The Rest Is History

The Rest Is History

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The Rest Is History

History English

The world’s most popular history podcast, with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.

Join The Rest Is History Club (www.therestishistory.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Here are some of our favourite episodes to get you started:

WATERGATE/NIXON apple.co/3JrVl5h

ALEXANDER THE GREAT apple.co/3Q4FaNk

HARDCORE HISTORY'S DAN CARLIN apple.co/3vqkGa3

PUTIN & RUSSIA apple.co/3zMtLfX

551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)

551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)

In the triumvirate of 1066, William of Normandy, Harald Hardrada, and Harold Godwinson, the latter has above all endured as one of the great heroes of English history. But how did he become the short-lived King during that tumultuous year? The answer lies in his formidable family, the Godwins. Often symbolised as the last of the Anglo-Saxons, their stratospheric rise to power was engineered by...

550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)

550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)

Born into a world of treachery, violence and death, William of Normandy defied all expectations, forging a legacy that lasts to this day. Born out of wedlock and dismissed as an upstart, he was originally known as William the Bastard. Inheriting the Duchy of Normandy at just eight years old, William was faced with betrayal, bloodshed, and anarchy. From the restless Normans, who expanded across...

549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)

549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)

Following the bloody St Brice’s Day Massacre, of the 13th of November 1002, which saw King Æthelred brutally exterminating the Danes from England, the Vikings were hungry for revenge. None more so than the terrifying Scandinavian King, Sweyn Forkbeard. Having capitalised on his famous father, Harold Bluetooth’s unification of Norway and Denmark, through his aggressive christianisation of the...

548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)

548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)

The Norman Conquest of 1066, culminating in the legendary Battle of Hastings, is perhaps the greatest turning point in the history of the English nation. It was a year that changed the fate of England forever, forging empires, and settling continents. And yet, despite its infamy and significance, the true nature of those totemic events are often forgotten. So what happened in the build up to the...

547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)

547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)

The second revolution that engulfed France over the course of 1792 reached its climax in December, with an astonishing, world-changing spectacle, which held all the eyes of Europe spellbound: Louis Capet, formerly King Louis XVI of France, was on trial for his very life. A guilty verdict would undermine millennia of thought and tradition, ripping apart the longheld inviolability of the king,...

546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)

546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)

“From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say you were present at its birth!”By September 1792, the Prussians, under the leadership of the formidable Duke of Brunswick, were closing in on revolutionary Paris. There, the streets roiled with the clanging of church bells, thousands of volunteers, patriotic songs and slogans, and of course;...

545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)

545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)

In the summer and Autumn of 1792 - with the Prussians bearing down on Paris, the streets thronged with the stirring swell of the Marseillaise, but also the rotting bodies of those brutally killed during the September Massacres - the French Revolution bore a new symbol of optimism and hope: Liberty. Embodied by a female figure, later known as Marianne, and famously enshrined in Eugène Delacroix’s...

544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)

544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)

‘Still more traitors, still more treason…"It is 1792 and France has been at war since April; it is not going well. In Paris, the Tuileries Palace has been stormed, and the royal family imprisoned. Meanwhile, tensions are rising between the main political factions of the Revolution, the Girondins and the Montagnard, led by the icy Maximilien Robespierre. The streets of Paris teem with armed young...

543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

27 February 2025

543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

“Anyone who even thinks of abandoning this mission will be cut up into a thousand pieces…I am the wrath of God!”At the height of the age of exploration, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one story in particular gripped the imagination of European colonialists: El Dorado, a legendary city of gold, hidden in the very heart of the South American Rainforests. But no kingdom sought this...

542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe

24 February 2025

542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe

In Tudor England, during the reign of Elizabeth I, there lived in the very heart of her court a magician, alchemist and polymath, bent upon conversing with the angels of heaven and other supernatural beings. His name was John Dee, and he would prove to.be one of the most remarkable men of his age, living long enough to witness both the dying days of the reign of Henry VIII, and the succession of...