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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LAST EPISODE

340 – A Bit of a Cnut

01.23.2020

When we left off, Cnut had managed to get Eadric to go on the record calling for the execution of the English claimants to the throne… and then Cnut rejected the suggestion, and instead outlawed Eadwig, and exiled the sons ...

The British History Podcast episodes:

01.23.2020 340 – A Bit of a Cnut When we left off, Cnut had managed to get Eadric to go on the record calling for the execution of the English claimants to the throne… and then Cnut rejected the suggestion, and instead outlawed Eadwig, and exiled the sons ...
01.17.2020 339 – Cnut the Conqueror It’s been a strange few years. The fall of the House of Wessex and the rise of Cnut looks like a simple story of conquest. After all, it’s right there in the title. Virtually every book on this era has ...
12.27.2019 338 – The Fall of King Edmund Ironsides Edmund hadn’t lost, and for now that was enough. He had shown himself to be a contender. So Ironside took his remaining men and marched East… but the accounts are careful to point out that he stayed north of the ...
12.22.2019 337 – The Rise of King Edmund Ironside Can you feel it? It feels like there is a lull before the storm. AEthelred Unread is now gone, and Normandy is now officially on the board. 1066 is on the doorstep. But the lull is an illusion you experience ...
12.10.2019 336 – The End Is The Beginning Is The End Christmas is old. Older than Christianity, in fact. As a consequence, there’s a lot to it. Symbols and traditions that come from all over the world, and from all across time. It’s a complex event that, predictably, can provoke a ...
11.26.2019 335 – Acts of Spasmodic Violence Morcar and Sigeferth were under a lot of stress. These two noble brothers from the North had only just managed to join the Wulf dynasty through Sigeferht’s marriage to Ealdgyth, the niece of the powerful Ealdorman AElfhelm of York and ...
11.14.2019 334 – No Cnut November There are worse things than spending a holiday in Normandy. And one of those things is spending a holiday in Normandy because you just lost your entire Kingdom to the Danes. Support the Show
11.08.2019 333 – The Conquest of England England in 1013 was a Kingdom begging to be conquered. Decades of bad decisions have eroded its foundations and now it sat as a mere shadow of its former glory. It had none of the military prowess established by King ...
10.31.2019 Teig O’Kane and the Corpse Happy Halloween
10.25.2019 332 – The Jomsvikings So here we are. With two full companies of Jomsvikings laying waste to southern England… and in response, the nobility… the people tasked with defending the population and the Kingdom… decided that this was an excellent chance to fight among ...
10.17.2019 331 – Thoughts and Prayers AEthelred, for the first time in quite a while, had a chance for a breather. King Sweyn Forkbeard, having been paid a king’s ransom, had withdrawn his forces with a promise never to return. Support the Show
10.07.2019 330 – The Purge The Court of AEthelred had turned over three times during his reign. First, there was his regency council. Then, when he took full power he replaced his regency council with his young friends and corrupt enablers. Then the old guard ...
09.27.2019 329 – Forkbeard When you go to your local grocery store there’s a pattern. You go down your usual aisles, grab your bread, your tea, that thing you know you’re not supposed to eat but do anyway because it is delicious and you ...
09.20.2019 328 – The St Brice’s Day Massacre The year 1002 was still 64 years away from 1066, but The House of Normandy had already begun a coup upon the Kingdom of England. The dynasty held only a minor Duchy, and for a fairly short amount of time, ...
09.14.2019 327 – Sail Away Sail Away Sail Away Now that we’ve checked in with the rest of the world, let’s get back to our story…which lately hasn’t been going so well. In the space of 70 years the Kingdom went from a preeminent power in the West to ...
09.08.2019 326 – The Year 1000 It’s so easy to lose the forest for the trees. This show is a show about one small island which, even at this part of the story, is still at the edge of civilization. It is very easy to forget ...
08.24.2019 325 – From Bad to Worse When we left off, England was reforming its legal structure. Now, law isn’t known for being a sexy subject…neither are lawyers for that matter. But law shapes our societies in ways that are so fundamental that they are often invisible ...
08.21.2019 324 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 ...

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