History Cafe

True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

#14 'Eyeball to eyeball' - Ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis

September 24, 2025 • 31 mins

22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine’ nothing but ‘grand theatrics.’ Not a single Soviet ship is stopped by the US Navy. What was going on? (R)

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#13 'Russian roulette' - Ep 4 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

September 17, 2025 • 24 mins

15 October 1962: Soviet nuclear missile sites are discovered. It’s only three weeks before the mid-term elections. Kennedy decides that to negotiate publicly with Khrushchev would be a disaster at the polls; as would ignoring them which is what his allies advise him to do. So, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the President chooses ‘to play Russian Roulette with nuclear missiles.’ (R)

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#12 'The only way to save Cuba' - Ep 3 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

September 10, 2025 • 22 mins

The Cuban Missile Crisis begins not because Castro is a dangerous communist but because he is NOT. Khrushchev tells his ruling council: ‘The only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there’ - not only to prevent an American invasion, but also to keep Fidel Castro sweet. (R)

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#11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

September 3, 2025 • 28 mins

1959: The first country the new revolutionary president of Cuba visits is the United States of America. And he’s a big hit. The students at Princeton carry him on their shoulders. Castro wants a trade deal with the American government. So why does Kennedy fight the presidential election of 1960 on getting tougher than the Republicans with Cuba? (R)

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#10 'These missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

August 27, 2025 • 31 mins

We have the memo to President Kennedy dated Day 2 of the crisis with his own security chiefs clarifying that the Soviet missiles on Cuba made ‘no significant difference.’ So why does October 1962 develop into the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war? (R)

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#112 Loss, love and the struggle to stay alive in 1912

August 20, 2025 • 26 mins

Jon explains his decision to write an historical novel, A Spring Marrying. He discovered the extraordinary history of the sail trawlers working off the English coast before 1939 whilst making a film for C4. It was the men who crewed them that fascinated him the most. Down in Brixham, Devon, they had four crew – skipper, mate, deckhand, and a cookie who was often only 12 or so. Theirs was an unremitting routine. Danger and death wer...

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#31 'Remember, remember, the fifth of November' - Ep 8 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

August 13, 2025 • 22 mins

At the time, London gossip accused the king’s chief minister Robert Cecil of fabricating the entire plot to blow up everyone who mattered and leave the country ungovernable. When Cecil died seven years later, he was remembered as lying and self-serving. ‘The King’s misuser, the Parliament’s abuser, Hath left his plotting… is now a rotting.’ On the first anniversary, 5 November 1606, people were forced to celebrate by going to churc...

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#30 'A tall and desperate fellow' - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

August 6, 2025 • 33 mins

The night before - 4 November 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic with experience as a soldier fighting for the Spanish, is found with matches and fuse powder in a storeroom under the House of Lords. He’s ‘booted and spurred’, ready for a quick get-away. Or maybe not. The government account keeps changing. (R)

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#29 The King's Fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

July 29, 2025 • 32 mins

As his father had done, Cecil built his entrapments around a germ of genuine plotting. We uncover a small Catholic rebellion in Warwickshire in response to the king’s tougher anti-Catholic laws. And we examine Cecil’s imaginative embellishment: a mystery letter delivered to a compromised Catholic peer on 26 October warning of ‘a terrible blow this Parliament.’ It was handed to the king to decipher. If anything was designed to terri...

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#28 'A formidable network of secret agents' - Ep 5 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

July 23, 2025 • 31 mins

We dig deeper into the animosity between the king and Cecil whom he bullied and called names. And we see the Gunpowder plot in the context of the previous plots hatched by the Cecils against their enemies. All of which historians now agree were largely fabrications. Father and son had spies everywhere and openly boasted of their policy of entrapment. (R)

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#27 'Hellish miners' - Ep 4 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

July 16, 2025 • 33 mins

To avoid any possible blame for the plot falling on himself or the king, Cecil procures confessions saying the seven gentlemen plotters began excavating a tunnel under the House of Lords long before the government stepped up its anti-Catholic legislation. They apparently lived on site, in an upstairs room, seven to a bed. They dug unnoticed, only in the day (or was it only in the night?) for almost a year, before spying a handy cel...

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#26 Why blow up Parliament anyway? - Ep 3 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

July 9, 2025 • 30 mins

The parliament of 1604 refuses to grant the king money. They’re still paying for the effects of the last plague. But this is Cecil’s job. What to do? On 5 November 1605 the assembled MPs and peers are calmly informed that there has been a devilish Catholic plot to blow the lot of them up. A plot that their king and Cecil have brilliantly foiled. Unsurprisingly, this time, they vote the king the money he so badly needs. Job done. (R...

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#25 'Here lieth the Toad' - Ep 2 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

July 2, 2025 • 34 mins

We take a look at James I’s shadowy chief minister Robert Cecil who manages to implicate most of his Catholic enemies in the plot. Cecil was so desperate to improve King James’s dire view of him (his father had caused the execution James’ mother, Mary Queen of Scots) he would stoop to anything. (R)

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#24 'There is no state trial so totally devoid of reality' - Ep 1 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

June 25, 2025 • 32 mins

We look at the story the government published as The King’s Book, more than 500 witness statements and other contemporary sources and conclude, like the Victorian antiquarian Jardine who wrote up the trial from the State Papers, there is no reliable corroborating evidence for the gunpowder story we’ve been told. (R)

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#67 The King, the lies and the whitewash - Ep 7 Nightmare in the trenches 1914-16

June 18, 2025 • 41 mins

On 14 July 1916 senior officers finally decided to ignore Haig. At the Battle of Bazentin Ridge they put to use everything that was good practice and broke in to the German lines. But because junior officers at the front were not permitted to take a decision, and their commanders in their chateaux were hopelessly out of touch, it was never converted into a ‘break through.’ Another 9,000 lives lost for very little gain.

After the di...

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#66 The British who cheated on the Somme - Ep 6 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

June 11, 2025 • 41 mins

At the southern end of the line, next to the French, British units took all their objectives on the first day of the battle. They succeeded mainly because their maverick commanders had learnt from the French how to bombard the Germans accurately, putting them out of action long enough for the infantry to mop up. They’d also been assisted by the French big guns. By lunchtime some of these units were being served a hot meal in a newl...

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#65 Haig's war crime on the Somme - Ep 5 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

June 4, 2025 • 43 mins

The French decided they only had enough artillery to attack on a 9-mile front if they were to neutralise the German guns so that their infantry were not needlessly slaughtered. Haig had fewer guns – enough for perhaps 4 miles of front – but he chose to attack across 16 miles. 57,000 British soldiers died on the very first day, 1 July 1916, and no ground was gained. The French achieved all their objectives and lost 1,500 men. This i...

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#64 They had the wrong guns - Ep 4 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

May 28, 2025 • 40 mins

On the eve of the Somme the British had far too few artillery guns, and most of the ones they had were the wrong sort. They needed five times as many heavy guns before they could launch an attack. The few big guns they did have were grossly inaccurate, sometimes missing a target by one mile. They were firing shells that were not fitted with delayed-action fuses which meant the German machine-gunners were safe in their deep undergro...

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#63 The generals never studied how to attack trenches - Ep 3 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

May 21, 2025 • 40 mins

The British Army wanted to throw men against machines. Its generals had not thought about how to cross 100-200 yards of open space with wire entanglements. They had been offered plenty of designs for armoured tractors with caterpillar tracks but had ignored them. It was Churchill, head of the Royal Navy, who eventually funded the development of the first ‘tank’. But they arrived late at the Somme and were so badly deployed they cou...

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#62 They refused to take orders - Ep 2 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914:16

May 14, 2025 • 37 mins

Unlike the Royal Navy, the British Army proved itself over the course of decades incapable of taking new ideas on board: trench warfare, the machine gun and the tank to name a few. And at the heart of the problem was that too many men in the army refused to take orders. Not the rank and file, you understand, who were executed for any refusal to march into a hail of bullets. But the officers. The reason was that they regarded themse...

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History Cafe

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#14 'Eyeball to eyeball' - Ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}#13 'Russian roulette' - Ep 4 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

#12 'The only way to save Cuba' - Ep 3 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

#11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

#10 'These missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

#112 Loss, love and the struggle to stay alive in 1912

#31 'Remember, remember, the fifth of November' - Ep 8 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#30 'A tall and desperate fellow' - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#29 The King's Fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#28 'A formidable network of secret agents' - Ep 5 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#27 'Hellish miners' - Ep 4 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#26 Why blow up Parliament anyway? - Ep 3 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#25 'Here lieth the Toad' - Ep 2 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#24 'There is no state trial so totally devoid of reality' - Ep 1 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

#67 The King, the lies and the whitewash - Ep 7 Nightmare in the trenches 1914-16

#66 The British who cheated on the Somme - Ep 6 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

#65 Haig's war crime on the Somme - Ep 5 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

#64 They had the wrong guns - Ep 4 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

#63 The generals never studied how to attack trenches - Ep 3 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16

#62 They refused to take orders - Ep 2 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914:16

Popular Podcasts

#14 'Eyeball to eyeball' - Ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis

#13 'Russian roulette' - Ep 4 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?