his day: a gifted astronomer, inventor, Abbot and ultimately, victim of leprosy.
Show Notes
Scene One: Summer 1327, Oxford University.  Richard of Wallingford is just finishing up his time at Oxford and composing two of his most important scientific works.
Scene Two: Autumn 1327, St Albans to Avignon, via London. Richard has been elected abbot and is making his way to have his appointment confirmed by the pope in Avignon. 
Scene Three: Winter 1327/Spring 1328, St Albans. Richard returns to St Albans and begins work on his marvellous astronomical clock. 
Memento: The abbot’s Albion instrument, which he invented but which is long since lost. We know exactly how it worked because the instructions for it are one of those important works he wrote in 1326-7 at Oxford.
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Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Seb Falk
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Nadine Akkerman: Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (1620)

In Women’s History Month we take a look back at a figure who has been misrepresented by successive generations of historians. Elizabeth Stuart, was the goddaughter of Elizabeth I and sister of the ill-starred Charles I of England. She was someone who played an active part on the times in which she lived. In this episode the Dutch historian Nadine Akkerman takes us back to meet a woman who was known as ‘The Queen of Hearts.’
In her riveting new book, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts, Nadine Akkerman draws back the curtain on centuries of hearsay and prejudice to reveal Elizabeth’s life in its full, extraordinary glory. This was a woman of great courage and intelligence, who ruled alongside her husband, guided their children after his death, played a vital role in contemporary politics, travelled extensively, wrote letters voraciously and hunted wild boar while eight months’ pregnant.
Who knows how the seventeenth century would have turned out if she had acceded to the throne of England in 1625 instead of her hapless brother Charles I. She was, in so many ways, the true successor of her namesake and godmother, Queen Elizabeth I.  
Show Notes
Scene One: Elizabeth all alone in Prague, refusing to abandon her subjects, while her husband is with the army.
Scene Two: The lunch before the battle of White Mountain. Her husband is in Prague and Elizabeth wants to visit the troops. They realize they are too late – battle has already begun.
Scene Three: Heavily pregnant, Elizabeth flees from Prague in search of a safe haven where she can give birth. 
Memento: Elizabeth’s ‘pacquet de nuit’; the one item the enemy (i.e. the Duke of Bavaria) managed to take from her during the flight. Ambassadors later try to get it back, so it must have been important to her. Previous biographers have translated it as ‘nightclothes’. I can’t imagine that to be correct, but I don’t know what it is either! 
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Nadine Akkerman
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Anthony Tucker-Jones: Winston Churchill and Victory in North Africa (1943)

In this episode the military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones shares his latest research on one of the great figures in British history: Winston Churchill. To get a close look at Churchill’s personality and his modus operandi, he takes us back to the year 1943 – a pivotal year at the heart of the Second World War.
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The fall of Tunis in May 1943 marked the first liberation of an occupied city by the Allies. It was a significant moment, the military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones argues, as important at the time as the victory at Stalingrad.
Winston Churchill was one who relished the news when it arrived in London. Always keen to be in the thick of the action, Churchill was soon climbing aboard a plane bound for Tunisia where he would address the victorious troops in person in the ancient surrounds of Carthage.
Churchill’s idiosyncratic manner is something that has long interested Tucker-Jones. In this episode he describes Churchill’s personality, his faults and his peculiar strengths through the prism of events in 1943. This was a time when his wartime popularity was at its height and a time when the fate of the Second World War swung firmly in the Allies’ favour.
 
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Scene One: 7 May 1943. The Allied liberation of the Tunisian capital Tunis.
Scene Two: 1 June 1943. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s visit to the Roman amphitheatre at Carthage, to congratulate 3,000 men of the British 1st Army on their victory.
Scene Three: 17 August 1943. The Liberation of Messina.
Memento: Churchill’s sun helmet from his trip to Carthage
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Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Anthony Tucker-Jones
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Christopher de Bellaigue: Suleyman the Magnificent (1534)

This week we travel back to the Islamic year 941 which straddles 1534/5 of our own calendar, a particularly deadly year in the reign of the Ottoman Emperor, Suleyman the Magnificent. 
There was no shortage of extraordinary rulers in the sixteenth century: Ivan the Terrible towered over Russia, England had its own Gloriana, Elizabeth I, Charles V governed the vast Holy Roman Empire, while in India, the Emperor Akbar transformed Mughal culture. But every one of these mighty potentates cowered in the shadow of the man who ruled the Ottoman Empire between 1520 and 1566 - Suleyman the Magnificent.
In his compelling new book, The Lion House, the award-winning writer and expert on the Islamic world, Christopher de Ballaigue takes us deep inside the Ottoman corridors of power in this dramatic period of their history.
Show Notes
Scene One: Transylvania. The death of Alvise Gritti, son of the Venetian Doge, merchant, millionaire and chief procurer of everything from guns to parmesan at the Ottoman Court, at the hands of the Hungarians.
Scene Two: Baghdad. Having recently taken the city, Suleyman awakes from a nightmare in which his treasurer Iskender Celebi, who has recently been hung on the Sultan’s order, tries to strangle him. 
Scene Three: Baghdad. Suleyman receives a letter from his beloved wife Hurrem, back in Istanbul, reminding him of the delights of home.
Memento: the extraordinary solid gold quadruple crown made in Venice for the Sultan, valued at 144,000 ducats and dripping with unimaginable jewels. 
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Christopher de Ballaigue
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen: A History of the Library (1850)

Of all the accomplishments of human civilisation, the creation of libraries, making the preservation and transmission of knowledge possible, is surely the greatest. In this episode the academics Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen take us back to 1850, a pivotal moment in the history of public libraries. 
Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen’s new book, The Library, A Fragile History, takes on the ‘long and tumultuous history’ of these noble institutions, from the clay tablets of ancient Nineveh to the problematic Google Books project (inspired, like so many other attempts to ‘encompass the world’s knowledge’, by the library of Alexandria). This is an unflinching look at library history, one that does not shy away from the neglect, the destruction and the moments when knowledge was lost.
Show Notes
Scene One: London, The House of Commons. The debate surrounding the Public Libraries Act is in full swing, giving us the chance to understand what this act meant to the development of libraries, and why it failed to gain so little support outside Parliament. 
Scene Two: Bordeaux, France. The great municipal library of Bordeaux, one of the finest public collections in France, and one of many similar Bibliotheques municipales. Although France had a system of public libraries that were, on paper, the envy of the world (due to the size and reputation of their collections), in reality they were tombs of books: rarely used, badly funded and frequently looted. 
Scene Three: New York, USA. The famous public library building was still decades in the future, but New York had a highly diverse system of different libraries, for different publics, that explain why a great central collection was so long in the making. 
Mementos: Arthur, One of the books stolen by Count Libri that went missing in the mists of time in order to return it to its rightful bibliothèque municipale. Andrew, mid 19th century ‘triple-decker’ edition of The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Lulu Jemimah: The Last Pre-Colonial King of Buganda (1885)

This week we meet a misunderstood king who resisted colonial rule. 
History is full of kings and queens with bad reputations. And yet, on closer inspection, we often find these reputations weren’t always entirely justified. That’s the argument that my guest today, Lulu Jemimah, makes for King Mwanga II – the last pre-colonial king of Buganda before British colonial rule.
King Mwanga is known mostly for his part in killing 45 young pages who were Christian converts between 1885 and 1887, later known as the Uganda martyrs. Some scholars have argued that Mwanga was bisexual and that he had the pages killed after they refused his sexual advances in court. 
But what if Mwanga’s reign and reputation were more complicated than the picture this story paints? Mwanga came to the throne aged sixteen and inherited a kingdom which was under threat from European powers engaged in a “Scramble for Africa”.
Our guest is the writer, producer, and media consultant Lulu Jemimah. With over ten years’ experience she has worked across different platforms from print to radio, stage, and screen. She has also been involved in communicating research to broader audiences across topics like health, economics, history and politics.
Show Notes
Scene One: September, 1855. A meeting is held between Mwanga and his chiefs to discuss European influence on the continent.
Scene Two: October, 1885. The execution of Bishop Hannington
Scene Three: 15th November 1885. The execution of king’s close friend and confidante Joseph Mukasa Balikudembe by the Prime minister. 
Momento: The snake that tried to kill King Mutesa.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Lulu Jemimah
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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