Shows
History Cafe#54 'Slavery was even worse than we thought' - Ep 1 Money not Morality ended British enslavementWe start this 5-part series by trying to give a factual outline of the experience of being transported in horrendous conditions from Africa to the British Caribbean against your will. And we open up the debate started in 1938 by the brilliant young Trinidadian historian Eric Williams as to whether it was money or morality that ended British enslavement? The trade in the enslaved was banned in 1807, the enslaved were 'emancipated' in 1833. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2025-02-1236 minHistory Cafe#72 It was mainly the poor who burned - Ep 5 Bloody Mary Tudor?Most of those executed for their beliefs under Philip and Mary 1555-58 came from places with a long history of religious dissidence. It matches European evidence that many – perhaps most – of those burned at the stake were not Protestants, but ‘anabaptists’ or people with similar beliefs – usually poor - whom both Protestants and Catholics were persecuting. The government of Edward VI had already begun before Mary came to the throne. But why so many in England? We discover literature appearing from the late 1540s that openly encouraged dissenters to die for their beliefs. And we explore the possibility that so many died...2025-02-0542 minHistory Cafe#71 Most who were burned were not Protestants - Ep 4 Bloody Mary Tudor?Until six weeks before the child was due, everybody at court and indeed in Europe, believed Mary was pregnant. She suffered a rare disorder - pseudocyesis - maybe triggered by a tumour on her pituitary gland that would eventually kill her. The imminent birth of a Catholic heir to the Anglo-Spanish dynasty meant that the select council governing the kingdom really now had no alternative but to grasp the nettle of suppressing any potential causes of unrest – including any remaining shreds of die-hard Protestantism - and promptly. We also discover, that the majority of those who were burned were not Pr...2025-01-2941 minHistory Cafe#70 More interested in pirates than heretics - Ep 3 Bloody Mary Tudor?Who ran the persecution of heretics in England 1555-58? England was a joint monarchy but historians traditionally accused bigoted Mary of running the clamp down herself - with her cousin, Reginald Pole the Archbishop of Canterbury. There’s no evidence it’s true and Pole was useless at running anything. But didn’t Mary intervene to make sure Thomas Cranmer was burned – Henry VIII’s archbishop? No, again. Cranmer was tried by the pope and Mary had no power to spare him. As for Mary’s Privy Council, they turn out to have been more interested in pirates than heretics. Much more im...2025-01-2239 minHistory Cafe#69 Who exactly was a heretic? - Ep 2 Bloody Mary Tudor?England in the mid-1550s was being governed by a joint monarchy: Philip and Mary and a select council of extremely able English politicians. Almost all of them had experience in government stretching back through the violently protestant regime of Edward VI. To all appearances they had for years been living as active protestants. And yet here they were in a government that was conducting a campaign against religious heresy that we have always understood to be a Catholic campaign to stamp out Protestantism. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2025-01-1538 minHistory Cafe#68 Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! - Ep 1 Bloody Mary Tudor?Bloody Queen Mary? 313 people died for their beliefs 1555-58. We owe it to the victims to get the story right. In 2020 historian Alexander Samson said about the reign of Mary Tudor ‘it feels as if we are at the start.’ So dismiss everything you thought you knew and be prepared to be amazed. Ever since Mary died childless, at the age of just 42 in 1558, the history of her reign was written almost exclusively by English Protestant historians, mainly using Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ written by an Elizabethan Protestant. We look at why Foxe exclusively blames Mary and why he’s wrong. (R...2025-01-0840 minHistory Cafe#32 The curious case of inventing ScottishnessIn 1983 Professor Hugh Trevor Roper claimed that Scottishness had been invented. We enjoyably demolish Trevor Roper’s theory and reveal that the commercialisation of romantic Scottishness in the nineteenth century had far deeper and darker roots than the manufacture of tartan and romantic fiction. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-12-3135 minHistory Cafe#79 Santa Claus and the KnickerbockersA whole lot of nonsense has been written about the invention of the modern Christmas. It was thought up by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens or Prince Albert. We just can’t resist attaching a famous name to things, especially if the name belongs to a writer or a royal. We deserve better than this. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-12-2529 minHistory Cafe#107 This is Armageddon - Ep 7 Lunatics take over the Asylum: Neoliberalism uncutWe present the final, damming evidence that the neoliberal case for freedom from all government regulation was always a dangerous deceit. It was always intended to make us prisoners of the unaccountable rich, as we are today. This is not liberty. It is not even the twilight of sovereignty. This is Armageddon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-12-1830 minHistory Cafe#106 Dark make-believe - Ep 6 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncutUnbelievable, sinister. Milton Friedman advises apartheid South Africa that neoliberal free-market economics can solve the problems of the Soweto riots, in the same way it delivered a ‘miracle’ of liberty under the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-12-1129 minHistory Cafe#105 Smears, imprisonment, assassination - Ep 5 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncutNeoliberalism was welcomed, finally, as a way to tackle what seemed to be a breakdown in American society in the late 1960s. Big business and FBI under J Edgar Hoover felt threatened by Keynsian consensus on welfare and the eradication of poverty. They had plenty to gain by provoking the extremism, and clearing the way for Milton Friedman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-12-0427 minHistory Cafe#104 Catch 22 - Ep 4 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncutThe breakdown of American post-war consensus in the 60s calls for desperate measures on all sides: a government war in Vietnam, inner-city rioting, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Alarmed, US businesses seek salvation from the previously dismissed economic theory of neoliberal free-market capitalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-11-2730 minHistory Cafe#103 Disinformation didn't start with Donald Trump - Ep 3 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncutWe look at the roots of free market Neoliberalism and discover that big business in the US has been championing freedom from regulation since 1895, even claiming in 1923 that the anti-child labour movement in America was secretly being run from Moscow… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-11-1934 minHistory Cafe#102 'The Cuckoo in the Nobel nest' - Ep 2 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncutHow did less welfare, less government regulation of business (aka neoliberalism free market) become a global ‘fashion’ without any evidence of its benefits? Something to do with an imposter ‘Nobel’ prize and a PBS TV series funded by American big business? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-11-1331 minHistory Cafe#101 'everything absolutely maxed out' - Ep 1 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncutCivil liberty is different from individual liberty. Philosophers have known this since at least the 17th Century. We explore the two fundamental fallacies of neoliberalism to show why neoliberal economics can only bring prosperity to the few, and is incapable of predicting financial crashes. Today in the USA those damaged by neoliberalism have been driven to elect an unhinged criminal... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-11-0632 minHistory Cafe#78 Remembrance Day - aren't we forgetting something?At least 50% of deaths from war in the last three centuries were civilians. In 2001 the International Red Cross calculated that in modern warfare ten civilians die for every member of the military killed in battle. In the two World Wars the vast majority of soldiers were “civilians in uniform” – conscripts or volunteers. But do we officially remember them? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-10-3020 minHistory Cafe#23 The Last Million Men - Ep 7 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?One day after Britain goes to war - ‘at sea’ - on 4 August 1914 the first War Council unceremoniously throws out the army’s secret plan to send a few divisions to meet the Germans head on and win quick, painless glory fighting alongside the French. Only then do the four men who had single-handedly thrown away the chance of avoiding a general European war, understand what Britain’s most prestigious soldier, Kitchener, has been warning since 1911. That a war with Germany would last at least 3 years and it would come down to ‘the last million men’ Britain could send. (R) Hosted o...2024-10-2336 minHistory Cafe#22 The Bullying of Edward Grey - Ep 6 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?A right-wing anti-German contingent call their campaign for war, the weekend of 31 July-2 August 1914 a ‘pogrom’. All talks of peace are, in their words, a German-Jewish plot to keep Britain out of the war for financial reasons. They have the support of the Conservative party, the British and French military, the politician in charge of the Royal Navy, and the press. But how on earth does Grey persuade the anti-war Liberal Cabinet and Parliament? And WHY? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-10-1630 minHistory Cafe#21 8pm 1 August 1914 the War is Off - Ep 5 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?8pm German time the Kaiser orders champagne, halts the German advance towards Belgium, and sends a telegram of congratulations to his cousin George V at Buckingham Palace. The Liberal British Cabinet had voted to remain neutral on 31 July. Earlier on 1 August Foreign Secretary Grey met the German ambassador Prince Lichnowsky (one of a string of meetings that week) to tell him that France might also remain neutral. A few hours later they met again and Grey added that even if France went to war Britain would not. So what went so catastrophically wrong in the next 72 hours? (R) Hosted...2024-10-0933 minHistory Cafe#20 Hanging on Russia's apron strings - Ep 4 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?In 1912 a deal between War Secretary Haldane and the German chancellor Bethmann-Holweg to allow Britain to retain naval supremacy if they both remained neutral (if neither side had started the war), was rudely sabotaged. It involved lying to Cabinet that the Germans were demanding a full-scale Anglo-German alliance, which they weren’t. It meant throwing away what the majority of the Cabinet saw as the best chance to contain Russian expansion, by making common cause with Germany. Russia, allied to the French, could now call all the shots. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-10-0222 minHistory Cafe#19 Bicycling holidays along the French-Belgian border - Ep 3 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?How did what friendly chats between British and French generals since 1905 turn into a commitment to send a small British Expeditionary Force to France at the start of a war with Germany? A commitment that had not been agreed by Cabinet, Parliament or the Navy? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-09-2529 minHistory Cafe#18 Spies of the Kaiser - Ep 2 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?We look at anti-German hysteria in Britain 1906-1909. The British publishing phenomena of 1906 was The Invasion of 1910 (by Germans), serialised in the Daily Mail and marketed by men walking around London in Prussian uniforms. This chimed perfectly with the anti-German clique at the foreign office. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-09-1826 minHistory Cafe#17 The Elephant in the Room - Ep 1 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?Britain’s main problem by 1910 was Russian expansion towards its Persian oil and India, the jewel in Britain’s crown. So why did Britain go to war to SUPPORT Russia and AGAINST Germany which was its closest European friend and trading partner? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-09-1134 minHistory Cafe#40 Henry VIII: the pope, Katherine, Anne and FlorenceAfter years of negotiation and confrontation, Pope Clement VII was heard swearing unpapally over Henry VIII’s divorce. And no wonder. The history of Henry’s pope is a murky tale of code-breaking and ruthless sieges that involves Michelangelo and Machiavelli and a great deal of double-dealing. Pope Clement was trapped between a rock and a hard place: the only way to save his Medici family’s city of Florence was to refuse Henry his divorce and split Christendom. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-09-0436 minHistory Cafe#52 Anne Boleyn - Henry's MacGuffinMost of what we think we know about Anne Boleyn turns out to be later invention, with no historical basis. We argue that she was a MacGuffin: she was necessary to the way things turned out for Henry, but unimportant in herself. We’re not even sure he was in love with her. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-08-2844 minHistory Cafe#51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job - Ep 6 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the FrenchThe Ambassadors painting by Hans Holbein reveals the French horror at Henry’s decision in January 1533 to defy the pope and get remarried to a pregnant Anne Boleyn. But since Henry couldn't get an annulment he had no choice. No big-time European princess would marry him. With the Spanish seriously weakened by war, Turkish invasion and protestant revolt in Germany, and Henry’s French allies now needing him more than he does them, Henry’s long game to get the Pope on side against the Spanish is now in extra time. Henry is free to make himself head of the Church...2024-08-2130 minHistory Cafe#50 No more ménage á trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the FrenchIn a dynamite French document from August 1530, still overlooked by historians, the King of France offers to send troops to England to defend Henry VIII against the Spanish. No French government before or since has ever promised to send troops to defend England. Does this explain Henry’s sudden move in August 1530 to go on the offensive against Rome and the clergy in England? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-08-1428 minHistory Cafe#49 Like an episode of the Borgias - Ep 4 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French31 May 1529: Faced with France and Spain doing a deal and leaving England in the lurch, Henry races against time to begin his divorce trial in London, and then pulls the plug just before a verdict is reached. Meanwhile the pope and his cardinals are double-crossing each other. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-08-0733 minHistory Cafe#46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French1527: The pope is a prisoner of the marauding Spanish in Rome and yet Henry sends his man Knight on a madcap mission to ask Pope Clement VII for permission to marry a young woman he is already sleeping with. It’s the first of a whole series of crazy errands, asking the pope for the impossible. Does Henry have a hidden agenda? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-07-3132 minHistory Cafe#45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the FrenchDid Henry break with Rome in order to seize power over the wealthy, ubiquitous church in England? We find that the dates don’t add up. Instead we look at why in June 1525 Henry promoted his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy over the head of his heir Mary. And why Charles V broke off his engagement with 9 year old Mary to marry a Portuguese princess instead. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-07-2432 minHistory Cafe#44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII, his wife, his lover, the FrenchIn 2010 a document from 1527 was found in which Henry admits to the pope that he is sleeping with the woman he wishes to marry instead of, or as well as, his Spanish wife Katherine. Very little of the traditional story can be believed. It’s Katherine who matters in the story of Henry’s Reformation, not Anne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-07-1731 minHistory Cafe#77 Stanley never got the joke - Ep 5 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'The events that followed Livingstone’s funeral are perhaps important for the light they shed on everything that Livingstone was not. Stanley, having declared that he would complete what Livingstone had begun, undertook three ‘momentous’ journeys. Whatever the cover stories he created, Stanley’s expeditions were intended to grab and occupy African lands, sometimes through fake treaties he claimed to have signed with African leaders. One result was the wholesale mapping of central Africa; the other was what we now know as the ‘scramble for Africa’, a gruesome series of invasions and seizures by European states. Stanley’s presumption earned him the lastin...2024-07-1140 minHistory Cafe#76 Twelve Reckless Americans - Ep 4 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' Henry Morton Stanley, the New York-born journalist who was actually born in Wales, ‘finds’ Livingstone, although everyone knows he’s not lost. Stanley’s employer Gordon Bennett Jr of the daily New York Herald has spotted a fantastic money-making enterprise, pedalling fictitious stories of the romantic failures of the British explorer, Dr Livingstone. It was time for the Americans to take over the exploration of Africa. The British had bogged themselves down with ‘too many theodolites, barometers, sextants’. Stanley and other ‘energetic… reckless Americans’ would ‘command … an expedition more numerous and better appointed than any that has ever entered Africa’ and infinitely more ruth...2024-07-0331 minHistory Cafe#75 The Lion and the Tartan Jacket - Ep 3 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'The British audience for Livingstone’s book 'Missionary Travels' can’t get enough of his ‘manly’ and ‘forcible’ style. He brings a very personal mix of far-away adventure and science to his stories. His account of being mauled by a lion – shaken like ‘a terrier dog does a rat’ and how the tartan jacket saves his life – are still vivid reading. But had he not glossed over the danger of malaria and other diseases fatal to Victorian Britons (in much the same way as he casually dismissed as an ‘inconvenience’ the arm savaged by the lion and rendered useless even before his real explorin...2024-06-2638 minHistory Cafe#74 Smoke that Thunders - Ep 2 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'Livingstone was the first European to record his visit to Smoke that Thunders on the Zambezi river. 100 metres of plummeting water, across the entire kilometre of the Zambezi’s width. He promptly named it after his queen, Victoria Falls. His ambition was to find a navigable river from the east coast of Africa inland. Although it was clear that Smoke that Thunders would put a stop to any trade boats navigating any further inland he remained undaunted. He calculated that just being able to bring a ship this far would be well worth the effort. Now he just had to ho...2024-06-1937 minHistory Cafe#73 'Stronger than the ox he rode' - Ep 1 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'Exploration changed in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Henry Morton Stanley met Dr David Livingstone. We discover that Livingstone isn’t remembered for anything he achieved. A missionary and medical doctor from a poor Scottish background – and an indestructible traveller - he learned to make accurate geographical calculations and used them to map a small part of Africa. Amazingly he did most of his successful exploration with an African team and backed by African funds. So why did he become an international sensation? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-06-1337 minHistory Cafe#100 'My dreams were merely dreams' - Ep 4 Murder. Mystery at the North PoleDid Robert Peary or Frederick Cook reach the North Pole first? In our 100th podcast, we weigh up what evidence remains after a ruthless campaign to destroy records and reputations. And we discover the new evidence that has begun to emerge from the most unexpected places. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-06-0545 minHistory Cafe#99 Shadowlands - Ep 3 Murder. Mystery at the North PoleA full year before US commander Robert Peary claimed he had been the first man to reach the North Pole, a younger, medical doctor, also from America, had beaten him to it. Or so he told the press. His name was Frederick Cook and he had expedition history with both Peary in the Arctic and Amundsen in the Antarctic. He not only treated the Inughuit well but also returned with credible latitude readings and unique observations of the movements and character of the polar ice. None of which was unacceptable to Peary and his millionaire backers. Hosted on Acast. S...2024-05-2936 minHistory Cafe#98 'So coarse, so manly' - Ep 2 Murder. Mystery at the North PoleRobert Peary’s backers were the wealthy railway barons and bankers of New York. It didn’t matter to them whether Peary was the first to get to the North Pole or not. What mattered to them in 1909 was that he would say he’d reached the Pole, and then tell a strong, manly tale about it. In their eyes the future of Americans, as the tough frontier people, depended upon it. It may well have pushed Peary, a man who was known to be both ruthless and exploitative, towards murder… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...2024-05-2244 minHistory Cafe#97 'a day of undiluted hell' - Ep 1 Murder. Mystery at the North PoleWe may think the main controversy surrounding American, naval commander, Robert Peary’s claim to be the first to reach the North Pole on 6/7 May 1909 was whether he, and the other ‘invisible’ five men accompanying him, actually got anywhere near the Pole. However, it’s a much more complicated and sinister story than that…. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-05-1541 minHistory Cafe#48 'Gunsmoke and Mirrors' - Ep 2 Was the Wild West wild?What was the driving force behind the settlement of the American west? Was it the so-called ‘anarchocapitalism’ so admired by the Hoover Institution and some of the followers of President Trump? The violence they fetishize turns out to have been only in those places populated by young men – we’re talking not just cowpokes or gold and silver prospectors, but also vigilantes in the towns back east. The majority of frontiers-people were peaceful Americans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-05-0836 minHistory Cafe#47 The Law-less Frontier - Ep 1 Was the Wild West wild?A series of land grabs and cruel clearances by the Federal government from 1781 triggered a crazy, barely-contained movement west, spearheaded by gold prospectors, cattle ranchers, homesteaders and the railroads. By 1892 it was generally agreed that the American character was forged in the violence of the shifting frontier. We look at the popular fiction and entertainment that helped create this belief: Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Mark Twain’s Six-fingered Pete and many others. And we examine what really went on! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-05-0142 minHistory Cafe#39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin. Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the idea off as magic. More striking, like other English philosophers, Newton believed that all this h...2024-04-2345 minHistory Cafe#38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conceived and measured and drew on the work of his contemporaries and of many men before him...2024-04-1736 minHistory Cafe#96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?Henry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over… or at least we thought it was, until now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-04-1029 minHistory Cafe#95 Murder in the Tower - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?One common-girl-denies-king-until-he-marries-her, two kings, three royal murders in the Tower, and the Queen's mother accused of witchcraft. Just about standard for late 15th Century England and Wales. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-04-0329 minHistory Cafe#94 'Political gangsterdom' - Ep 3 What Wars? What Roses?By the time Henry VI finally lost the last bit of England's French Empire in 1453 he could no longer go to war in France to occupy and enrich his nobility. This small, interrelated and bickering group, cooped up in England with an agricultural depression settling in, now resorted to what the historian Michael Postan long ago (in 1939) famously called ‘political gangsterdom.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-03-2735 min
History Cafe#93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?Why was the 15th century in England and Wales so violent? It certainly wasn’t York v Lancaster, white-rose v red-rose rivalry. Monarchs were useless but that’s not unique to the 15th century. So what was it that defined this period? It has everything to do with the plague… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-03-2031 min
History Cafe#92 'Welcome Traitor!' - Ep 1 What Wars? What Roses?Why do we know so little about medieval history? About England and Wales in the fifteenth century? The Wars of the Roses (Lancaster v York) lasted 4 months not the traditional 85 years. Even the roses were (mostly) inventions. And was it even medieval? The execution of the King’s chief minister as a traitor in 1450, by sailors dissatisfied with an ineffective king, was shocking. It revealed that the common people believed the true crown was the community. You can’t get more modern than that. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-03-1328 minHistory CafeEp 1 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #34 Getting the vote in 1918 - the secret strategyREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY - Mrs Pankhurst claims she won women the vote through ‘marvellous leadership.’ An all-male conference of MPs counters that it gifted women the vote. We reveal that neither is true. The door to women’s suffrage is finally opened in January 1917 through brilliant negotiations behind the scenes by Millicent Fawcett, the president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage, her female colleagues and the enlightened MPs who work with her. [Please note on our logo the NUWSS colours of berry red and leaf green - not often seen today] Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...2024-03-0835 minHistory CafeEp 2 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #35 Most women didn’t want the voteREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY We go back to the great number of unsung women and men who made great strides towards women’s votes and female emancipation by 1900. Emmeline Pankhurst sets up her Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 as a pressure group for votes for poor working-women in the cotton mills. By then a majority of MPs is already consistently in favour. But the public are uninterested and no government will therefore act. The question is whether the WSPU can find a formula for making ministers give votes to women.2024-03-0827 minHistory CafeEp 3 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #36 The Pankhursts didn’t want the poor to get the voteREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - begin in the Manchester Labour Party in the 1890s and learn their publicity-grabbing tactics from Labour. But these tactics turn out to have the worst possible effect – making women’s votes even less likely than before. They are so bad, in fact, it makes you wonder whether the Suffragette leadership had some other agenda. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-03-0830 minHistory CafeEp 4 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #37 Hunger strikes and forced feedingREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The militant strategy of the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes - is delivering them headlines. It gets them nowhere with the government but it makes enormous sums of advertising revenue from fancy retailers, and funds Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst’s society lifestyle. Rich London ladies in silks and satins pour in the money, while working-class activists take all the risks. WSPU officer Theresa Billington drafts a constitution to give everyone a say but Emmeline Pankhurst tears it up and manoeuvres anyone with a socialist agenda out. Who exactly is this organisation for? Hosted on Acast. See...2024-03-0838 minHistory CafeEp 5 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #41 The violence the Suffragettes wouldn’t admit toREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY From 1912 the WSPU – the Pankhurst Suffragettes – are out of control and dangerous. But that is not how they're remembered. Anyone who disagrees with the violence either leaves or is thrown out. Whatever they later claim about their ‘wonderful leadership’, it is their young, poor members who are inventing new and increasingly dangerous ways of intimidating the government. The WSPU leadership claims it never threatened life, only property, but this is manifestly not true. Axes are thrown, full theatres set on fire, bombs put on trains, acid poured into mail-boxes and the leaders do nothing to contain...2024-03-0837 minHistory CafeEp 6 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #42 The violence backfiredREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY November 1912 sees the first defeat for women’s votes since 1891. The government has been struggling with law and order after two years of mass strikes. That year even school children go on strike. The violence of the suffragettes is barely noticed and can definitely not be rewarded. For the first time in a generation, Parliament turns against women’s votes. What little sympathy there was for women’s suffrage among the wider public ebbs away. But Christabel Pankhurst, from her cosy Paris apartment, is enjoying the fight. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo...2024-03-0837 minHistory CafeEp 7 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #43 The Suffragettes did not win the voteREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY Suddenly, after 1913 votes for women looks inevitable. Not through the chaotic, dying campaign of the suffragettes. But through the political brilliance of Millicent Fawcett and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Their 1913 alliance with the Labour Party changes the whole political balance. Now Liberal Prime Minister HH Asquith’s blockheaded intransigence over women’s votes is costing his party dearly and letting the Tories in. At the 1915 election all three parties will be vying to give women the vote. But then… war breaks out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...2024-03-0841 minHistory CafeEp 8 The Secret History of the Suffragettes - #60 After 1918 - the secrets are out - Ep 8 The Secret History of the SuffragettesREPEAT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S DAY The reason we all believe Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst achieved women’s votes in Britain is because that’s the narrative created in the 20s and 30s by former suffragettes. The reality of what Emmeline and Christabel got up to post 1918 is shocking. Suffice it to say it involves racial purity and telling working women they can buy silk underwear, shapely shoes and fur hats, not by improving their working conditions but by giving into the feminine desire for shopping. What? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-03-0844 min
History Cafe#91 Death Camp tattoos were IBM numbers - Ep 10 Trading with the NazisDuring the war US and British bankers continued to send cash to Germany, while American companies in Germany were drawn down a slippery slope of collaboration. American bosses may have kept in touch with German subsidiaries via neutral hang-outs (like the fictional Rick’s Bar in the 1942 film Casablanca). Some made use of prisoners of war for slave labour. The five-figure tattoo on every death camp inmate began as an IBM-Dehomag punch card number. Nobody was going to be called to account for trading with the Nazis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-03-0635 min
History Cafe#90 British appeasement, a sinister game? - Ep 9 Trading with the NazisIn 1937, the new British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, believed he single-handedly could ensure world peace. He told the King, George VI, that he would do this by pursuing his objective of Germany and England being ‘the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against Communism.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-02-2731 minHistory Cafe#89 Britain's Nazi Allies - Ep 8 Trading with the NazisIn 1935 the Etonians in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office rejected all calls from the USSR to unite with France and Eastern Europe against the rise of the Third Reich. They were far too terrified of Communism. Instead, Britain agreed a treaty allowing the Germans to expand their navy. When supporters of the elected left-wing government in Spain faced annihilation by Franco’s fascists in 1936-7 the Tory Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, openly welcomed the carnage in Spain. It would, he declared, make the British public understand that Nazi Germany would be ‘an ally of ours and of all order-loving folk...2024-02-2130 minHistory Cafe#88 'It haunts me' - Ep 7 Trading with the NazisHorrified by the implications of aiding German rearmament, a few British and American companies made serious attempts to get out of Germany in the 1930s. Particularly after Kristallnacht, 10 November 1938, when Nazi thugs attacked Jewish businesses. But the British Establishment saw Hitler as ‘a man who could be relied upon’. The Bank of England argued as late as March 1939, four days after Hitler had marched into Prague, that the British couldn’t just pull out of Germany, without bringing down the whole London banking sector. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-02-1427 minHistory Cafe#87 Kill Nazism with kindness? - Ep 6 Trading with the NazisA perfect storm created the conditions for the Nazi’s march to war. The naïve belief that you could kill Nazism with kindness (aka trade agreements from which bankers and businessmen personally hoped to profit) was held simultaneously by the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and the second in command at the British Foreign Office, Orme Sargent. Their opponents in government argued that tough action was necessary to contain Germany ‘even at a cost’ to those who had invested. They were consistently undermined. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pri...2024-02-0727 minHistory Cafe#86 'Hell-bent to supplant our democratic government' - Ep 5 Trading with the NazisIn 1936 the US Ambassador in Berlin, William Dodd, wrote to President Roosevelt warning of a pro-Nazi clique of US industrialists ‘hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government.’ We look at the notorious Liberty League and the dinner in New York’s Astoria to celebrate the fall of Paris to the Nazis. We showcase the businessmen who believed they were above democracy and could achieve world peace (under fascism) through world trade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-02-0126 minHistory Cafe#85 Nazi sterilisation, the American way - Ep 4 Trading with the NazisFor all the complaints about the difficulties of doing business in Hitler’s Germany, the Americans seemed strikingly settled there. Now we get to the nub of why, when Germany occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and then part of Poland in 1938-39, its military rolled out in General Motors and Ford cars and trucks, and its planes were using General Motors and Ford parts. They were also burning American fuel. And using American research to justify forcibly sterilising those they considered mentally unfit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2024-01-2430 minHistory Cafe#84 Dollars and Dictatorship – Ep 3 Trading with the NazisSTAND-ALONE. The Americans insisted on extracting every cent from war-torn Britain and France in the aftermath of World War I. They made them repay the money they had borrowed, at increasingly high interest rates, to buy American weapons to fight Germany. It led to economic depression. The 1929 Wall Street Crash was part of a global financial meltdown which led to economic nationalism – survival of the fittest, everyone for himself. And that was before Hjalmar Schacht Reichsminister for Economics in Germany, trapped American companies in a series of clever regulations. It enabled Hitler to rearm. [We'll soon get to how the Br...2024-01-1724 minHistory Cafe#83 Enrich your enemy, impoverish your allies - Ep 2 Trading with the NazisThe US had a paradoxical strategy to ensure repayment of its WW1 loans. It would make Germany economically prosperous to ensure Germany was in a position to pay reparations to France and Britain (as per the Treaty of Versailles). This would mean that impoverished Britain and France could keep repaying the interest on their wartime loans to the Americans.Economist Maynard Keynes, aware that Britain and France would never recover from endless interest repayments, proposed cancelling all war debts. Everyone would end up better off in the long run, as was later proved. But the US government refused and American...2024-01-1031 minHistory Cafe#82 'The whole world belongs to the Americans' - Ep 1 Trading With The NazisCarl Siemens, chair of Siemens the German electronics business, complained in 1929, ‘the whole world belongs to the Americans.’ If you want to understand how it was that American businesses ended up investing so heavily in Germany in the 1920s and 30s – so heavily that eventually they enabled Hitler to arm the fascist Third Reich - then you have to start by going back to the First World War. It starts with asking why the Americans declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917 but mysteriously did not ally with either Britain or France. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...2024-01-0528 minHistory Cafe#33 Sex, Hollywood and FashionWhy did fashion become so much more conservative in the 1930s? We look at the puritanical Hays Motion Picture Production Code that banned indecent passions, and at MGM’s Adrian Greenberg, the most powerful Hollywood designer of his day. The arrival of colour film stock and the invention of the close-up meant Adrian designed for the camera, experimenting with hats and calf-length dresses that flattered both the lead actresses and ‘Nancy’ in the plush seat. MGM’s Louis B Mayer, who’d started out selling second hand clothes, made a fortune producing mass-made copies to coincide with each film’s release for...2023-12-3033 minHistory Cafe#79 Santa Claus and the KnickerbockersA whole lot of nonsense has been written about the invention of the modern Christmas. It was thought up by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens or Prince Albert. We just can’t resist attaching a famous name to things, especially if the name belongs to a writer or a royal. We deserve better than this. So here's our offering from the History Café Christmas Party! Have a good one. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-12-2029 minHistory Cafe#30 ‘A tall and desperate fellow’ - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder PlotThe night before - 4 November 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic with experience as a soldier fighting for the Spanish, is found with matches and fuse powder in a storeroom under the House of Lords. He’s ‘booted and spurred’, ready for a quick get-away. Or maybe not. The government account keeps changing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-12-1333 minHistory Cafe#29 The king's fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder plotAs his father had done, King James I's Chief Minister, Robert Cecil ,built his entrapments around a germ of genuine plotting. We uncover a small Catholic rebellion in Warwickshire in response to the king’s tougher anti-Catholic laws. And we examine Cecil’s imaginative embellishment: a mystery letter delivered to a compromised Catholic peer on 26 October warning of ‘a terrible blow this Parliament.’ It was handed to the king to decipher. If anything was designed to terrify James I, whose father had narrowly escaped death from a gunpowder blast, this was it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...2023-12-0632 minHistory Cafe#28 ‘A formidable network of secret agents’ - Ep 5 Blowing up the Gunpowder PlotWe dig deeper into the animosity between the King, James I of England and VI of Scotland and his Chief Minister, Robert Cecil, whom he bullied and called names. And we see the Gunpowder plot in the context of the previous plots hatched by the Cecils (father and son) against their enemies. All of which historians now agree were largely fabrications. Father was Elizabeth I's Chief Minister, like his son he had spies everywhere and openly boasted of his policy of entrapment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-3031 minHistory Cafe#27 'Hellish miners' - Ep 4 Blowing up the Gunpowder PlotTo avoid any possible blame for the plot falling on himself or the king, Cecil procures confessions saying the seven gentlemen plotters began excavating a tunnel under the House of Lords long before the government stepped up its anti-Catholic legislation. They apparently lived on site, in an upstairs room, seven to a bed. They dug unnoticed, only in the day (or was it only in the night?) for almost a year, before spying a handy cellar next door for the gunpowder barrels. Yes. Of course. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-2133 minHistory Cafe#26 Why blow up Parliament anyway? - Ep 3 Blowing up the Gunpowder PlotThe parliament of 1604 refuses to grant the king money. They’re still paying for the effects of the last plague. But this is Cecil’s job. What to do? On 5 November 1605 the assembled MPs and peers are calmly informed that there has been a devilish Catholic plot to blow the lot of them up. A plot that their king and Cecil have brilliantly foiled. Unsurprisingly, this time, they vote the king the money he so badly needs. Job done. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-1830 minHistory CafeBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 3 TasterBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 3 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-1205 minHistory CafeBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 2 TasterBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 2 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-1202 minHistory Cafe#25 ‘Here lieth the Toad’ - Ep 2 Blowing up the Gunpowder PlotWe take a look at James I’s shadowy chief minister Robert Cecil who manages to implicate most of his Catholic enemies in the plot. Cecil was so desperate to improve King James’s dire view of him (his father had caused the execution of James’ mother, Mary Queen of Scots) he would stoop to anything. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-1234 minHistory Cafe#24 ‘There is no state trial so totally devoid of reality’ - Ep 1 Blowing up the Gunpowder PlotBACK BY POPULAR DEMAND - FOR 5 NOVEMBER! We look at the story the government published as The King’s Book, more than 500 witness statements and other contemporary sources and conclude, like the Victorian antiquarian Jardine who wrote up the trial from the State Papers, there is no reliable corroborating evidence for the gunpowder story we’ve been told. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-0532 minHistory CafeBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 1 TasterBlowing up the Gunpowder Plot - Ep 1 Taster by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-0105 minHistory Cafe#06 London fires were visible from France - ep 6 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?Who won the Battle of Britain? For good strategic reasons Churchill claimed victory. But the Germans, who saw the eight months of the Blitz as part of the same campaign, achieved much of what they intended. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-0123 minHistory CafeBattle of Britain - London Fires Were Visible From France - Ep 6 Taster FinalBattle of Britain - London Fires Were Visible From France - Ep 6 Taster Final by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-11-0101 min
History Cafe#05 Forcing Britain 'to her knees' - ep 5 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?The Battle of Britain was never as close as the popular story has it. The RAF was too well organised and supplied. But is that why the Luftwaffe switched to bombing London? Or was there another reason? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-10-2825 minHistory CafeBattle of Britain - Taster Ep 5 - Forcing Britain To Her Knees Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-10-2401 min
History Cafe#04 More than a double bluff - ep 4 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?Churchill talks up the threat of invasion, even though it looks impossible. ‘I might as well send my men straight into a sausage machine,’ writes the German Chief of Staff. But invasion preparations still go on. Who is bluffing who? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-10-2431 minHistory Cafe#03 'Always carry pepper to throw in their eyes' - ep 3 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?Britain is gripped by fear of invasion. Government leaflet 'If the Invader Comes' calls for pepper and ‘a sharp knife to kill them if necessary.’ Churchill goes on BBC and says ‘we await undismayed by the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight.’ So why in private is Churchill saying he doubts the invasion would ever take place? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-10-2231 minHistory Cafe#02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?Was the Battle of Britain a fight for Luftwaffe air superiority in order to enable an invasion? The Luftwaffe itself did not think so. It had another agenda altogether. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-10-2229 minHistory Cafe#01 Waterworld Flotilla - ep 1 of Who really won the Battle of Britain?The Germans make extraordinary preparations for the immense task of invading Britain in 1940. Why bother when neither Hitler nor any senior German officer wanted to do it or thought it was possible? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-10-0524 minHistory Cafe#72 It was mainly the poor who burned - Ep 5 Bloody Mary Tudor?Most of those executed for their beliefs under Philip and Mary 1555-58 came from places with a long history of religious dissidence. It matches European evidence that many – perhaps most – of those burned at the stake were not Protestants, but ‘anabaptists’ or people with similar beliefs – usually poor - whom both Protestants and Catholics were persecuting. The government of Edward VI had already begun before Mary came to the throne. But why so many in England? We discover literature appearing from the late 1540s that openly encouraged dissenters to die for their beliefs. And we explore the possibility that so many died...2023-09-2842 minHistory Cafe#71 Most who were burned were not Protestants - Ep 4 Bloody Mary Tudor?Until six weeks before the child was due, everybody at court and indeed in Europe, believed Mary was pregnant. She suffered a rare disorder - pseudocyesis - maybe triggered by a tumour on her pituitary gland that would eventually kill her. The imminent birth of a Catholic heir to the Anglo-Spanish dynasty meant that the select council governing the kingdom really now had no alternative but to grasp the nettle of suppressing any potential causes of unrest – including any remaining shreds of die-hard Protestantism - and promptly. We also discover, that the majority of those who were burned were not Pr...2023-09-2041 minHistory Cafe#70 More interested in pirates than heretics - Ep 3 Bloody Mary Tudor?Who ran the persecution of heretics in England 1555-58? England was a joint monarchy but historians traditionally accused bigoted Mary of running the clamp down herself - with her cousin, Reginald Pole the Archbishop of Canterbury. There’s no evidence it’s true and Pole was useless at running anything. But didn’t Mary intervene to make sure Thomas Cranmer was burned – Henry VIII’s archbishop? No, again. Cranmer was tried by the pope and Mary had no power to spare him. As for Mary’s Privy Council, they turn out to have been more interested in pirates than heretics. Much more im...2023-09-1539 min
History Cafe#69 Who exactly was a heretic? - Ep 2 Bloody Mary Tudor?England in the mid-1550s was being governed by a joint monarchy: Philip and Mary and a select council of extremely able English politicians. Almost all of them had experience in government stretching back through the violently protestant regime of Edward VI. To all appearances they had for years been living as active protestants. And yet here they were in a government that was conducting a campaign against religious heresy that we have always understood to be a Catholic campaign to stamp out Protestantism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-09-0838 min
History Cafe#68 Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! - Ep 1 of Bloody Mary Tudor?Bloody Queen Mary? 313 people died for their beliefs 1555-58. We owe it to the victims to get the story right. In 2020 historian Alexander Samson said about the reign of Mary Tudor ‘it feels as if we are at the start.’ So dismiss everything you thought you knew and be prepared to be amazed. Ever since Mary died childless, at the age of just 42 in 1558, the history of her reign was written almost exclusively by English Protestant historians, mainly using Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ written by an Elizabethan Protestant. We look at why Foxe exclusively blames Mary and why he’s wrong....2023-08-3040 min
History Cafe#16 The men behind the myth - Ep 7 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?Within days of 28 October 1962 two journalists publish the official but untruthful White House account, as instructed and edited by the President. They also call-out a political enemy for daring to consider a humiliating missile swap with the Soviets. But we show how the Kennedys had already suggested this very missile swap to Khrushchev via private backchannels, on condition he kept it secret. Which he did. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-08-2421 min
History Cafe#15 ‘The Fourteenth Day’ - Ep 6 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?28 October 1962: by holding his nerve Kennedy defuses the crisis in just 13 days. He says it’s over although he’s unable to verify whether Khrushchev ever withdraws his missiles or not. The last missiles do indeed leave Cuba on day 48 of the crisis but for very different reasons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-08-1629 min
History Cafe#14 ‘Eyeball to eyeball’ - ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuban Missile Crisis?22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine’ nothing but ‘grand theatrics.’ Not a single Soviet ship is stopped by the US Navy. What was going on? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2023-08-0931 minHistory Cafe#57 From mayor to meat market. Getting elected in the 18th CenturyIt is still wrongly but commonly thought that in the 18th Century the gentry bought their way into a parliamentary seat, mainly by purchasing land, or by gaining the approval of some unrepresentative local patron who had the borough in his pocket. You've heard of pocket boroughs, and rotten boroughs? Well, Jon's 1985 doctoral thesis, researched entirely from local documents rescued from mouldy parish chests and corporation vaults, contradicted so many of the leading historians of the day so baldly that although Jon was awarded his doctorate he could never publish. But NOW that the old orthodoxy has collapsed and everyone...2023-04-2635 min
Journeys into Genealogy podcast18th century towns, power and local politics with Jon RosebankA fascinating discussion on how early 18th century towns worked, politics, religions, who were the local leaders and why, with Jon Rosebank, author of Partisan Politics and host of the History Cafe podcast. We talk about Plymouth, Tiverton, Taunton, Totnes, Dartford and several others over the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.2022-01-0550 minHistory Cafe#57 From mayor to meat market. Getting elected in the 18th Century.An accessible podcast on Jon’s academic book Partisan Politics – looking for consensus in Eighteenth-Century Towns (Exeter University Press 2021). See Publications page on this website for 45% discount.It is still wrongly but commonly thought that in the 18th Century the gentry bought their way into a parliamentary seat, mainly by purchasing land, or by gaining the approval of some unrepresentative local patron who had the borough in his pocket. You've heard of pocket boroughs, and rotten boroughs? Well, Jon's 1985 doctoral thesis, researched entirely from local documents rescued from mouldy parish chests and corporation vaults, contradicted so many of the leading hist...2021-06-2335 minHistory CafeCafé Bite: The Last of the Magicians?Café Bite: The Last of the Magicians? by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2020-09-0802 min
Scon aka Jack TuppRosebanky - JON SCON vs RYNO vs MLU3 dudes jamming at Rosebank Lodge, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Will revisit and remix for sure...
cum on beats ejaculate...!!!2016-02-1706 min