As 1945 began the greatest conflict in human history was drawing to a close. But with the war in the west almost over, a new question was increasingly being asked. It was one to which Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt all had different answers. What was going to happen next?

In this episode the million-copy bestselling author Giles Milton takes us back to some key moments in 1945. At Yalta on the Crimean peninsula and later in the ruins of Berlin, the shape of the post war world – the world we know today – was beginning to take shape.

What is clear now was not so then. Were the Allies really friends or were, as Churchil worried to Anthony Eden, they hurtling towards a third world war? Arriving in Berlin at the start of July 1945, the US army colonel Frank Howley feared much the same. As Milton explains, it was Howley who saw before almost anyone else that the Germans had ceased to be enemies and the Russians had ceased to be friends.

The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Milton’s latest book. Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World.

Show notes

Scene One: 4 February 1945. Yalta. Opening of the Crimea Conference

Scene Two: 2 May 1945. Berlin. Yevgeny Khaldei takes a photograph of the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag

Scene Three: 1 July 1945. Berlin. Colonel Howley arrives

Memento: A little of the Schliemann Gold

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Giles Milton

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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

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Walking around a cathedral today can be a solemn and an awe-inspiring experience, but what if we could stand inside the same building and travel back 800 years or so? In this episode we do exactly that.

Our guide is Dr Emma J. Wells, a historian, broadcaster and author of Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals.

In this beautifully illustrated book, Emma visits sixteen world-renowned cathedrals ranging from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, to the “northern powerhouse” of York Minster. She describes their origins, the striking and unusual stories attached to them and the people central to their history. 

In this episode, Emma takes me to the high medieval period, when European architecture was falling in love with the gothic style and cathedral-building was at its height. 

Dr Emma J. Wells’s new book Heaven on Earth is out now from Head of Zeus. 

Scene One: Canterbury cathedral, trinity chapel, the scene of St Thomas Becket’s elevation and translation into his new shrine.

Scene Two: Salisbury, the ceremonial laying of the first five foundation stones of the new cathedral after its move from Old Sarum.  

Scene Three: Chartres, France, William de Breton described the growing cathedral’s vaults as bringing to ‘look like the shell of a tortoise’ referring to the higher vaults and a longer and wider nave than any other in Christendom.

Memento: To restore the “super-shrine” of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.

People/Social

Presenter: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Dr Emma J. Wells

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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In the final sentence of A People’s Tragedy, his multi-award winning study of the Russian Revolution, Orlando Figes wrote ominously that, ‘the ghosts of 1917 have not been laid to rest.’

This year, as Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has played out, we have been able to glimpse some of these ghosts: fear, paranoia, grievance. All these emotions have arisen out of a long, complicated and contested history that Figes has attempted to explain for a Western readership in his illuminating new book: The Story of Russia.

In this episode we talk about Vladimir Putin’s use and misuse of history today and we look back to a particularly significant year in Russia’s past. 1917 brought revolution to Russia. ‘It is hard to think of an event, or series of events, that has affected the history of the past one hundred years more profoundly’, Figes writes.

The Russian Revolution is an event that began in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in Feburary 1917 and thereafter was driven forward by Vladimir Lenin's singular character. We scruitinise this event, as ever, in three telling scenes.

Orlando Figes’s The Story of Russia is out now from Bloomsbury.

Scene One: March 1917. Tauride Palace in Petrograd (St Petersburg).

Scene Two: 3-4 July 1917. Kshesinskaya Mansion in Petrograd.

Scene Three: 25 October 1917. Smolnyi Institute in Petrograd.

Memento: Grand Duke Michael's abdication manifesto

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Orlando Figes

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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

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Having watched the second Elizabethan era draw to a close in recent weeks, it is fitting that in this episode we are going back to the beginning of the first Elizabethan era – the moment when Mary Tudor died leaving the throne to her younger half-sister.

These two queens, the first women to rule England in their own right, were divided by their faith. The greatest challenge facing Elizabeth on her accession was to unite a country which was polarised by religion, having passed from hard-line Protestantism under Edward VI back to Catholicism with Mary.

Our learned guide on this journey is Dr Lucy Wooding whose masterful new book, Tudor England, gives a rich, detailed vision of the period. Wooding's book is not simply limited to the big political moments but takes the reader right into the lives of ordinary people as well.

Dr Lucy Wooding is Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, Oxford. She is an expert on Reformation England, its politics, religion and culture, and the author of Henry VIII.

Tudor England by Lucy Wooding is out now.

Scene One: 17 November 1558, London. In the early morning, Mary I lies dying at St James's Palace. By evening, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, has also died – a momentous day for Catholicism in England.

Scene Two: November 1558, a few days earlier. Princess Elizabeth is at a dinner party at Brocket Hall, with the Count of Feria who has been sent by Philip II (Mary’s husband) to sound out the heir to the throne. He concludes that she is, ‘'She is a very vain and clever woman’, who is, ‘determined to be governed by no one'.

Scene Three: Late 1557, The Works of Sir Thomas More, sometime Lord Chauncellor, wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge are published by the printer William Rastell, who was also More’s nephew.

Memento: The reliquary known as the ‘Tablet de Bourbon’, made by one of the great Parisian goldsmiths and acquired as part of a ransom during the Hundred Years War. Worn by Mary I in the portrait by Hans Eworth.

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Dr Lucy Wooding

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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

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This week we are off to see some of the Renaissance masters at work with the acclaimed novelist Damian Dibben.

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In the early years of the sixteenth century Venice was not only a place of great power it was a site of huge cultural splendour. In particular a new generation of artists were animating the buildings like never before. And unlike many of the other Renaissance painters, the Venetians were not solely obsessed by line and form; they were equally interested in the allure and possibility of colour. 

In this episode (with a short detour to the Sistine Chapel) we set our gaze on a place that is still affectionately known as the Queen of the Adriatic. In doing so we look at two of its great artists as they work with their cobalts and ultramarines. One of them, Titian, is well known to us. The other, Giorgione, or ‘Big George’, is a more elusive character.

Only a small number of Giorgione’s paintings survive today, but they convey his strange and brilliant originality. Art historians have spent centuries trying to make sense of his enigmatic depictions, which are suffused with a misty light that seems to have drifted straight off the lagoon.

Damian Dibben’s novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages and published in over forty countries. His series The History Keepers was an international publishing phenomenon. His new book is The Colour Storm.

Scene One: 1510. Titian, the 22 year old Venetian painter paints his 'Man with a Quilted Sleeve.

Scene Two: 1510. Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This was an incredible feat of artistic brilliance and physical endurance, achieved by a someone who was a true genius but personally difficult and far from pleasant.

Scene Three: October 1510. The death of Giorgione. One of the greatest painters, a vital link in the history of art who would have produced stunning masterpieces had he not died at 33, probably of plague.

Memento: Giorgione’s painting of a knight and his squire, or groom, c.1507

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Damian Dibben

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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

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We start our sixth season with Robert Harris, one of Britain's great contemporary novelists. He takes us back to a tremendously important year in English (and world) history. 1660.

In England the mid seventeenth century was a dramatic and bloody time. It was a age when important questions about the nature of power were posed and the traditions of monarchy were challenged. In 1649 this led to the execution of King Charles I on a cold January day in Whitehall. Almost a century and a half before the French removed Louis XVI, England pioneered a new form of republican society.

This was not destined to last. Oliver Cromwell’s death in September 1658 left the country with a power vacuum. After various alternatives were tested, the decision was finally taken to invite the dead king’s eldest surviving son, Charles, back from Europe to regain the throne for the Stuart family.

Charles II’s entry into London on his birthday, 29 May 1660, was a emotional occasion. But for all the excitement and all the glamour of the year John Evelyn called an ‘Annus Miribilis’, some knotty questions remained. One of the greatest of these was what should be done with the surviving ‘regicides’ – the scores of people who had signed the death warrant of the new king’s father.

This history forms the background to Robert Harris’s exhilarating new novel. In Act of Oblivion he tells the story of a transatlantic manhunt for two of the regicides: the colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe.

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris is available now.

Show notes

Scene One: 29 May 1660. Charles II returns to London after being exiled and is proclaimed lawful monarch.

Scene Two: 29 August 1660. The Act of Oblivion is passed in Parliament.

Scene Three: 27 July 1660. Colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe, two regicides, arrive in Boston

Memento: Charles I’s death warrant

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Robert Harris

Production: Maria Nolan

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

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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Hello everyone, we're back!

Season Six of Travels Through Time begins with an episode with the Number One Bestselling novelist Robert Harris tomorrow. 

Music: “Love Token” from the album “This Is Us” By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

This week we meet an extraordinary couple, whose life-long partnership and dual creativity changed the face of Britain’s Arts and Crafts movement. 

If it’s ever been possible to come up with a philosophy for how to live, William Morris came pretty close. He once said that “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment and it’s one that makes even more sense when you learn more about his family and the home he created with his wife, Jane. 

Their marriage was complicated and painful at times, but Jane and William Morris built a life together that valued things that were beautiful and useful, people who were generous and creative.

The story of their relationship is told vividly in my guest today, Suzanne Fagence Cooper’s new book How We Might Live: At Home With Jane and William Morris. Suzanne Fagence Cooper is a writer, lecturer and curator, working on 19th and 20th century British art, design and culture. How We Might Live, is published by Quercus. 

As ever, for more about this episode, head over to our website: www.tttpodcast.com

Show Notes

Scene One: 1862. The birth of May Morris.

Scene Two: 1862. First exhibition for Morris & Co.

Scene Three: 1862. The death of Elizabeth Siddall.

Momento: Gabriel Rossetti's book of poems.

People/Social

Presenter: Artemis Irvine

Guest: Suzanne Fagence Cooper

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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Welcome to a very special live recording of Travels Through Time, made at the Chalke Valley History Festival.

Under the sun of a midsummer day in southern England, Violet Moller sat down for a chat, and a song, with a fascinating young historian. Oskar Jensen took Violet back to the year 1815 and introduced her to several characters from his new book, Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth Century London.

Oskar Jensen completed a doctorate at Christ Church, Oxford before being awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. He is currently teaching at the University of East Anglia as a Senior Research Associate and is about to take up a NUAcT Fellowship at Newcastle University

Jensen has appeared on BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? and regularly contributes to Radio 3 and 4. He is also one of the BBC New Generation Thinkers 2022 and is a co-founder of the Romantic National Song Network.

Vagabonds is his first popular history book.

As ever, for more about this episode, head over to our website: www.tttpodcast.com

Scene One: Kennington in South London, as 22-year-old servant Mary Bailey, who has just been fired, hears an execution ballad about Eliza Fenning.

Scene Two: Torbay harbour, as a certain Corsican gentleman sets off total mania and hysteria in Britons across the land, inspiring a number of songs in the process.

Scene Three: Tower Hill, as Joseph Johnson tries to come to terms with alienation, disappointment, and disability - partly through appropriating songs of both hope and protest.

Memento: Napoleon’s tricorn

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Oskar Jensen

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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With thanks to everyone at the wonderful Chalke Valley History Festival.

This week we are travelling back to the ninth century to witness one of the major turning points in English history.

Winston Churchill regularly tops ‘the greatest Briton of all time’ charts, but his own vote for this accolade apparently went to the man we are going to discuss today.

Alfred 'the Great' is the only English monarch to enjoy such an admiring epithet. Æthelred, the later monarch, is remembered as ‘the Unready’ (although this meant poorly advised rather than unprepared), William I is either ‘the conqueror’ or ‘the bastard’ depending on your point of view – no other monarch’s reputation has survived with a rosy glow.

Our time travel today in the company of the world-renowned historian Michael Wood reveals exactly why Alfred is so well thought of. He takes us back to 878, a pivotal year in our history when, against all the odds, the Viking invaders were defeated, pushed out of Alfred’s kingdom of Wessex and the geopolitics were set for the following centuries.

Michael Wood’s In Search of the Dark Ages: a History of Anglo-Saxon England 40th anniversary edition, is newly published by BBC Books.

As ever, for more about this episode, head over to our website: www.tttpodcast.com

Scene One: March 23rd Easter at Athelney, after Alfred’s desperate guerrilla war in the Somerset marshes.

Scene Two: 9th May, the Battle of Edington, Alfred defeats the Viking forces against all odds.

Scene Three: 26th June Treaty at Wedmore which changed the course of the Viking wars and resulted in their leader, Guthrum converting to Christianity with Alfred as his godfather.

Memento: Alfred’s little commonplace book that he carried around with him, and perhaps had with him in the marshes.

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Michael Wood

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

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