Travels Through Time

Ronen Steinke: The Arab Doctor and the Jewish Girl (1943)

In this episode of Travels Through Time we meet two extraordinarily brave people who formed an unlikely friendship in Hitler's Berlin. 
Their names were Dr Mohammed Helmy – a Muslim Egyptian doctor who had been living in Berlin since coming to study there in 1922 – and Anna Boros, a sixteen year old Jewish girl. When the Nazi regime's persecution of Jewish people started to escalate, Anna's mother approached Dr Helmy to ask for his help. His solution was to form a unique and daring plan that would fool the Gestapo just enough times to save Anna's life. 
Anna and Dr Helmy's story is the subject of a new book by our guest today, the journalist and author Ronen Steinke. Ronen is also a political commentator for Süddeutsche Zeitung,  Germany's leading broadsheet newspaper and has published a number of works in Germany on the Nazi period. His most recent book Anna & Dr Helmy: How an Arab Doctor Saved a Jewish Girl in Hitler's Berlin is published by Oxford University Press. 
Show Notes
Scene One: 1943. The Berlin mosque. A place that had fascinated Berliners and inspired the imagination of intellectuals and artists, a place that had been open to visitors and had attracted visitors like Albert Einstein - and a place where a particular friendship with the city's Jews had been visible since the mid-1920s. Now in 1943, this mosque was forcibly placed under the control of the Nazi-friendly Mufti of Jerusalem, a guest of honour of the SS.
Scene Two: 1943. The doctor's practice of Dr Mohammed Helmy in the well-to-do Charlottenburg district of Berlin. The Gestapo barge in, they are looking for a Jewish girl who has gone to ground in order to escape deportation: Anna. They don't find her however, they are met only by the doctor and his Arab assistant, and so they leave empty-handed. The beauty of this scene is: They have been duped.
Scene Three: 10 June 1943. The appartment of Dr Mohammed Helmy in the rough Moabit neighbourhood of Berlin. Nighttime. A secret meeting. Along with a fellow Egyptian, Dr Helmy helps the Jewish girl Anna whom he is hiding to convert to Islam. The idea is to save her life.
Momento: An instrument from one of Berlin’s jazz clubs.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Ronen Steinke
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Dr Priya Atwal: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire (1837)

In this episode of Travels Through Time we attend a magnificent Sikh royal wedding which was as much carefully orchestrated political theatre as it was the union of two people before god.
Indian weddings are famous for their exuberance and that of Prince Nau Nihal Singh, who married Bibi Nanaki Kaur Atariwala in 1837, may well have been the most extravagant of all time.
This lavish month-long celebration was an emotional moment for the young Prince’s grandparents, Ranjit Singh, ‘the lion of Punjab’, Maharajah and founder of the splendid Sikh dynasty that ruled northern India from 1799-1849, and his beloved wife, Maharani Datar Kaur. They oversaw the wedding preparations and presided over the whole extravaganza.
But while the guests feasted and the dancing girls performed, Ranjit Singh and his advisors were busy negotiating with representatives of the East India Company over the division of power in the Punjab and beyond.
Click here to order Dr Priya Atwal’s book Royals and Rebels, the Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire from an independent bookshop near you.
Show Notes
Scene One: March 6th, 1837. The 'vatna' ceremony performed by his family (particularly his grandmother and the senior queens) where the couple are smeared with a paste made of turmeric as part of his pre-wedding celebrations.
Scene Two: Early April, 1837. The wedding ceremony at the home of Sham Singh Attariwala, local warlord and father of the bride.
Scene Three: End of March, 1837. The military parade performed by the groom in front of Maharajah Ranjit Singh's British guests at the end of the month-long celebrations.
Memento: One of the Maharani’s incredible outfits, including the jewels!
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Dr Priya Atwal
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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David Bosco: The Struggle to Rule the Ocean (1982)

In this delightfully modern episode of Travels Through Time we are setting sail for an adventure on the high seas.
Our guest is David Bosco, author of The Poseidon Project, The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans, in which he charts the efforts of international organisations to create consensus and establish a structure of globally recognised rules for the oceans.
In this episode David takes us back to 1982, a fraught year on the high seas when Britain was battling Argentina in the South Atlantic for control of the Falkland Islands and the waters around them. In the Arctic, a British adventurer had just completed the famous Northwest Passage. He did so just as disagreement between Canada and the United States over the legal status of the Passage became acute. Meanwhile, final preparations were underway for the signing of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But there was a cloud over the celebrations—the world’s leading maritime power, the United States, had decided not to sign.
Click here to order David Bosco's book The Poseidon Project, The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans from an independent bookseller. 
Show Notes
Scene One: January 1, 1982, The North Pole. Sir Ranulph Fiennes and his wife Virginia Fiennes celebrated the New Year with the rest of their expedition at a snow-covered base camp. 
Scene Two: June 8, 1982, the South Atlantic Ocean, approximately 500 miles northeast of the Falkland Islands. An aircraft bombs the tanker Hercules during the war between Argentina and the United Kingdom for control of the Falklands. 
Scene Three: December 10, 1982: Rose Hall Hotel, Montego Bay, Jamaica. The site for the signing of the new United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 
Memento: The signed treaty from the convention in Montego Bay. 
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: David Bosco
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Edward Shawcross: The Last Emperor of Mexico (1867)

Today we’re off to the nineteenth century to examine an event that Karl Marx called ‘One of the most monstrous enterprises in the annals of international history.’
Edward Shawcross takes us back to meet Maximilian, the Last Emperor of Mexico.
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The 1860s were a decisive decade in the emergence of the modern world. As Britain’s empire expanded, and the United States emerged entire from a debilitating Civil War, an audacious French scheme to place an Austrian archduke on an invented throne in Mexico played tragically out.
One of the chief architects of this plan was the daring French leader, Napoleon III. In Napoleon’s mind the effort to insert a Catholic emperor into a contested part of the world was an inspired piece of statecraft. Yet to many others the enterprise was quite different. It was hubristic, high-flown, destined to fail.
Today’s guest tells us about this whole astonishing story. The Last Emperor of Mexico is Edward Shawcross’s debut book. Widely praised, it tells the extraordinary true story of Maximilian of Mexico.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com. For more about The Last Emperor of Mexico look here.
"A superbly entertaining and well-researched account that sets a new standard for histories of the doomed escapade."--Financial Times
Show notes
Scene One: 13 February 1867, Mexico City (and its outskirts). Ferdinand Maximilian, so-called emperor of Mexico, rides out to confront his enemies.
Scene Two: Querétaro. Early morning of May 15 1867, Maximilian is cornered in a shell-shattered former convent.
Scene Three: 19 June 1867, Querétaro another convent, this one is Maximilian’s prison cell. This is the day of his death.
Memento: Maximilian’s silver crucifix.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Edward Shawcross
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Roderick Beaton: Herodotus and the Birth of Written History (447 BCE)

This week we are going back to witness the birth of historyas a written discipline.
Our guide on this long journey into the ancient world has spent his lifestudying and teaching Greek language and culture, but it was when he retired from academia that Professor Roderick Beaton found the time to write the book he had been dreaming about since he first visited Greece as a teenager. The Greeks, A Global History is a masterful, sweeping journey through 3500 years of history that tells the stories of Greek people, their language and their culture.
In this episode, Roderick takes us back to the year 447BCE and the moment when Herodotus of Halicarnassus, newly arrived in Athens, sat down and began to write his Histories and in doing so, laid the foundations of the discipline of History itself.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order Roderick Beaton’s The Greeks: A Global History from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Show Notes
Scene One: Herodotus of Halicarnassus arrives in Athens and begins writing his monumental Histories.
Scene Two: Pericles, the many-times elected statesman of the Athenian democracy, persuades his fellow-citizens to embark on a huge andcontroversial building programme on the Acropolis of Athens.
Scene Three: Outside the small town of Coronea, an Athenian expeditionary force is defeated by the city’s neighbours, the Boeotians. The defeat marks the beginning of division of the ancient Greek world into blocs led by Athens and Sparta, and is the harbinger of the Peloponnesian War in which the Greek city-states fought themselves to exhaustion and stalemate.
Memento: One of the rolled scrolls on which Herodotus wrote his Histories.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Roderick Beaton
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Nick Rennison: Scenes from a Turbulent Year (1922)

In our first episode of 2022, we’re travelling back exactly a hundred years.
We visit three self-contained moments – the trial of Hollywood’s much-loved comedian ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle for the murder of Virginia Rappe, the assassination of the Weimer Republic politician Walther Rathenau and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. Each one sheds light on a different facet of the modern world that was 1922. 
Our guest is Nick Rennison, whose most recent book 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year charts this extraordinary year in world history month by month. Nick is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and crime fiction. His other works include Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography and The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction. He is a regular reviewer for both the Sunday Times and Daily Mail. 
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year.
Show Notes
Scene One: November, 1922. Valley of the Kings, the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb
Scene Two: June, 1922. Berlin, the assassination of Walther Rathenau by right wing extremists
Scene Three: January, 1922. Hollywood, scandals such as the 'Fatty' Arbuckle trial and the murder of William Desmond Taylor which ultimately shaped the kind of films produced in America over the next four decades
Memento: A first edition copy of James Joyce's Ulysses
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Nick Rennison
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Christmas with the Three Wise Historians (2021)

In this Christmas special of Travels Through Time our three wise presenters Peter, Violet and Artemis get together to remember some of their favourite books and episodes from the last year on the podcast. 
Thank you so much to all of our listeners for joining us over the course of the year and happy Christmas!
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order the books discussed in this episode from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Show Notes
Peter's choices: The Ruin of all Witches by Malcolm Gaskill, Surviving Katyn by Jane Rogoyska
Violet's choices: Albert & the Whale by Philip Hoare; Alexandria by Edmund Richardson
Artemis's choices: The City of Tears by Kate Mosse, Blood Legacy by Alex Renton
People/Social
Presenters: Peter Moore, Violet Moller, Artemis Irvine
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Tom Chivers: Journeys into Deep London (62 AD)

In this episode we visit London in 62 AD, barely twenty years after it was first established by the Romans, to traverse its lost landscape and hidden waterways.
When we think of London, we usually think of a sprawling urban metropolis: glass and steel, terraced houses, every imaginable form of transport and noise. We don’t often think about the natural landscape that lies beneath it all. And yet, our guest today argues, it is London’s geology that has been a crucial force in the shaping of the city over the last two thousand years. 
Tom Chivers is a writer, publisher and arts producer from south London. He is also an award-winning poet who has published two pamphlets and two full collections of his poetry. London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City is his non-fiction debut and it’s been described by critics as “entertaining, enlightening and deeply moving.”
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City.
Show Notes
Scene One: 62 AD. The river Walbrook.
Scene Two: 62 AD. The Westminster Delta.
Scene Three: 62 AD. The Rockingham Anomaly, in Southwark, to meet Harper Road Woman.
Memento: A shoe. “I like the idea of the wearer’s footprint being retained in the soft leather, and also to imagine what kind of ground the sole has stood on/walked across.”
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Tom Chivers
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Elizabeth Drayson: The Last Muslim Sultan of Granada (1492)

This week we head to Granada in southern Spain to witness one of the most important years in the history of not only Europe, but the whole world.
In 711 a band of Berber tribesmen made the short voyage from North Africa to Southern Spain, landing near Gibraltar. The land they found mesmerised them with its beauty and natural abundance, they settled down, built cities and were joined by Arabs from across the vast Muslim Empire who made al-Andalus their home.
Towards the end of the eleventh century, Christian Europeans began the long process of Reconquista, reclaiming the lands they saw as being rightfully theirs. By the late fifteenth century, only Granada remained in Arab hands and in 1492, Boabdil, the last Sultan of Granada, handed over the keys of the city to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella – the joint Catholic rulers of Spain.
We are visiting this watershed moment in the company of Professor Elizabeth Drayson, Emeritus Fellow in Spanish at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. Her new book, Lost Paradise, The Story of Granada, she reveals the full wonder of this city’s history, highlighting the experiences of some of its minority populations including Jews, Gypsies, women.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order Elizabeth Drayson's book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Show Notes
Scene One: 2 January 1492, in Granada. Christian and Muslim royalty have assembled for the official surrender of the city to the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.
Scene Two: Mid-July, 1492, on the road to Cádiz, the route to one of Spain’s biggest seaports, as Jewish families prepare to sail into permanent exile from theirhomeland.
Scene Three: September 1492, in the old wood-panelled library of the University of Salamanca. Queen Isabella I of Castile meets Spain’s most renowned Humanist, Antonio de Nebrija, to accept his newly published grammar of the Spanish language.
Memento: the gold ring set with a turquoise owned by the last Muslim sultan of Granada.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Elizabeth Drayson
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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Nigel Pickford: Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester (1682)

On the morning of 6 May 1682, in unremarkable weather, the Gloucester, a 50-gun frigate of the Royal Navy, collided with a sandbank off the Norfolk coast. The wreck that followed was no ordinary one. For aboard was James, Duke of York, heir to the English throne and a glittering array of fellow travellers. Within hours of the collision, two hundred people were dead.
Today we travel back to the late seventeenth century and to the Norfolk coast to witness that dramatic shipwreck. It was an event that very nearly changed the course of English history.
Guiding us through this enthralling historical story is the author Nigel Pickford, the author of Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester. Pickford not only tell us about this story but he also gives us a peek into his unusual career, searching the oceans of the world for valuable shipwrecks.
This episode of Travels Through Time is supported by The History Press. To read a beautifully illustrated, exclusive extract from Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester, head over to Unseen Histories.
As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Click here to order Nigel Pickfords book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Show notes
Scene One: Early Morning, Wednesday 3 May 1682. James, Duke of York, embarks on a royal barge at Putney.
Scene Two: 5am on the morning of 6 May 1682. The wrecking of the Gloucester.
Scene Three: 6 June 1682. Aboard the Charlotte yacht for the court martial of the pilot James Ayres.
Memento: A seventeenth-century wine bottle.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Nigel Pickford
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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