The British History Podcast

By Jamie Jeffers

Society & Culture Education History

What's The British History Podcast about?

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The BHP is a chronological retelling of the history of Britain with a particular focus upon the lives of the people. You won't find a dry recounting of dates and battles here, but instead you'll learn about who these people were and how their desires, fears, and flaws shaped the histories of England, Scotland, and Wales.

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324 – AEthelred: Law and L...

08.21.2019

With the Scandinavian raiders gone, and with AElfric of Hampshire defanged, England was free to get back to work. And, as we saw last episode, this meant that the King was once again redistributing wealth from the have-a-lots to the ...

The British History Podcast episodes:

08.21.2019 324 – AEthelred: Law and Lawlessness With the Scandinavian raiders gone, and with AElfric of Hampshire defanged, England was free to get back to work. And, as we saw last episode, this meant that the King was once again redistributing wealth from the have-a-lots to the ...
08.10.2019 323 – AEthelred: Brotherhood of the Wolf And we are back! Thank you all for being patient while the BHP went on a brief parental leave. And speaking of things that are back… The Dowager Queen AElfthryth has returned to the King’s inner council following what looks ...
08.03.2019 PSA: Are We Dead? (We aren’t)
07.12.2019 322 – Æthelred: We’re Absolutely Forked Ealdorman AElfirc of Hampshire was out… and Ealdorman AEthelweard the Chronicler was in. He would now be the King’s chief councillor… and he would be supported by his son, AEthelmaer… the King’s uncle, High Reeve Ordwulf of Devon, and the ...
07.06.2019 321 – AEthelred: Course Corrections 992 was a bad year. There was treason, Vikings, the King’s closest advisor absconded with half the navy, and tipped off an enemy invasion with just enough time to let them escape.
06.27.2019 320 – Æthelred: Our Wooden Wall The Battle of Maldon was a catastrophe. The brave last stand of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth was never going to change that fact. He was the leading man of Essex and the second most powerful Ealdorman in England and now he was ...
06.21.2019 319 – The Battle of Maldon Battles don’t appear out of thin air, not even in honor cultures. There’s a reason, a context, that develops long before soldiers or warriors enter a field prepared to do violence. And the Battle of Maldon comes with a lot ...
06.13.2019 318 – Æthelred: Chaos is a Ladder By 984 the Regency council had been broken and a new inner circle of nobles had been elevated. And this development was accompanied by a rapid series of changes at the highest levels of the kingdom. The political rivals of ...
05.30.2019 317 – Æthelred: A Culture of Corruption At 16 years old, King AEthelred was considered fully grown by Anglo Saxon standards. And as a bonus graduation present, the powerful Bishop AEthelwold of Winchester… who appears to have been the defacto head of state while AEthelred was a ...
05.23.2019 316 – Æthelred: The Old Guard Before we get back to our story, I’ve been seeing your conversations online and it made me realize I need to clarify something. Some of you took the discussion of AEthelred’s unflattering nickname, and how he caught hell for some ...
05.16.2019 315 – Æthelred: The Cracks in the Foundation “Under AEthelred nothing was done; or, more truly, throughout his whole reign he left undone those things which he ought to have done, and he did those things he ought not to have done.” That is the damning conclusion of ...
05.03.2019 314 – Æthelred: Are You Ready? King Edward, like those before him, had died under mysterious and apparently violent circumstances. And the next in line for this increasingly bloody throne of England was his 12 year old little half-brother. Æthelred.
04.25.2019 313 – How to Make a Martyr “No man can make himself king, but the people have the choice to choose as king whom they please; but after he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over the people, and they cannot shake his yoke from ...
04.20.2019 312 – King Edward King Edgar is Dead… and in his place reigned his son, King Edward of England. And you’d think that we’d be referring to him as King Edward the First. Or, if you wanted to fudge it a bit and give ...
04.11.2019 311 – Team Edward King Edgar the Peaceable was buried at Glastonbury in 975. But weirdly that isn’t the end of his story. William of Malmesbury tells us that nearly a century later, in 1053, the Abbot Ailward re-opened the King’s tomb. Malmsbury doesn’t ...
03.29.2019 310 – Political Theater Human beings can’t really be summed up in a nickname. Usually we are more complicated than a word or two. And sometimes, the nickname just doesn’t reflect reality. If you take Edward the Elder, for example, the name probably conjures ...
03.22.2019 309 – Size Doesn’t Matter (until it does) You would think that someone named Edgar the Peaceable enjoyed a good reputation. But the closer you look, the more things start to look…off. And if you look closer than that, you start to get the sense that maybe things ...
03.14.2019 308 – A Thirst for Reform Across the North Sea, in Scandinavia, a man named Harald Greycloak was struggling for dominance in the region. He wasn’t just any man, he was a son of Erik Bloodaxe and Gunnhilde. And his fight brought him into direct conflict ...
03.08.2019 307 – Cleaning House The King is dead. Long live the King. Eadwig, the 18 year old King known for his beauty, had died. Somehow.
03.01.2019 306 – King Eadwig The King is dead, long live the King. So … last episode was a bit of a shocker wasn’t it?
02.14.2019 305 – A Very Special BHP Valentine’s Day Episode History is known as a field for being a bit of a slog. Tracing events, and people, and social movements through decades and centuries is a huge task and the results are usually dense at the best of times. But ...
02.12.2019 304 – A Kingdom Divided Northumbria was always the hot mess of the heptarchy. There are a few exceptions where they manage to pull it together long enough to produce something important, like Bede, or when Leeds United won the premiership in 1991. But generally, ...
02.01.2019 303 – Eric Bloodaxe We can probably assume that Harald Fairhair, the King of Norway, had fantastic hair. It was either big, or really long, or super glossy, and it was almost definitely blonde. But it wasn’t the only trait he was known for. ...
01.25.2019 302 – King Eadred Ok, where were we? With all this focus on culture, it’s been a little bit since we last talked about the political situation in Britain. So lets remind ourselves of where things were politically.
01.17.2019 Chapter 8 – Twilight of the Anglo Saxons This isn’t going to end well.
01.11.2019 301 – Common Folk Today, we’re going to wrap up this cultural series with a focus on my favorite group of people. The people who rarely, if ever, get talked about. The commoners.
01.07.2019 PSA: Where Are the Episodes? For a full transcript, go to thebritishhistorypodcast.com
12.18.2018 300 – Noble Lives When we left off, we were talking about Thegns. Specifically, we were talking about King’s Thegns and how they could wield degrees of power that could rival even the formidable Ealdormen. At this point in this short series, the hope ...
12.07.2018 299 – The Shape of Power Ealdormen… Thegns… Ceorls. These were the important cogs in the machine of government. They had powerful roles, and held powerful spaces within anglo saxon culture. And it’s time we get to know these roles like the back of our hand. ...
12.03.2018 The Achavanich Beaker Burial Project: Ancient DNA with Maya Hoole Links to material referenced in the show. * The Achavanich Beaker Burial* ‘Ava’: a Beaker-associated woman from a cist at Achavanich, Highland, and the story of her (re-)discovery and subsequent study, Published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries ...
11.16.2018 298 – Uptown Ceorl Long ago there was a settlement that had been occupied and farmed by the British and the Anglo Saxons for centuries. In fact, by the time that the Scandinavians arrived on the island, this village known as Wharram Percy was ...
11.10.2018 297 – The Hundreds and the Wapentakes We have spoken a lot about the life of a handful of individuals – namely the rulers that have descended from the line of Alfred. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first is the simple fact that ...
10.26.2018 The Halloween Special I love Halloween. I think it might be my favorite holiday, and it’s not really because I like spooky things. I actually kind of hate horror movies. The reason I love Halloween is because in the pantheon of modern holidays ...
10.19.2018 296 – Darkening Skies It begins in France. The struggle for power between King Louis IV and Hugh the Great had been raging for quite some time… When we last visited the continent, , Hugh the Great, King Otto of Germany, Duke William of ...
10.11.2018 295 – The Return of England You know the pieces on a chessboard? There’s the knight, and the queen, and the castle….and then there’s the bishop. There’s a reason why a game that simulates medieval power strategy has a piece called the bishop. Bishops had power. ...
10.05.2018 294 – It All Comes Crashing Down The story of the last few episodes is a story about a lesson that humanity has had to re-learn again and again throughout history. When your society is ordered around a single figure it’s likely to descend into chaos the ...
09.23.2018 293 – The Beacons are Lit When we left off, AEthelstan had recently died, Olaf had returned from Dublin and been crowned King of Jorvik (which meant that the Kingdom of Jorvik was back). The English Fyrd was still recovering from the bloodbath at Brunanburh. And ...
09.10.2018 292 – King in the North How we understand any event comes down to what angle we are able to view it from. And the story of AEthelstan is no exception. On the one hand, it is easy to see AEthelstan as one of the greatest ...
08.30.2018 291 – Pandemonium When King Edward died, the plan was that his second son would take the throne. By all indications, neither Edward nor the power structures within Wessex, wanted AEthelstan. The young AEtheling had been discarded and sent to be raised in ...
08.23.2018 290 – This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land Brunanburh had been a titanic struggle. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle speaks of how the fighting lasted from morning to night, until “the field grew dark with the blood of men.” Blood spilled from warriors of no less than four separate ...
08.18.2018 289 – Brunanburh You can’t just go to war. I mean… I guess you can. But it’s not a good idea. War takes work. It takes planning. It takes preparation. War, to put it simply, is a pain in the ass. You really ...
08.10.2018 288 – Extracurricular Activities I wonder if King Rudolph of France resented his crown. I mean, seeking the crown probably seemed like a good idea at the time but the whole thing had been turning out to be an enormous headache. And it all ...
08.02.2018 PSA Deadlines are coming up, make sure you're registered at vote.org or headcount.org.
07.27.2018 287 – The Conquest of Scotland For the last six years, AEthelstan had been ruling in a manner that hasn’t been seen in Britain for generations. Beyond being a warlord, or even a King… AEthelstan was acting more like an Emperor. All of the Anglo Saxon ...
07.21.2018 286 – Noble Pursuits After generations of devastating war, England has found itself at peace. Which leaves a question we haven’t had to ask in a while. What did the Anglo Saxons actually do during peacetime? Support the Show
07.11.2018 285 – Full Court Press The Era of AEthelstan is one of contradictions. His behavior, his policies, his wars… pretty much everything that is happening during this period seems to have an element of duality. This man was discussed by scholars of his time in ...
07.07.2018 284 – AEthelstan the Victorious Last week, we ended with King AEthelstan’s aggression towards Kingdoms of Wales and Cornwall. We don’t know precisely what occurred, or why AEthelstan demanded crippling tributes from the Welsh and then violently expelled or executed the Cornish of Exeter. Support ...
06.28.2018 283 – The Kingdoms of the Foreigners Imagine that you went from being a disfavored bastard with little power, to the most powerful English king that had ever existed, in the space of just a few years. Support the Show
06.14.2018 282 – How To Win Friends and Influence Jorvik AEthelstan had completed his annexation of Jorvik, and in doing so he had outperformed every last one of his predecessors, including his grandfather, Alfred the Great. But there were a few loose ends that he still needed to knot up. ...
06.08.2018 281 – England The last couple of episodes have focused on the political tools that AEthelstan had at his disposal. Marriage alliances, fostering, dynastic cults and diplomatic entreaties were all powerful pieces moving on a huge dark age chess board. And the thing ...

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