Righteousness and the Lionheart
Two names are synonymous with the Crusades – King Richard of England and Saladin. But Saladin is simply a western corruption of an Arabic honorific (akin referring to Richard as…
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Opening the Iron Curtain – the East Germany’s day of dissent
. It’s the summer of 1953, and, across East Germany, angry people take to the streets. This isn’t a polite protest. This is a furious, red flag ripping, police beating,…
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Operation Unthinkable – Churchill’s plan that would have started World War 3
According to Field Marshal Montgomery, rule number one on the first page of the book of war is ‘do not march on Moscow’. In April 1945, Winston Churchill ordered the…
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Louis of England – history’s forgotten King of England
. In August of 1216, the King of Scotland rode down the entire length of England to pay homage to a new English king at Dover. The Scottish monarch bent…
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Princess Mary Tudor’s flight to freedom
In the summer of 1550, Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was packing her belongings and preparing to flee her home. Her Tudor brother was the figurehead for…
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Canterbury’s cancelled Christmas and the Plum Pudding Riots
. In 1647, the new Puritan government tried to cancel Christmas. People in Canterbury protested in a peculiarly English way, with a destructive game of football followed by a mass…
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The Prince of Poyais – settling in the country that never was
In 1822, Gregor MacGregor committed what The Economist newspaper has called the ‘biggest fraud in history’ and ‘the greatest confidence trick of all time’. Investors, many of them Scottish, put…
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A wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama
. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland sank a huge chunk of its national wealth into an audacious scheme to colonise central America. By building its own colonial…
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Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term and the voice from the sewer
. In the first half of 1940 only one question mattered in American politics. Would Franklin D. Roosevelt break with tradition and run for a third term as President of…
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Achtung! Achtung! Nazi Germany’s dystopian experiments with TV and radio
. Everywhere you turn, you see the unmistakable face of Adolf Hitler. His voice echoes in your head, broadcast from a thousand loudspeakers. His wild, gesticulating speech is reaching its…
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Hitler’s plan for monster railways across Europe
In 1941, Adolf Hitler issued orders to Nazi Germany’s railway officials. He wanted them to develop a new type of railway. It was to be bigger, far bigger, than anything…
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Cancelling Christmas and the Plum Pudding Revolution
In 1647, the new puritan government tried to cancel Christmas. In 1647, the new puritan government tried to cancel Christmas. People in Canterbury protested in a peculiarly English way with a destructive game of football …
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What were the inalienable heirlooms of the Habsburgs?
Amongst a glittering treasury of splendours, the Habsburgs revered two objects above all others. One was a bowl reputed to be the Holy Grail and the other was a unicorn’s horn. Where did these otherworldly objects come from? And where are they today …
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The most spectacular incident of biological warfare?
The bubonic plague that swept Asia and Europe in the Middle Ages was one of history’s most destructive and transformative disasters. Was the Black Death caused by an intentional and devastating act of biological warfare …
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Give peace a chance? Congress’s lone World War pacifist
Only one Member of Congress, Representative Jeannette Rankin, voted against the resolution that brought the United States into the Second World War. Astonishingly, she had also voted against American participation…
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The Englishman who started the Spanish Civil War
. This week, on the Vaguely Interesting Podcast, we go back to the 1930s and visit the Croydon Airport to meet the Englishman who started the Spanish Civil War. Just…
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Commuting hell on the underground steam railway
What happened when steam engines were placed in the tunnels of the world’s first underground railway? The Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863 and, for the first 45 years, it ran…
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How did Britain thank her greatest military commanders?
The story of how Britain rewarded four of its most illustrious battlefield commanders. This is the story of how Britain thanked four of the biggest names in her military history…
