Donald Rayfield returns for the second of three episodes on Crimea — this time taking the long view, from the Mongol Golden Horde to Catherine the Great's annexation and the early Soviet period.

At its height the Crimean Khanate was a sophisticated and surprisingly humane state. It was also, as Rayfield puts it, the self-appointed freeholder of the former Mongol empire — and it collected its rents in the form of money, livestock, and human captives. Eventually, the leaseholders rebelled.

A story of revival after disaster, and disaster after revival, ending in the grim absorption of the peninsula into the Russian imperial project.

Along the way we admire the fighting skills of the Tatars and learn about a mysterious shop in Venice which would sell you poisoned almonds!

The subject today comes out of the Crimean war (1853-1856).

I talked to Professor Donald Rayfield, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian history at Queen Mary University of London, about the war itself and in particular what happened to those taken prisoner.  Surprisingly life could be pretty good!

Part 1 of the podcast told the sad story of how some shocking misjudgements on the part of Justinian saw him dragged to the Hippodrome where a man with a pair of pliers cut off his nose, cut out his tongue.

But in a misjudgement every bit as big as Justinian’s instead of putting him in a sack and throwing him in the Bosphorus his successor exiles him to the Crimea. I mean everyone knows you can't be emperor unless you are bodily intact so there is no chance he is coming back is there? Is there?

Well there is if Justinian has anything to do with it. Russell Crowe style he will have his revenge in this world or the next! Even if it does mean he has to marry a Turkic princess to get it.

And if all that isn't enough the brilliant David Parnell explains Justinian's religious policies. All very sensible. Well apart from his plot to kidnap the pope perhaps.

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Justinian II becomes emperor at sixteen. Even allowing for the hostility of our sources the reign is not all plain sailing.

I'm joined by Professor David Parnell to work through the first half of one of Byzantium's most extraordinary reigns. Part one takes us from his accession to the moment the city loses patience and terminates the reign violently. David and I are left scratching our heads as to why this story has never had its own Netflix series.

We started with the empire Justinian inherits, which is much smaller than the one his famous namesake Justinian I assembled. Two generations of Arab expansion and some energetic Slavic settlement have done their work. Constantinople and Anatolia are doing fine. Greece and the Balkans are a mess. The Arab caliphate is slightly distracted by civil wars but still very much a threat on the eastern frontier, having already put Constantinople itself under siege in the 670s. We talk about that siege, the role Greek fire played in saving the city, and why all this matters for understanding both what Justinian thinks he can achieve and his overconfidence.

Then we get into the reign itself. Justinian is pious, bold and occasionally effective but capable of the most disastrous misjudgements. So it starts well and then starts to unravel!

You don't have to be young and beautiful to get ahead in Stuart England but it really doesn't hurt. The is the story of 'gorgeous George' - that is to say George Villiers (later Duke of Buckingham) who in his early 20's became the favourite of James I of England (VI of Scotland). 

Despite his willingness to promote based on good looks, James I comes out of this rather well. He may have believed in witches (how else to explain what happened to his bride??) but he also believed in peace - greatly to the benefit of his subjects.

Of course his subjects weren't remotely grateful and were delighted when Charles I took over and (with Buckingham) started wars with Spain and France. As with so many wars the enthusiasm faded fast when it turned out these things cost money. And the Duke of Buckingham was in the firing line as members of the House of Commons were overcome with rage and the mob turned against him.

All sorts of extraordinary things in this episode - storm raising witches, wizards, false beards, mad, romantic journeys across Europe in search of a bride and (my personal favourite) the House of Commons grinding to a halt as one member after another bursts into tears. Lucy Hughes-Hallet is a brilliant guest. The story in her book The Scapegoat is (as she rightly says) much better than any fiction.

Seriously - get the book. We didn't cover a tenth of it. By turns hilarious and tragic it is a window into a world hovering between the medieval and the modern.

Jonathan Clements returns to talk about his book on the First Emperor of China and the man who was sent to kill him: facts and fictions in Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero (2002), the evil mirror-universe version of Confucianism, an impossibly well-endowed “eunuch”, the construction of the Terracotta Army, the politics of archaeology, and how to spent a slave labour dividend. And what to do when you had the Mandate of Heaven a minute ago but can't remember where you put it.

It is astonishing to me that we went from the first powered flight of a few hundred feet in 1903 to attempting to fly the Atlantic in 1919. 

The Daily Mail had offered a prize of £10,000 to cross the Atlantic. The pilots called it the Big Hop. Nowadays we think nothing of it but back then they had open cockpits, primitive navigation tools, unreliable weather forecasting and many other problems. This was right on the edge of what was possible at the time. And not always on the right edge!

We talked about:

- the wonderful Hilda Hewlett, a pioneer of British aviation

- how WW1 affected the competition (and the competitors)

- Alcock and Brown and the runners up

- how to keep calm (in your lounge suit) and carry on, even as death is racing to meet you.

It is a wonderful story and David is wonderful storyteller!

Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University is on excellent form to talk me through the German Peasant's War of 1524-25. Things I learned:

- take Martin Luther seriously (but not literally)

- monasteries feed the poor and needy (particularly when they are armed and extremely determined)

- the scale of the revolt was off the charts, nothing like it until the French Revolution

- the East German State celebrated its revolutionary past with a mural of the war which needs to be on everyone's 'must see' list (only to collapse a few months later!

All in all this is a terrific and thought provoking episode. The role of Luther in all this surprised me greatly. 

Lyndal's book Summer of Fire and Blood is here.

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Today the thing we find mysterious is why WWI lasted as long as it did. Why continue a pointless slaughter. Comparisions with the war in Ukraine suggest an answer!

My guess is is Professor David Stevenson and for him the mystery is not why it lasted so long but why it ended when it did.

For the German public is was particularly mysterious. Just a few months before the Armistice Germany was all conquering. Russia had been driven out of the war on terms hugely favourable to Germany. And in the West her storm troopers seemed poised to deliver victory on this front too.

And while the tide had clearly turned the German army was falling back in good order. So what compelled Germany to submit to allied terms? Was it a stab in the back as many Germany came to believe, or something else?

David is brilliant at unpicking all of this. As for the answer to the riddle - well, one place to look is in Bulgaria . . 

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Ed West is a journalist and massively popular substacker - do check out his substack The Wrong Side of History. But he has a sideline in history so I got him on the show to talk about 1066 and the battle of Hastings. Ed is on top form so please join us as he talks about:

- why Harold should have listened to his Mum

- Harald Hadrada's absolute last poem

- what made the Norman's so very hard to beat

- and why the Normans were the woke progressives of their day!

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