Our guest today is Sarah Wise, an author known for her incisive social studies of nineteenth century history. In this episode Wise takes us back to a more recent year, 1947, so she can investigate the moment when the British public began to turn against the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.

The Mental Deficiency Act was a terrifying piece of legislation that resulted in the imprisonment of tens of thousands of vulnerable people. As Wise explains, many of its victims were young, working class women who were deemed incurable 'moral imbeciles'. As such they were locked away with no hope of release. In 1947 this began to change.

Sarah Wise is the author The Undesirables: The Law that Locked Away a Generation.

Scene One: George Scott Rimmington's bungalow in Newton Abbot (September 1947)

Scene Two: Publication of The News of the World's expose of Margery X (1947)

Scene Three: Cambridgeshire MP stands up in the Commons and asks Aneurin "Nye" Bevan a question (30 January 1947)

Memento: A pencil written letter from 'Christine' to her mother. 

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Sarah Wise

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

In this episode from our archive we spoke to the archeologist and broadcaster Neil Oliver, a figure familiar to millions in the UK. While Oliver's television work has taken him around the world, he retains a special connection to his Scottish homeland. One historical site, in particular, continues to enchant him: Skara Brae.

Skara Brae on the wind scoured Orkney Islands is the best-preserved Neolithic settlement in all of western Europe. Embedded inside its stone houses and in the surviving monuments are tantalising clues to how our ancient ancestors lived and how they died.

In this episode Oliver takes us back four and a half millennia to around 2,500BC to see Skara Brae as a dynamic, living community. He then explains the mysteries that surround its abandoment and considers the significance of the settlement to us today.

Scene One: A day in the life of Skara Brae

Scene Two: The great mystery of the settlement's abandonment

Scene Three: Where did the people go?

Memento: A sharp stone knife

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Neil Oliver

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Unseen Histories

There's no more familiar piece of classical music than Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. But for all the recordings and broadcasts and interpretations of it that there has been over the past three centuries, there is still some mystery about the music. Why did Vivaldi write it? What were his inspirations? Where and when did The Four Seasons burst into life.

The broadcaster and author Dr Hannah French has written a wonderful, incisive book called The Rolling Year that examines questions like this. In this special episode Peter and the violinist Min Kym sat down with Hannah to find out more about Vivaldi, his music, Mantua and Manchester.

Enjoy the music. We'll be returning to the Travels Through Time format very soon!

Interviewers: Peter Moore and Min Kym

Guest: Dr Hannah French

Production: Maria Nolan

Music: John Harrison, The Four Seasons

After some time away, we've decided that now's the moment for some new forays into the past. Keep an eye on this feed – new episodes on the way!

In the meantime we thought we'd post one of our favourite ever interviews here. It's with the author Nikolai Tolstoy on his stepfather, the novelist Patrick O'Brian.

O'Brian was a writer of great gifts. His depiction of the late Georgian world is regarded as being very nearly as vivid as Jane Austen's. But who was he really? Where did he get his inspiration from? How did he treat those closest to him? Tolstoy, who knew Patrick as well as anyone alive, answers these questions.

We hope you enjoy this episode. Happy 2026 and more soon!

After a short break at TTT, enter the world’s largest flying machine.

‘R101’ was one of the most ambitious creations of the airship era. Plans for it began about a century ago in the 1920s. The vision of engineers and politicians was that the 1930s were to mark the start of a new epoch in air travel. R101 was to lead the way. Huge airships were going to glide through the imperial skies, binding together the distant outposts of the British Empire.

In 1930 R101’s story reached its tragic climax when, seven hours into a flight from its base in Bedfordshire, it crashed to the north of Paris. Of the fifty or so on board, only a handful survived the hydrogen fireball.

R101’s story, and the history of the era that created it, are the subject of a new book by the New York Time bestselling author S.C. ‘Sam’ Gwynne. His Majesty’s Airship tells the story of ‘the life and death of the world’s largest flying machine’.

In this episode Sam takes Peter back to see R101 as the moment of disaster nears.

To be in with winning one of two hardback copies of His Majesty’s Airship, just head to the Unseen Histories Instagram page and follow/like this post.

For more, as ever, visit our website: tttpodcast.com. To read an extract and see images from His Majesty’s Airship, visit unseenhistories.com

Show notes

Scene One: 30 June 1930. Royal Airship Works, Cardington. R101 is beset with problems.

Scene Two: 4 October 1930. The departure of R101 from Cardington, Bedfordshire.

Scene Three: 5 October 1930. Near Beauvais, France. The crash, and aftermath.

Memento: R101’s Control Car

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: S.C. Gwynne

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 1930 fits on our Timeline

Join Peter Moore and Sarah Bakewell for a little walking tour of Fleet Street in London. Instead of three scenes, in this episode they stop off at three locations, as Peter tells Sarah about three of the characters who appear in his new book: the printer William Strahan, the writer Samuel Johnson and the politician John Wilkes.

Peter Moore is a Sunday Times bestselling historian. His new book is Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream. Sarah Bakewell is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, most recently of the history of humanism: Humanly Possible.

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

Location One: The Old Cheshire Cheese (William Strahan)

Location Two: 17 Gough Square (Dr Johnson's House)

Location Three: Near John Wilkes's Statue on Fetter Lane

Presenter: Peter Moore

Asking questions: Sarah Bakewell

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_

In 1520 the artist Albrecht Dürer was on the run from the Plague and on the look-out for distraction when he heard that a huge whale had been beached on the coast of Zeeland. So he set off to see the astonishing creature for himself.

In this beautifully-evoked episode the award-winning writing Philip Hoare takes us back to those consequential days in 1520. We catch sight of Dürer, the great master of the Northern Renaissance, as he searches for the whale. This, he realises, is his chance to make his greatest ever print.

Philip Hoare is the author of nine works of non-fiction, including biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noël Coward, and the studies, Wilde's Last Stand and England's Lost Eden.  Spike Island was chosen by W.G. Sebald as his book of the year for 2001.  In 2009, Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It was followed in 2013 by The Sea Inside, and in 2017 by RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR. 

His new book, Albert & the Whale led the New York Times to call the author a 'forceful weather system' of his own. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the digital projects http://www.mobydickbigread.com/ and https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com/

As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.

Scene One: Nuremberg, home of Albrecht Dürer, at the height of its power as an imperial city, of art and technology.

Scene Two: The Low Countries. Driven out of Nuremberg by the plague and a city in lockdown, Dürer escapes to the seaside.

Scene Three: Halfway through his year away, Dürer hears a whale has been stranded in Zeeland.  This is his chance to make his greatest print, a follow up to his hit woodcut of a rhinoceros.  What follows next is near disaster, a mortal act.  It changes his life.

Memento: Memento: A lock of Dürer’s hair (which Hoare would use to regenerate him and then get him to paint his portrait)

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Philip Hoare

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Colorgraph

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

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See where 1520 fits on our Timeline 

It's time to revisit our archives. In this episode one of the world’s great historical novelists takes us back to one of the most dramatic and consequential moments in European history. Bernard Cornwell is our guide to the Battle of Waterloo.

Waterloo. That single word is enough to conjure up images of Napoleon with his great bicorn hat and the daring emperor’s nemesis, the Duke of Wellington. Over the course of twelve or so hours on a Sunday at the start of summer, these two commanders met on a battle in modern-day Belgium, to settle the future of Europe.

For a battle so vast is size and significance, it still has some elusive elements. Historians cannot agree on when it started. The movement of the troops is still subject to debate. Wellington, who might have been best qualified to answer these riddles, preferred not to speak of Waterloo. His famously laconic verdict was simply that it was ‘the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.’

Few people are as qualified to analyse this tangled history as Bernard Cornwall. For forty years he has been writing about this period of history through his ‘Sharpe’ series of books.

As Cornwall publishes his first new Sharpe novel for fifteen years, we take the opportunity to ask him about the battle that was central to all. Over a brilliantly analytical hour, he walks us through the battlefield, in three telling scenes.

Scene One: Sunday June 18th, 11.10 am.  Napoleon orders his grand battery to start firing

Scene Two: Sunday June 18th, 8.00 pm. Napoleon sends the Imperial Guard to save the battle.

Scene Three: Sunday June 18th, 10.00 pm.  Wellington weeps over the casualties.

Memento: A heavy cavalry sword, carried in an attack at Waterloo

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Bernard Cornwell

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Colorgraph

Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_

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See where 1815 fits on our Timeline 

Our guest today is one of the greatest of Britons. Lady Hale was, until her retirement three years ago, the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom – the most senior judge in the country.

Peter sat down with Lady Hale at her London home for a conversation about her life, her love of history and memoir Spider Woman. After this she took him back to 1925, a pivotal year for the law and women’s rights.

For women, the 1920s were a progressive time. Figures like Eleanor Rathbone and Viscountess Rhonda led movements such as the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and the Six Point Group. In 1925 three particularly important pieces of legislation passed through Parliament. Here she tells us about each of them.

Lady Hale is the author of Spider Woman.

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

Scene One: Administration of Estates Act 1925 (Royal Assent 9 April 1925)

Scene Two: Guardianship of Infants Act 1925 (Royal Assent 31 July 1925)

Scene Three: Widows, Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act (Royal Assent 7 August 1925)

Memento: Her mother’s tennis racquet.

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Lady Hale

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 1925 fits on our Timeline

In this special live episode, recorded at the Buckingham Literary Festival last weekend, the award-winning writer Flora Fraser takes us to one of the most remote places in the British Isles to witness the dramatic story of how her namesake Flora Macdonald helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after his failed attempt to take the throne from George II.

Their adventure is one of the most romantic and romanticised episodes in our history, sighed over and depicted by succeeding generations seduced by Flora’s bravery and charm.

Flora Fraser is the author of several acclaimed works of history including Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton; Venus of Empire, The Life of Pauline Bonaparte, and The Washingtons.

Her book Pretty Young Rebel, The Life of Flora MacDonald is out now in hardback.

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

Scene One: June 1746. The Prince comes to Flora at midnight in South Uist and asks for help. 

Scene Two: September 1746. Flora is a captive on a Royal Navy warship in Leith harbour and a celebrity.

Scene Three: December 1746. The ship bringing Flora South from Leith reaches London.

Memento: The handsomely bound Bible in two volumes that Flora carried down to London, where she was kept a state prisoner into the following year.

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Flora Fraser

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 1746 fits on our Timeline