Rearview Mirror Chronicles

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Some books refuse to be read.
They arrive without an author, without a key, sometimes without even a recognisable language, and then sit there, daring us to make sense of them.

In this episode, we step into the shadowy world of mysterious manuscripts, texts written in ciphers no one can crack, alphabets that belong to no known culture, and pages filled with symbols, diagrams, and illustrations that feel deliberate,...

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In her final years, Jane Austen was finally a published success, and quietly, unmistakably dying.

This episode follows Austen through the narrowing circle of her last months, her illness, her unfinished work, and the extraordinary mental clarity she retained as her body failed. From the calm precision of Persuasion to the sharp, unfinished promise of Sanditon, we see a writer still evolving, still experimenting, still ...

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History tells us that Ancient Egypt was a man’s world. Kings, warriors, gods with beards, power passed from father to son like a sacred inheritance. And then there’s Hatshepsut.

A woman who did not simply rule Egypt, she redefined what rule looked like.

She did not seize power in a bloody coup. She did not lead armies into battle. Instead, she did something far more dangerous. She rewrote the rules quietly, methodically...

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Rome’s legions have crushed rebellion, broken queens, and burned their way across Britain, but the conquest is not yet complete. In this final episode, we march north with Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the most brilliant general Britain would ever face. From relentless campaigns in the wilds of Caledonia to the shadowed slopes of Mons Graupius, this is war at the edge of the known world. 

Agricola wins glory, secures Britain...

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Rome thought Britain was broken.

In this third episode of the Roman invasion of Britain, we ride straight into fire, blood, and fury with Boudicca, the warrior queen who very nearly destroyed Roman rule on the island.

This is not the neat legend of school textbooks. This is the raw story of humiliation, revenge, and absolute rage. A widowed queen flogged in public. Her daughters violated. A people pushed beyond enduranc...

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This episode opens with the bizarre and unsettling prelude under the mad emperor Caligula, when invasion looms like a dark cloud, only to dissolve into mockery and chaos. But the threat doesn't vanish—it festers. Then comes Claudius, an unlikely emperor desperate for legitimacy, who does what Caligula could not: he unleashes his legions across the Channel in a gamble for glory and power.

We plunge into the clash o...

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In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we return to the moment Julius Caesar steps onto the shores of Britain in 55 BC, a bold gamble at the very edge of the Roman world. Britain is not yet a conquest but a rumour, a place of shifting tribes, chariots on the beaches, and uneasy diplomacy. Caesar’s landings are about prestige and intelligence as much as warfare, and they bind Britain, loosely but permanently, t...

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In Part One we watched Hermann Goring face the judges at Nuremberg, but Part Two is where the story really hits home. Because Nuremberg did not end in 1946, it launched a revolution, one that still shapes global justice today. It gave us the Genocide Convention, the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and ultimately the International Criminal Court, a court designed to hold even presidents and generals to account.

But...

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Christopher Marlowe was a genius, a heretic, and almost certainly a spy.
 In the shadowy world of Elizabethan London, where faith was treason and a careless word could mean death, Marlowe moved easily among informers, torturers, and men who vanished without trace. He wrote blazing poetry by candlelight and carried state secrets by day. He drank with killers. He argued with atheists. He lived on the edge of the gal...

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Step inside the blood soaked heart of ancient Rome, where fame was forged in steel and death was sold as entertainment. From slaves and prisoners to superstars of the ancient world, gladiators lived brutally short lives beneath the roaring crowds of the Colosseum. In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we uncover who these men really were, how many truly died, how the games were staged, and why an empire becam...

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Hermann Göring sat in the dock at Nuremberg draped in arrogance, still convinced that history might yet bend in his favour. Our latest episode peels back the veneer of the Reichsmarschall and exposes the unsettling truth that the man who helped forge a regime of industrial murder was not a monster from myth but an ordinary human being who revelled in power, vanity, and spectacle. We walk through the trial that should ...

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Ronald Reagan. The smiling cowboy president who told Americans he would make their country great again, long before that slogan returned to stalk the halls of power. But behind that easy grin was a far more complex figure, and in this episode I step into the darker rooms of his legacy.

Reagan sold a dream of American renewal, but for many it came wrapped in fear, austerity, and a widening gulf between those who had ple...

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Millions displaced. Millions dead. Borders redrawn in blood and dust.

Between 1937 and 1971, South Asia was shattered, not once, but five times. From Burma’s separation to the birth of Bangladesh, the British Raj fractured into new nations, each carrying the scars of migration, memory, and loss.

In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we trace the story of Shattered Lands: The Five Partitions and the Making of Mo...

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In 1720, London lost its mind.

Merchants, maids, dukes, and kings all chased the same glittering dream, a company that promised riches from the farthest seas. But what began as a daring new financial experiment became one of the greatest scandals in history.

The South Sea Bubble wasn’t just a crash, it was a mirror held up to human greed, belief, and folly. This is the story of a nation that invented the modern stock ma...

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In this final episode of the Nelson and Emma saga, the guns fall silent — but the story is far from over. As the smoke clears at Trafalgar, Britain gains its greatest hero, and Emma Hamilton loses everything she loves.

Keith Hockton takes you from the decks of HMS Victory to the quiet despair of Merton Place and the lonely exile of Calais, tracing the final years of the woman who once held the heart of an empire. It’s ...

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Last time, we told the story of Lady Emma Hamilton, the woman who loved Nelson. This time, we tell the story of the man who loved her back… and the battle that would make him immortal.

It’s September, 1805. England waits in fear of invasion. Across the Channel, Napoleon’s armies are massing, and one man stands between Britain and disaster.

Horatio Nelson.

He’s older now, exhausted, worn thin by years at sea. But he’s sti...

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You know, every so often, history gifts us a character so dazzling, so impossible, that they almost seem invented. Lady Emma Hamilton was one of them. Born into poverty, she reinvented herself again and again, actress, artist’s muse, courtesan, and eventually, the most famous mistress in England.

But Emma wasn’t just a pretty face. She was a survivor, a strategist, and perhaps one of the first true celebrities. She cap...

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Most people know Samuel Pepys as the man who gave us one of the greatest diaries in English history, a meticulous observer of the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Restoration court. A man of reason, order, and astonishing curiosity.

But turn the page a little further, and a different Pepys begins to emerge, darker, more conflicted, and all too human. A man who writes not just of kings and fires, but of lust, s...

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Art Deco, it’s the style that made the future look glamorous. Born from the ashes of the First World War, it captured an age hungry for beauty, speed, and progress. You can see it in the skyline of New York, the sweep of an ocean liner, the shimmer of a cocktail bar at midnight.

In this episode, we dive into the world of Art Deco, the movement that turned industry into elegance and gave modernity its first true sense o...