Travels Through Time

Nicholas Guyatt: The Dartmoor Massacre (1815)

In the spring of 1815, as all Europe fretted about the return of Napoleon Bonaparte, a terrible massacre was perpetrated by British militiamen against American inmates at Dartmoor Prison in England.
This episode has been very nearly forgotten by history. Today the historian Nicholas Guyatt takes us back to the early nineteenth-century, to the days of the very last war between Great Britain and the United States of America, to explain just what happened.
Nicolas Guyatt is Professor of North American History at the University of Cambridge. His new book, The Hated Cage, is a forensic, erudite and absorbing account of the Dartmoor Massacre.
Today’s episode comes along with a few fabulous extras. Along with the usual episode page on our website, you can also read a beautifully-illustrated and introduced extract from The Hated Cage on Unseen Histories. And, for those of you who are very interested in this story, we added the full, uncut video of the conversation between Peter and Nicolas on our YouTube channel. Enjoy!
Show notes
Scene One: Ghent, 24 December 1814 – the signing of the treaty that would end the War of 1812.
Scene Two:  Dartmoor, England. 26 March 1815. A mock trial is held by the inmates.
Scene Three: Dartmoor, 6 April 1815. The day of the massacre.
Memento: The effigy of Reuben Beasley
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Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Nicholas Guyatt
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
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Bronwen Riley: Journey to Britannia (130 AD)

This week we are setting sail for the Roman province of Britannia to traverse the empire's north-western frontier – Hadrian's Wall. 
Hadrian’s Wall is the largest archaeological feature remaining from Roman Britain, a 73-mile line of fortifications stretching from the River Tyne on the east coast to the Solway Firth on the west. Building was begun by the Emperor Hadrian in 122 AD, during a visit to this remote, unruly corner of his empire. Astonishingly, only five percent has been excavated to date, so new finds and evidence are unearthed surprisingly often.
In this episode we follow in the footsteps of a brilliant young general making his way from Rome to Britain to take up his post as governor of this outpost of the empire in 130AD. Our navigator is Bronwen Riley, a historian who traced this journey in her rigorously researched yet highly readable book, Journey to Britannia. She brings life in the second century into vivid focus by taking us to the dodgy quayside bars of Antica Ostia where the snacks were questionable and the wine was liberally watered down and into the private thoughts of Dutch soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall desperate for a taste of home.
Bronwen Riley is a writer, editor and deviser of historical and literary journeys in Britain, Byzantium and beyond. She has a special interest in the Classical world and in Romania, both life-long passions. She is a director of the Transylvanian Book Festival (transylvanianbookfestival.com). Read more about her creative writing project with the Romanians on Hadrian’s Wall at bronwenriley.co.uk/dacians-on-the-wall. Her latest book Journey to Britannia from the Heart of Rome to Hadrian’s Wall AD130 (Head of Zeus) is now out in paperback.
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: July 130 AD. Severus and Minicius Natalis prepare to leave Rome, they visit relatives and plan for the long months ahead on the road and in their new lives in Britain. 
Scene Two: October 130 AD. On one of his many peregrinations around the empire, Hadrian visits Egypt (holiday hotspot of the ancient world) with a vast entourage including both his wife and his lover, travelling in unparalleled style and luxury on a ship with purple sails (probably).
Scene Three: 130 AD. Severus reaches Britain and begins his journey northwards taking in the major cities and camps along the way, meeting officials and inspecting his soldiers. 
Momento: A souvenir cup from Hadrian’s Wall in all its enamelled glory but also would love to visit a bookshop to see if some Greek antiquary/interpreter has transcribed any British poetry or Druidic philosophy!
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Bronwen Riley
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Katherine Rundell: John Donne, Super-Infinite (1601)

This week we head back to Renaissance England to immerse ourselves in the world of John Donne, one of Britain’s most ingenious poets. We visit playhouses, bear-fighting pits and the poet’s marital bed to better understand Donne’s life and work. 
John Donne led many lives, from a young rake in his early years to archdeacon of St Paul’s in his old age. Born into a grand Catholic family who had suffered persecution under Protestant monarchs, he was intimately acquainted with the cruelty of sixteenth-century England. In particular, the tragic death of his younger brother who, aged just nineteen, was thrown into prison for hiding a Jesuit priest and subsequently caught the plague. 
However Donne’s poetry isn’t defeatist – he was famous in his time for his unusual, intelligent and imaginative work, which used fleas to talk about sex and violence to talk about God. And in the view of our guest today, Katherine Rundell, Donne should be considered alongside William Shakespeare as one of the finest wordsmiths this country has ever produced. That’s why she has written a sparkling new biography of the poet: Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. 
Katherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. She has written for, amongst others, the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times: mostly about books, though sometimes about night climbing, tightrope walking, and animals.
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: 1601. John Donne composing rakish poetry as a man about town - including almost certainly Love’s Growth - attending bear baiting 
Scene Two: 1601. The first performance of Hamlet - which Donne would, perhaps, as a great attender of plays, have gone to see
Scene Three: 1601. John Donne marries the 17 year old Anne and is thrown in the Fleet prison by her father, amid ice-cold winds and lice
Momento: John Donne’s Commonplace book. 
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Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Katherine Rundell
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
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Mary Wellesley: Hidden Hands (1413)

This week we head to fifteenth-century Norwich to meet two of the most extraordinary women in medieval England: Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. 
Manuscripts are one of the most tangible sources of evidence we have about the distant past and our guest this week, Mary Wellesley, has dedicated her professional life to studying them and persuading them to give up their secrets. In her spellbinding book, Hidden Hands: the Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers, she reveals traces left by the people who made these vital artefacts. As she explains, manuscripts are ‘the only connection we have with these people in the past who would otherwise remain completely anonymous and unknown.' 
In this episode Mary takes us to the early fifteenth century, a period of unease in religion when reformist ideas were circulating and the Church reacted violently against anything that appeared to challenge its orthodoxy.
Mary Wellesley is a research affiliate at the British Library and Medieval Language and Literature course tutor for the library's adult learning programme. She's a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the TLS, amongst others. Hidden Hands is her first book.
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: Early 1413. The boisterous mystic and serial pilgrim visited the cell of the anchoress, Julian of Norwich. 
Scene Two: Late 1413. Margery sets off on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Scene Three: 1413. The exemplar of the Short Text of Julian’s Revelations was copied.
Momento: Julian of Norwich's autograph copy of the Long Text. 
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Mary Wellesley
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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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.
People/Social
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.
People/Social
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.
People/Social
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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