Sophie (age 9) and Ellie (age 7) tell the story of how the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. 

2000 years ago Rome was in chaos. The great Roman general Julius Caesar had been murdered. He was stabbed to death by nobles, including his friend, Brutus. They had believed he wanted to make himself King. They did not want to be ruled by a King.

The murderers of Caesar were delighted with themselves. They thought they had saved Rome. However, Julius Caesar’s friends were furious. One of his friends was called Mark Antony. He was asked to speak at Julius Caesar’s funeral. Thousands of ordinary Romans were there. Mark Antony gave a speech in which he reminded everyone how much Caesar had loved the ordinary people. He also told them how in Caesar’s will he had left money for the poor people of Rome. Then he showed the crowd Caesar’s torn and bloody toga from when he had been killed. The crowd were furious. They turned on the murderers of Caesar and hunted them through the streets of Rome. Brutus and the other murderers fled.

Caesar’s nephew was called Octavian. Caesar had adopted him as his son. He now called himself Octavian Caesar. Octavian and Mark Antony raised and army and chased Caesar’s murderers. They defeated them in battle. Brutus killed himself.

Octavian and Mark Antony did not trust each other. They decided to divide up control of the Roman lands between them. Mark Antony took the East and ruled from Egypt. Octavian took the West and ruled from Rome. To make their alliance stronger, Mark Antony married Octavian’s sister, Octavia.

However, in Egypt, Mark Antony met Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. She had been Julius Caesar’s girlfriend. Now she became Mark Antony’s girlfriend. People in Rome did not like this. Nor did Octavian. War broke out. There was a big naval battle but at the height of the battle, Cleopatra and her ships fled. Mark Antony followed her. The battle was lost. Then Mark Antony’s soldiers fled too.

Mark Antony then believed that Cleopatra had killed herself. He was so upset he tried to kill himself with a sword. However, before he died he learned that Cleopatra was actually alive. He died in her arms. Cleopatra tried to make peace with Octavian but he was not interested. She killed herself by letting a snake bite her. She died from its poison.

Octavian then took total control in Rome. He called himself Imperator which meant Commander. Over time this word changed and became our word for Emperor. The Roman Republic was over; now it was the Roman Empire.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the Fall of the Roman Republic up to the death of Julius Caesar.----more----

Rome got more powerful. Her mighty armies conquered other countries because they were very disciplined. At first the Roman farmers would also be soldiers and then go back to their crops when the fighting was finished. As there was more and more fighting, further and further away Rome needed to have soldiers who were just soldiers. However, they didn’t know what jobs the soldiers could do when they had finished being a soldier.

The generals had a good idea. They decided to give the land that Rome had conquered to the soldiers. This made the soldier fight extra hard. However, it also made the soldiers very loyal to the generals who were going to give them land. Over time the soldiers became more loyal to their generals than to Rome.

Many Roman generals got rich and powerful. No one more so than Julius Caesar. He was a brilliant general. He conquered Gaul which was the Roman name for France.

Back in Rome the senators were worried that Caesar wanted to make himself a King. One day they stabbed him to death in the senate. Even his friend Brutus stabbed him.

The people who stabbed him thought they had won. They thought that they had saved Rome from having a King. However, they had forgotten that Caesar had friends, that his army loved him and so did the people of Rome.

In two weeks time we will tell the rest of the story and how Rome got its first Emperor.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the siege of Vienna from 1683. This was one of the most important battles and sieges in history.

In Europe it faced the Holy Roman Empire whose capital was in Vienna.

350 years ago the Ottomans decided to attack Vienna. They assembled a mighty army. Vienna was poorly defended. Its walls were old. They only had a small army in the city. The Holy Roman Emperor fled the city.

The Ottomans had huge cannon. They blasted holes in the walls of Vienna. Then the Ottomans attacked. Again and again they attacked the walls. The Viennese defended their city. But they were running out of soldiers. It seemed as if they city would fall.

Meanwhile the Holy Roman Emperor had been asking other countries for help. His German allies agreed to help. So too did the King of Poland. But would they be in time?

As the Ottoman army gathered for its final assault they heard trumpets in the hills around Vienna. The Germans and Poles had arrived. The Ottomans quickly turned around to face them.

At first the Germans charged down the hills. The Ottomans fought them and the battle was in doubt. Then the bugles sounded again. A loud fluttering echoed across the battlefield. Then came the sound of thousands of horses hooves. The Polish Winged Hussars thundered into the Ottoman lines. These were brave Polish soldiers with armour like knights. They had massive feathered wings on their backs. Just then the Viennese soldiers charged out of Vienna. The Ottoman army ran for its life. Vienna and Europe were saved.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the inspirational life of Harriet Tubman. She was an enslaved person in America who escaped to freedom and then helped others escape too. She later fought to free other enslaved people in America.----more----

Harriet was born in the South of the United States 150 years ago. Her parents were enslaved so she too was enslaved. She was forced to work for a white family and help raise their children. When she made a mistake she was beaten. She was even beaten when the baby she had to look after cried. When she got older she was forced to do hard work in the field. Once a metal block was thrown at her head and it badly hurt her.

When Harriet was older she got determined to escape. She managed to escape using a secret route called the underground railroad. At first she was in the north of the United States. However, after a while even that was not safe. So she went to live in British Canada.

Although she was safe there she worried about the black people, including her family, who she had left behind. Thirteen times she journeyed back to the south to rescue people. She had lots of adventures and was nearly caught several times. However, she helped 70 enslaved people to escape.

She later helped a man called John Brown who wanted to start a war to free the black enslaved people. He failed and was executed. However, a few years later a war did start. The North of the United States and the South of the United States fought. The South wanted to have their own country so they could carry on having slaves. The North did not want this.

Harriet helped the North in the fighting. At first she worked as a scout for the army, using the skills she had learned helping people escape. Later she helped attack a plantation and rescued hundreds of enslaved people.

The North won the civil war and the enslaved people were freed.

Harriet then settled down to enjoy her retirement. In her lifetime she was mostly forgotten. She died of old age aged 90 years old.

After she died she became famous as people remembered how brave she had been.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) have been following the news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They decide to tell the story of the History of Ukraine going back over a 1000 years.

Then the Mongols came from the East. They destroyed Kyivan Rus. They burned many cities and towns – Moscow was destroyed and Kyiv conquered.

For hundreds of years the Mongols ruled what we now call Ukraine and much of what we now call Russia. Slowly the people around Moscow managed to get rid of them and so did the Poles. The Poles and Russians then fought over who would control Ukraine. The Russians won and conquered Ukraine. However, the people of Ukraine did not forget that they had been a free people. 200 years ago many of them started to remember what it was like to be free and write stories and poems about it.

Then World War One started. Millions of Russians were killed. There was a revolution and the people of Ukraine rose up and set up their own country. The new Russian government was called the Soviet Union. They were communists. They attacked Ukraine and conquered it. They then forced Ukraine into the Soviet Union and made them be communist. They were so bad at running the country that millions of Ukrainians were killed by famine.

Then Germany under Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. He wanted to make all Russians and Ukrainians into slaves. Together the Russians and Ukrainians fought back. They defeated Hitler with the help of Britain, her Empire and America.

However, after the war finished the Soviet Union would not let those countries it had conquered go free. It forced them to be communist and killed or imprisoned anyone who disagreed with it.

Eventually all of Eastern Europe and the parts of the Soviet Union rebelled. The Soviet Union collapsed.

Ukraine became a free people again. Now they had their own country again and could rule themselves.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the Wars of the Roses. This was the civil war between the House of York and the House of Lancaster that was fought in the time of knights and castles to see who would rule England.----more----

600 years ago two families had a claim to the throne of England: the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. They were powerful noble families. They each had a banner with a Rose on it. The Lancastrians had a red rose; the Yorkists had a white rose. At first the Lancastrians were more powerful. So their Duke became the King of England. He and his son were at first very successful Kings. They fought wars in France. One king won a great victory at the Battle of Agincourt. Then Joan of Arc came and helped to reconquer France. The English were defeated. By this time the Lancastrian King was called Henry VI. He was not a very good king. He had a strong wife called Marguerite and she would have been a much better ruler than him.

Eventually the Duke of York got fed up with how useless Henry was being. The Duke claimed the throne of England for himself. He captured the King. However, Marguerite fought back. Her army killed the Duke of York in battle and they freed the King.

The Duke of York’s young son, Edward was now the Duke. He quickly marched to London with his friend Warwick. Warwick was a very powerful noble. He was so powerful that people called him the Kingmaker because they said he could make Kings. Together they chased Marguerite’s army to the north of England and fought a great battle at Towton. Marguerite and the Lancastrians were crushed and Henry was captured.

Now Edward was King of England.

For ten years Edward ruled. However, he and Warwick argued over who should be the wife of Edward. They argued so much that Warwick asked Marguerite who was hiding in France to invade England. She did so with Warwick’s help. Edward and his younger brother Richard had to flee. However, they weren’t gone long. They raised an army, returned to England, killed Warwick, defeated the Lancastrians, took back the throne and then murdered Henry VI. Edward was now King.

When Edward died he asked Richard to look after his young children until the oldest could be King. Richard agreed. However, Richard then imprisoned his nephews in the tower and took the throne for himself. The young princes were never seen again.

There was one last Lancastrian prince. His name was Henry Tudor. He invaded England, defeated Richard in battle and killed him. Henry then married one of Edward’s daughters and united the families. The Wars of the Roses were over.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of Genghis Khan.----more----

Then Temujin married a wife from another tribe called Borte. Together the tribes were stronger. However, a different tribe attacked them. They kidnapped Borte. Timojen asked another tribe to help and attacked the tribe who had kidnapped Borte. He killed them and rescued her. Now Timujin was getting powerful.

However, people in his tribe disagreed over who should have the important jobs. Timujin thought that people should have the jobs if they would be good at them. Some people thought that only rich nobles should have the best jobs. Those people were lead by a man called Jamukha. The tribe split in two and war between Timujin and Jamukha started.

Jamulkha won the first battle and burned Timujin’s generals alive. Timujin escaped and promised he would never lose a battle again. In the next battle Timujin had some sneaky tricks up his sleeve and he defeated and later killed Jamulkha.

Now Timojin was the most powerful man in Mongolia. He was in charge of all the tribes. They gave his the title “Genghis Khan” which meant “Ruler of everyone”.

Genghis Khan now decided to attack the powerful Chinese Empire. After a long siege he attacked and conquered the capital which we now call Beijing. Then he turned his army west. He conquered every country until he got to Eastern Europe. Then he turned back to conquer the rest of China.

After 25 years of rule he died. His body was buried in secret.

Nowadays many people think of him as a bloodthirsty conqueror. However, he was more than that. He married so many people and had so many children that many ordinary people today are descended from him. He did not mind what religion you were, what your skin colour was or whether you were rich or poor. He only rewarded people and gave them good jobs if they deserved it. Finally, he made the roads safe for trading. He allowed a route between the East and the West called the Silk Road. People took amazing inventions from China to Europe – like the compass, paper and gunpowder.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the great explorer Captain Cook who was the first European to discover Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.----more----

James Cook was born 300 years ago in Britain. Britain was a powerful country who got rich through trading and from her colonies. James Cook was born into a poor family. When he was 16 he went to become a grocer. The grocer’s was by the sea and James used to look out the sea and wonder what it would be like to be a sailor. After a year and a half he went to sea himself. He became a sailor on a ship which carried coal from Newcastle to London. It was a boring sailing job. However, James Cook spent his time learning all the mathematics that you needed to be a good sailor.

Then war broke out between Britain and France. James decided he wanted a life of adventure so he joined the navy. He had to start at the bottom. However, the navy soon realized that he knew a lot about sailing and was good at maths. He was put in charge of the sailing on a warship. Britain and France were fighting to see who would rule Canada. The British decided to sail their navy up a river in Canada to attack the French. The French thought this was impossible. However, they had not reckoned with James Cook. He mapped the river and found out where it was safe for the British fleet to sail without hitting the rocks. The British found the French, defeated them and conquered Canada.

The British admirals now realized that James Cook was a very clever man.

After peace came they made him captain of his own ship and sent him to the Pacific. They told him that his job was to look at Venus from there. However, when he arrived he opened secret orders. Actually he job was to explore the islands and in particular to find the mythical land called Terra Australis – which we now call Australia.

Captain Cook got very lucky because he met a local person called Tapaia. He knew the area very well and was a good sailor. Together they went exploring.

The first place that Captain Cook found was what we now called New Zealand. There were people already there called the Maori. Then he carried on sailing and found what we now call Australia. There were other people living there who we sometimes called Aboriginal people.

When he got back to Britain everyone was amazed. He was treated like a hero.

He was sent out again to find more of Australia. This time he found lots of islands that he claimed for Britain.

Then he was sent out a third time. This time he sailed to Hawaii and from there he went to the top of North America to what we now call Alaska. Up in the Arctic he tried to find a way to the Atlantic through the ice. He was not successful and sailed back to Hawaii.

There he had an argument with the local King and was killed on the beach.  

Still today though he is remembered as one of the greatest ever explorers.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the history of the Christmas Carol.

Songs used to be sung by pagans thousands of years ago to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Christmas was at the same time as the Winter Solstice so the Church carried on with the singing but instead made the songs about Christmas.

The first Christmas Carol we know of was from 2000 years ago and was called the Angels Hymn. All the early carols were in Latin and over time people stopped speaking Latin – and they stopped singing the Latin carols.

Then around 800 years ago a monk called St Francis of Assisi wrote the first nativity play. He had songs in the play to make it more interesting. He also had these songs in people’s own language so they could understand it.

Many of the songs became so popular that Minstrels would sing them. Many of the carols from his period have survived. While Shepherds watched their flocks by night is over 500 years old.

However, 400 years ago in England the Puritans came to power. They were very serious. They chopped off the King’s head and they banned Christmas and the singing of carols. People liked carols so much that they carried on singing them in secret when they were not in Churches. This is where the tradition of carol singers comes from.

Different carols came from different places.

150 years ago someone in America wrote Away in a Manger. People thought is was written by a famous holy man called Martin Luther, but it probably was not.

The carol Come all ye faithful was written about 300 years ago. Many people think that it remembers the old Stuart kings who used to rule England.

The most famous Carol story though is from World War One. British and German soldiers were fighting in the trenches. The fighting was very bloody.

Then on Christmas Eve the German trenches were decorated with candles and lights. The British were confused. Then they heard the Germans singing Silent night in German. The British sang back The First Noel. Slowly the British and German soldiers came out of the trenches. They stopped fighting and celebrated Christmas together in the middle of a war.

We are taking a Christmas break ourselves. Sophie and Ellie’s mummy works in the hospital and things are a little busy there at the moment. So we will be back with more History Storytime episodes in the New Year.

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Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of Blitzkrieg – how the Germans used tanks to conquer much of Europe at the start of World War Two.

In World War One Britain invented the tank. America, Russia and Britain used tanks to defeat Germany. However, after the war people in those countries did not want to fight any more wars. They made their armies small. They also decided to defend in the future not to attack. The French built a line of forts for defence. They did not have many tanks and those they did have they used for defence.

The Germans though had other plans. After Hitler came to power his built a powerful army for Germany again. This army had many tanks. The German generals invented a new way of fighting. It involved lots of tanks in one place smashing through the enemy lines. They would be helped by planes and paratroopers. They called this type of fighting, Lighting War. In German that is Blitzkrieg. It relied on their tanks – in German they were called Panzers.

The Germans invaded Poland. The Blitzkrieg worked. They crushed Poland with his cavalry and old fashioned army.

Next the Germans attacked France. They smashed through the French lines. The British ran away and the French surrendered.

The battle was followed by an air battle over Britain. This saw many German planes destroyed and the British one.

Next the Germans attacked Greece. Again the Blitzkrieg worked. Then they attacked Crete. Crete was an island and the British Royal Navy controlled the seas so the German used their paratroopers. They won the battle but many of the paratroopers were killed. Now the Germans had lost mucg of their airforce and their paratroopers. However, they still had their tanks.

Next they attacked Russia. At first, the Blitzkrieg worked again. However, the Russians had developed their own excellent tank called the T-34. They were also happy to attack the Germans. There were huge tank battles in Russia. Slowly the Russians started to win. Then America joined the war. She had learned from the Germans how to use tanks. The British had also now learned. As the British and Americans fought the Germans they used their massive tank armies and many planes to defeat Germany.

The War was won.

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