This week we head to the turbulent world of sixteenth century France to meet three fascinating queens whose lives were inextricably linked – Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary Queen of Scots. They are the subject of our guest today, Leah Redmond Chang's, new book, Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power.

'The royal body exists to be looked at,' Hilary Mantel wrote in her essay "Royal Bodies". For a royal woman especially, this has meant that the most intimate parts of her biology have been closely observed and occasionally used to alter the course of her country's history. Whether she had started menstruating, was fertile, was able to sexually satisfy her husband or provide him with a son and heir could all be details on which massive political decisions were based. As Leah Redmond Chang shows in her wonderful new book, these details of women's lives aren't a sideshow to the main event but, in fact, central to the action.

In this episode we visit 1559 to witness the unexpected and violent death of Henry II of France in a jousting competition. It was a tragic accident that would forever change the lives of his wife, Catherine de' Medici, his daughter, Elisabeth de Valois and his daughter-in-law Mary Queen of Scots.

Show notes

Scene One: June 30-July 10, 1559, Paris. The tragic and violent death of Henry II of France in a jousting accident after the wedding of his daughter, Elisabeth de Valois.

Scene Two: Mid-July 1559, the Louvre. The Spanish Duke of Alba visits the mourning chambers of Catherine de’ Medici.

Scene Three: Late November, 1559, Châtelleraut. The Departure of Catherine’s daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, for Spain.

Momento: Henry II's faulty jousting helmet, and/or the first letter Catherine de' Medici sent to her daughter as she was on her journey to Spain to meet her husband. 

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1559 fits on our Timeline

The Renaissance was stirred into life by many figures of genius. In this episode Peter meets up with the art historian, Andrew Spira, to talk about three of the great masters in one of the most captivating of years.

In different ways Botticelli, Perugino and Dürer were finding new stories to tell in their paintings. Spira evaluates all of this for us and he detects the emergence of something else that would be of central importance in the emerging Western society. This was a revolutionary new conception: 'the self'.

Andrew Spira is the author of The Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art, among other works. He is also one of the esteemed tour directors at Ace Culutral Tours.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: Sandro Botticelli's Mystic Nativity

Scene Two: Pietro Perugino's Resurrection

Scene Three: Albrecht Dürer's Self-portrait

Memento: A Dürer print

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Andrew Spira

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1500 fits on our Timeline

For this week's episode Peter headed in to Penguin's offices in London to meet Serhii Plokhy and talk to him about his new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War. They discussed how a culture of secrecy continues to define Russian society as it did before with the Soviets. They looked at the progress of the war and Putin's failed attempt to found a 'Eurasian Union'.

Following this Serhii revisits the dramatic events of 1991, when he watched on as the Soviet Union collapsed in the most unexpected of ways.

Serhii Plokhy has been described as 'The world's foremost historian of Ukraine' by the Financial Times. His new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War, is available in hardback now.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: August 1991. Moscow during the attempted coup

Scene Two: Late August. Edmonton, Canada. The Canadian prime minister pledges to recognize Ukrainian independence

Scene Three: 25 December. Mikhail Gorbachev's Resignation Address

Memento: Serhii Plokhy's aeroplane ticket from 1991

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Serhii Plokhy

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1991 fits on our Timeline

It's time to delve into our archive. In this brilliantly descriptive and entertaining episode, 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 all this 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.

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’

Presenter: Peter Moore

Interview: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Craig Brown

Producer: Maria Nolan

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 classicist Honor Cargill-Martin takes Artemis on a tour of the debauched and dangerous world of Roman politics. We meet Messalina, one of the Rome's most notorious women, and follow her through the events of 48 AD that would lead to her eventual downfall and execution.

For over two thousand years Messalina has been characterised as the scheming and sexually rapacious wife of Emperor Claudius. In one famous story she attends a brothel to take part in a twenty four hour sex competition. But now, in her wonderful new biography, Messalina: A Story of Empire, Slander and Adultery, Honor Cargill-Martin challenges this version of the empress's life. In particular, Honor seeks to rescue Messalina's reputation from some of the more egregiously sexist stereotypes that powerful women throughout history have often borne the brunt of.

As Honor shows us in this episode, Messalina certainly wasn't a saint, but she was a serious political operator who had survived and thrived in the volatile world of the first century Roman Empire. 

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: Autumn 48 AD, Imperial Palace, Palatine Hill. The emperor Claudius is out of Rome. Messalina, the handsome Gaius Silius, and their friends are partying in celebration of the wine harvest. This, her enemies will argue, is actually a bigamous wedding party.

Scene Two: A few days later in autumn 48 AD, From the Via Ostiensis to the Praetorian Camp. Messalina stands accused of adultery, bigamy, and treason. She tries to beg Claudius to spare her life but is blocked. The freedman Narcissus shows Claudius evidence of her adulteries before taking him to the Praetorian Camp where he executes a string of her alleged lovers.

Scene Three: New Years Day 49 AD, Claudius marries Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero. Lucius Silanus – Messalina’s daughter’s fiancé, now accused of incest to clear the way for her to marry Nero – commits suicide as the morning of the wedding dawns.

Memento: Nero's golden snakeskin bracelet. 

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 48 AD fits on our Timeline

Today Tom Whipple, science editor of The Times, takes us back to a critical moment at the beginning of World War Two.

Just a month after replacing Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, Winston Churchill learned that the Nazis were using beams to direct their bombers towards targets in Britain’s industrial heartlands.

The science behind these beams was so pioneering that it was difficult to believe that it was true. But, as Churchill learned at a dramatic meeting in Whitehall in June 1940, the beams were scientifically plausible. The man who told him this was an extraordinary 28-year-old physicist. His name was RV Jones.

RV Jones is the central character in Tom Whipple’s enthralling new book. The Battle of the Beams: The Secret Science of Radar That Turned the Tide of WW2 is out this week.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: 21 June 1940. RV Jones attends a meeting at the cabinet room in Whitehall

Scene Two: June 1940. With Flight Lieutenant Bufton/Corporal Mackie on a mission to find Jones’s ‘beams’ over Britain

Scene Three: 6 November 1940. At the crash site of a Heinkel III bomber at Chesil Beach in Dorset

Memento: Vera Cain’s (RV Jones’s wife) diary

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Tom Whipple

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1940 fits on our Timeline

It has been said that the past is another country, but the events we discuss in this episode feel all too familiar. Media interference in elections, Russian influence on Western politics, controversial immigration policy and the technology industry are all as close to the top of the agenda today as there were in 1924.

Today Violet is joined on a tour back to 1924 by the celebrated writer Simon Winchester. Simon is one of the great literary figures of his generation. His career as a journalist and an author spans the past half century, from reports on the Troubles in Northern Ireland to pioneering works of creative non-fiction like Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. Born in Britain, in this episode he joins Violet from his home in rural Massachusetts.

Simon’s latest book, which has just been published, Knowing What We Know, The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic takes us from ancient Babylon to Chat GPT, analysing many of the subjects that are discussed here.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Also, if you want to have a look - here's the Sandisfield Times!

Scene One: 25 October 1924, the Zinoviev Letter is published in the British press, setting Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour Party up for election disaster.

Scene Two: 1924. In New York City, the creation of IBM – International Business Machines.

Scene Three: 1924. In Washington, the Asian Exclusion Act passes through Congress, enshrining anti-immigration policy and racism into law.

Memento: IBM ‘golf ball’ font attachment for typewriter.

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Simon Winchester

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1924 fits on our Timeline

England in the mid sixteenth century was filled with drama and novelty. As conspiracies played out and a new queen sought to established herself on the throne, a glamorous new technology was emerging in the fashionable world.

In this fascinating episode, Rebecca Struthers, the author of Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History of Time, takes us back to the high Elizabethan Age to tell us all about the early days of watchmaking.

The stories that feature in this episode are covered in much more depth in Rebecca’s acclaimed new book. Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History of Time is published this week.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: 1572. With Mary Queen of Scots in Sheffield Castle.

Scene Two: 1572. With Queen Elizabeth I in Whitehall.

Scene Three: 24/5 August 1572. Paris. St Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Memento: Queen Elizabeth’s watch.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Rebecca Struthers

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Hodder & Stoughton

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1572 fits on our Timeline

In today’s beautifully described episode the author and journalist Luke Turner takes us back to 1943 to present us with a refreshingly different view of World War 2.

The war, Turner reminds us, was a cultural experience as well as a military contest. One feature of this cultural environment has been largely neglected by generations of scholars. This is the unusual degree of freedom some members of the British armed forces had to explore issues of sexuality and gender.

The stories that feature in this episode are covered in much more depth in Luke’s fascinating new book. Men at War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945 is published this week.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: 3-4 April 1943. RAF Lissett, Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

Scene Two: 16 April 1943. Off the coast of North Africa with Wing Commander Ian Gleed of the RAF.

Scene Three. November 1943. A couple of hundred miles north of the Allied line with Lieutenant Dan Billany.

Memento: The cockpit door from Ian Gleed’s hurricane.

Presenter: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Luke Turner

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1943 fits on our Timeline

This week we have an extra Friday episode for you. It’s with the multi-talented artist, historian and musician Dr Amy Jeffs. She takes us back to 1327, a year of high political drama when King Edward II of England was deposed by his wife, Isabella, and his teenage son, Edward III was crowned and began his fifty-year reign.

Jeffs spent her university years deep in the Middle Ages, studying palaeography, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and Middle Welsh, alongside more traditional art history courses.

Her fascination with words and images in manuscripts has led her to create two books, Storyland and Wild which explore enigmatic early Medieval stories and are beautifully illustrated with her own linocut prints, while the audiobook versions feature her songs and compositions.

Wild, which is just out in paperback, explores the mysterious, riddling tales in The Exeter Book, a rare tenth century manuscript of old English literature which has been in Exeter Cathedral since 1072.

In this episode Jeffs tells Violet more about all of this and together they set off for 1327 to examine the year’s politics through the prism of two compelling manuscripts.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: 1327. A disaster in the scriptorium. A group of manuscript makers, including a scribe and a painter, have been working on producing a book containing a series of portraits of English kings from William the Conqueror to Edward II, surmounting a poem that builds up to an exhortation for Edward II to conquer the Scots.

Scene Two: A mother’s gift. Sometime between 15-year-old Edward III’s knighting on 31st January and his coronation on 1st Feb 1327, his mother gives him a lavishly illuminated manuscript containing a treatise on kingship.

Scene Three. A funeral. Edward III’s father died/was killed at Berkeley Castle, on the 21st September 1327, but his funeral did not take place until 21st October. His body was borne to Gloucester Abbey, not in state, but with a wooden effigy.

Memento: Edward II’s crown, as displayed on his effigy.

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Dr Amy Jeffs

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

See where 1327 fits on our Timeline

==

Amy’s linocut images can be ordered from https://www.amyjeffshistoria.com

Insta: https://www.instagram.com/historia_prints/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2DrP4TiFqjZHAaWeLdQEGB