Travels Through Time

In this fascinating episode of Travels Through Time, Ken Follett, one of the world’s best loved historical novelists, guides us back to the beginning of the last millennium. The year we visit, 1002, comes at a time of change when, after centuries of stagnation, English society was beginning to emerge from that gloomy period we call ‘The Dark Ages.’

The subject matter, the scenes and the characters that feature in this episode come from the world depicted by Follett in his hugely-anticipated new novel The Evening and the Morning, the prequel to his bestselling masterpiece, The Pillars of the Earth.

For a chance to win a first edition hardback copy of The Evening and the Morning, to read more about the scenes discussed in this episode and to see images and show notes, please head to our website: tttpodcast.com

Scene One: 1002, The Slave Market, Bristol

Scene Two: 1002, The Viking seige of Exeter

Scene Three: 1002, The wedding of King Æthelred II & Emma of Normandy

Memento: A four-legged chair

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Ken Follett

Editorial: Artemis Irvine

Producers: Maria Nolan

Titles: Jon O

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

Podcast Partner: ColorGraph

So much more at: tttpodcast.com

In this episode of Travels Through Time we are taken on an invigorating tour of the ports, coasts and oceans of the world with Professor David Abulafia, winner of the prestigious 2020 Wolfson Prize for History for his book, The Boundless Sea.

For much more information about this episode, including images of the people and places involved, head to our website, tttpodcast.com

The scenes discussed in this episode come from The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (Allen Lane).

Show notes:

Scene One: 21 August 1415, The Portuguese attack on Ceuta, North Africa

Scene Two: 1415, The Eastern Settlement Greenland

Scene Three: 1415 Nanjing, east coast of central China

Memento: A piece of Chinese porcelain from Nanjing

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Professor David Abulafia

Editorial: Artemis Irvine

Producers: Maria Nolan

Titles: Jon O

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Check out the amazing colourised images made by our podcast partner, ColorGraph!

In this swashbuckling episode of Travels Through Time we head back to the year 1453. We watch on as the brilliant, ruthless young sultan, Mehmet II, makes use of terrifying modern weaponry as he seeks to capture the prize of his heart’s desire: the ancient city of Constantinople.

Our guest this week is the award-winning and bestselling writer Justin Marozzi. Marozzi has lived for much of his professional life in the Middle East and North Africa and is known for books like The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus (2008) and Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood.

The events described and the characters involved in this episode are taken from Marozzi’s latest book, Islamic Empires Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization. That book is published in paperback on 6 August by Penguin Press.

For much, much more about this episode, including battle plans and portraits of Mehmed and Constantine, head to our website: tttpodcast.com

Show notes

Scene One: January 1453. A Hungarian siege engineer called Orban offers the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II the most powerful new weapon in the world.

Scene Two: 22 April 1453, Mehmet displays an astonishing example of his military genius to seize control of the Golden Horn, Constantinople

Scene Three: 1:30am on 29th May, the battle for Constantinople reaches its dramatic climax

Memento: The magnificent cannon cast for the seige in 1453 by the Hungarian engineer Orban

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Interview: Violet Moller

Guest: Justin Marozzi

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Colorgraph

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

In this episode Professor Greg Woolf takes us to 146 BCE – the point at which Roman domination of the Mediterranean became inevitable.

In the West, the Romans destroyed the city of Carthage, ending the decades of military struggle known as the Punic Wars and finally defeating the Phoenicians.

In the East, Roman forces seized control of the important city of Corinth on mainland Greece, giving them a strategic foothold that they would go on to use in building their empire.

At the same time, the glittering intellectual capital of the ancient world, Alexandria, was beset by internal power struggles and so began the period of decline that would eventually lead to it, too, being absorbed into the Roman Empire.

For much, much more about this episode, head to tttpodcast.com

Scene One: The demolition of Carthage in Spring of 146

Scene Two: At the sack of the ancient city of Corinth in Greece in 146

Scene Three: The decline of Alexandria and the death of Ptolemy VI in 145

Memento: A painting from the Ancient world

Presenter: Peter Moore

Interview: Violet Moller

Guest: Professor Greg Woolf

Production: Maria Nolan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

Partner: Colorgraph

The conversation in this episode of Travels Through Time revolves around Woolf’s most recent book, The Life and Death of Ancient Cities.

In this brilliantly descriptive and entertaining episode of Travels Through Time the award-winning writer and satirist Craig Brown takes us on a cultural tour of 1963. We discuss the Great Train Robbery, the Beatles meteoric rise to fame and the assassination of JFK.

For much, much more about the episode and to be the first to see the amazing new colourised photograph of the Beatles in Washington DC at their first US concert – head to our website: tttpodcast.com

Show Notes:

Scene One: August 1963, lingering with the robbers in their hide-out at Leatherslade Farm.

Scene Two: Second half of 1963, Jane Asher's family home, Wimpole Street, to see/be Paul McCartney, living with the Ashers, at the time of the first flush of the Beatles’ success.

Scene Three: November 23 1963. In the Texas School Book depository with Lee Harvey Oswald as he shoots President Kennedy.

Memento: Paul McCartney’s handwritten lyrics for ‘Yesterday’

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Interview: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Craig Brown

Producer: Maria Nolan

Titles: Jon O

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

Podcast Partner: ColorGraph

Craig Brown’s book One, Two, Three Four: The Beatles in Time is available now from 4th Estate books.

In this episode of Travels Through Time, the writer and broadcaster Luke Pepera introduces us to Mansa Musa, a dazzling figure in African history. Mansa Musa was the Emperor of Mali in the fourteenth century. We follow him as he embarks on his spectacular pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325.

It was a journey of epic proportions, involving a procession of tens of thousands of people and the transport of extraordinary amounts of gold, the precious metal on which Mali had built its wealth.

For much more information about this episode - including illustrations of the places and people featured - head to our website, tttpodcast.com

To hear more stories from African history, you can follow Luke on Twitter at @LukePepera and read along with his blog.

Scene One: Early 1325, as Mansa Musa sets off on his extravagant pilgrimage to Mecca.

Scene Two: Mid-to-late 1325, in the court of al-Nasir, the Egyptian sultan, to witness the meeting between the two great leaders.

Scene Three: Late 1325, as a scholar in the Djingeureber Mosque at Timbuktu, which was established by the architects and scholars whom Mansa Musa brought back from his pilgrimage.

Memento: A book of poetry from the University of Timbuktu

Interview: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Luke Pepera

Producer: Maria Nolan

Titles: Jon O

Check out the amazing colourised images made by our podcast partner, ColorGraph!

In our fascinating season three opener, Peter talks to Professor James Shapiro, one of the world’s leading scholars of the life and work of William Shakespeare. He tells Peter about the origin of the concept of 'Manifest Destiny'. He takes us to meet a young Ulysses S. Grant, and he evokes the life of the greatest Romeo of the age: Charlotte Cushman. The year is 1845.

For much more information about this episode, including images of the people and places involved, head to our website, tttpodcast.com

The conversation in this podcast revolves around James Shapiro's most recent book,  Shakespeare in a Divided America. It is available now from Faber in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA.

Show notes:

Scene One: August, 1845.  John O’Sullivan, in an essay called “Annexation” introduces the phrase “Manifest Destiny” into the American vocabulary, capturing America’s shift from republic to empire, the repercussions of which are being felt to this day.

Scene Two: November, 1845.  Corpus Christi, Texas. Four thousand US troops are awaiting orders in Corpus Christi, Texas to cross the Rio Grande and invade Mexico. 

Scene Three: December 1845.  In a revealing act of cross-dressing that speaks to the anxieties about manliness at the time, the star American actress Charlotte Cushman debuts as Romeo - a role that no man at the time was able to perform successfully - at London’s Haymarket Theatre. 

Memento: A recording of Ulysses S. Grant speaking Desdomona’s lines in Othello:

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Professor James Shapiro

Producers: Maria Nolan

Titles: Jon O

Check out the amazing colourised images made by our podcast partner, ColorGraph!

We're really excited to let you know that the third season of Travels Through Time begins on Tuesday 21 July.

Our first guest will be with the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and world-leading Shakespeare scholar, Professor James Shapiro. Following him will be a brilliant range of historians, novelists, poets and others - all of them people with a passion for the past. 

For more, check out tttpodcast.com. // See you soon!

In this thrilling episode of Travels Through Time, Owen Matthews takes us back to 1941 to see Richard Sorge, the ‘spy to end all spies’, operating at the highest level in the most dangerous months of the Second World War.

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Two events in 1941 did more than anything else to settle the shape and outcome of the Second World War. The first was the most fateful decision of Adolf Hitler’s life: the launching of Operation Barbarossa against the USSR on 22 June. The second was the surprise Japanese aerial attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbour, six months later on 7 December.

These events appear crystal clear to us in retrospect, but for many living at that time they came like a flash out of the blue. A few people, though, did know what was coming. One of them was one of the most extraordinary communist underground operatives of the twentieth century: Richard Sorge. Sorge ran a Soviet spy group in Tokyo from the 1930s onwards that achieved astonishing access into the Nazi war machine.

A drinker, a womaniser, a risk-taker, all on a breath-taking scale, one journalist has classified Sorge ‘as an example of the rare species we might call Homo undercoverus – those who find the dull, unclassified lives that the rest of us lead simply not worth living.’

Our guest on Travels Through Time today is Owen Matthews, author of a new biography of Sorge. Owen studied Modern History at Oxford. His book, Stalin's Children, was translated into twenty-eight languages and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

The scenes and subjects described in this episode feature in Owen Matthews biography of Richard Sorge, An Impeccable Spy. The book is available in paperback from Bloomsbury now.

Show notes:

Scene One: 31 May 1941, The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Richard Sorge receives final confirmation that Operation Barbarossa will shortly be launched.

Scene Two: 22 June 1941. The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Sorge’s bitter fury when he hears news of the German invasion.

Scene Three: One night in August, 1941. The Embassy Ballroom with Sorge and Eta Harich-Schneider

Memento: Richard Sorge’s lighter

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest; Owen Matthews

Producer: Maria Nolan

Editorial: Artemis Irvine

Titles: Jon O

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Follow us on Twitter @tttpodcast_

Check out the best colourised images from our new partner, Dynamichrome.

In this thought-provoking episode of Travels Through Time, historian Kelcey Wilson-Lee takes us to the court of the English King Edward I in 1297 to meet his daughters at a dramatic moment in their lives.

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King Edward I’s daughters did not conform to the modern stereotype of medieval princesses. They weren’t delicate, wistful girls, passively waiting to be rescued by a handsome prince. Eleanora and her sisters were true Plantagenets. They were headstrong, passionate characters who spent as much time hunting, managing estates and travelling around England and the Continent as they did doing needlework in their chambers.

Their lives reveal the breadth of experience of royal women in the medieval period through the various roles they played. They represented their country and championed the needy. They promoted monastic houses, were brides in strategic alliances, rebellious daughters, landowners, patrons of culture, mothers, wives and most important of all in this story, sisters.

In this episode of Travels Through Time, the historian Kelcey Wilson-Lee takes Violet Moller to meet Eleanora, Joanna, Mary, Margaret and Elizabeth in the year 1297.

Kelcey Wilson-Lee’s Daughters of Chivalry: the forgotten children of Edward I is published by MacMillan

Show notes: 

Scene One: January, 1297, and the royal family has gathered in Ipswich for Elizabeth's wedding to Johan, Count of Holland, after which she is supposed to sail for her new husband’s lands.

Scene Two: July 1297, King Edward I’s court at St Albans. Joanna comes to plead her case after having eloped and secretly remarried a nobody without her father's permission. She makes a dramatic speech that is (very unusually) recorded and is forgiven by her Father.

Scene Three: Christmas 1297, in Ghent where Elizabeth (who eventually went to Holland) is reunited with her sisters who have married into Europe in years before.

Memento: A gold ring presented to Margaret by Edward I at Harwich.

People/Social

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Kelcey Wilson-Lee

Producer: Maria Nolan

Editorial: John Hillman

Titles: Jon O

Made in partnership with the brilliant photo colourists at Dynamichrome