History Cafe

By Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe

True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History... more

· History

4.6

1515 ratings

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How many episodes does History Cafe have?

The podcast currently has 345 episodes available.

History Cafe episodes:

September 16, 2026 #35 Getting the vote in 1918: 'marvellous leadership' - Ep 1 The Secret History of the Suffragettes
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.
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36min
September 09, 2026 #130 'The real mystery of 1492' - Ep 7 Columbus - legend and loser
European sailors in Columbus’s time had only rudimentary instruments, with no means of measuring longitude, and only a vague idea of how far north-south they were. So how on earth did they find the island of Hispaniola, over and over again, after weeks out of sight of land? There are some outlandish theories...
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33min
August 26, 2026 #129 ‘It’s a joke’ - Ep 6 Columbus - legend and loser
Columbus may now be dressing up like a friar and searching for the Garden of Eden but he and his brother are still cutting off the Arawaks’ hands if they fail to deliver a monthly quantity of gold. Horrified, Ferdinand and Isabella send a judge to bring the Admiral of the Ocean Sea and his family, home in chains.
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34min
August 19, 2026 #128 No more Mr Nice Guy - Ep 5 Columbus - legend and loser
When Columbus’s second voyage - the showy Armada of 1493 - reaches Hispaniola they find that the Arawak, including the chief who rescued Columbus from the shipwrecked Santa Maria on Christmas Eve 1492, have had enough. The avaricious, raping crew left behind at fort Navidad are now a pile of bleached bones.
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39min
August 12, 2026 #127 'They eat human flesh' - Ep 4 Columbus - legend and loser
Columbus is told where to find ‘pieces of gold as big as the ship’s great stern post.’ And that where the gold is, there are people called ‘Caribs’ who not only have bows and arrows, but also eat human flesh.

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33min
August 05, 2026 #126 'Seven head of women' - Ep 3 Columbus - legend and loser
Within two days of Columbus making first landfall on an island he named San Salvador after his God, Columbus had kidnapped several men to take to Spain to train as interpreters. To prevent them escaping, he then rounded up ‘seven head of women,’ along with three children.
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37min
July 29, 2026 #125 The torrid affair - Ep 2 Columbus - legend and loser
Nobody believed Columbus could reach the Indies (Asia, home to the Grand Khan). So why did Ferdinand and Isabella back him? The answer is all tied up with a torrid affair.
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33min
July 22, 2026 #124 Columbus was invented in 1777 - Ep 1 Columbus - legend and loser
Columbus the romantic hero is a myth created in 1777 by the Scottish historian Revd William Robertson. It hit the big time with Washington Irving’s biography 50 years later. Tales of lone scientific geniuses were becoming popular and Columbus had been snapped up by rebellious American colonists waving their newly minted Declaration of Independence. But the historical research was hopelessly flawed. Columbus had been wrong about pretty much everything.
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30min
July 15, 2026 # 40 Henry VIII: Pope Clement, Katherine, Anne and Florence
After 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.
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37min
July 08, 2026 # 52 Anne Boleyn - Henry VIII's MacGuffin
Most 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.
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45min

FAQs about History Cafe:

How many episodes does History Cafe have?

The podcast currently has 345 episodes available.

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History Cafe

FAQs about History Cafe:

How many episodes does History Cafe have?

History Cafe episodes:

FAQs about History Cafe:

How many episodes does History Cafe have?

More shows like History Cafe

Dan Snow's History Hit

The Rest Is History

The Rest Is Politics

Empire: World History