Tales of History and Imagination

This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to an episode from the first season to give it a new coat of (red) paint… speaking of, we’re going back to London in 1837 to discuss newspapers, the death of ‘Silly Billy,’ ‘painting the town red’ and a mysterious sex pest whose legend took on a life of it’s own throughout the remainder of the century…   

Content warnings: This week we discuss a sexual abuser.   

Sources Inclu...

This week on Tales of History and Imagination we discuss a murdered nanny, the murderer… his awful ancestors, and said murderer’s mysterious disappearance. 

Trigger warnings: murder.   

Sources Include:

A Different Class of Murder by Laura Thompson And several dozen news articles, including this piece from Lynn Barber interviewing John Aspinall This one from Steven Morris on the many theories on Lord Lucan’s disappearance This one ...

This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return one last time to the wreck of the Batavia. This is where things, finally, go all ‘Lord of the Flies’ on Batavia’s Graveyard. 

This is part four of a four parter - thanks for hanging in there with me all… I promise a load of one parters in the back half of the year.

Trigger warnings: murder, rape, descriptions of death by dehydration, a pitched battle and a handful of executio...

This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to the wreck of the Batavia. In part two we follow the adventures of the 48 in the longboat as they make their way along Australia’s Western coast; learn a little more about Francisco Pelsaert, and speak of the first of the murders on Batavia’s Graveyard. 

This is part three of a four parter.

Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, accidental poisoning.   

Sources Include: Ba...

This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to the wreck of the Batavia. In part two we discuss heresy, and the harrowing life of under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz. 

This is part two of a four parter.

Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, child mortality, religious extremism.   

Sources Include: Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons. 

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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to Australia for a real life soap opera that was considerably more bloody than Neighbours or Home and Away. First we need to take a cruise on a Dutch VOC flagship called The Batavia, the year 1629. 

In part one of a four parter, we discuss the voyage; how and why folk took such risks to travel to the end of the earth like this - and the voyage itself, right up until the ship w...

Hey all the next episode is likely to be delayed by a week or so… as you can hear I’m getting over a bit of a nasty cold/ case of flu - and my voice is still pretty ragged..  But in the meantime, here’s a little something I’ve had lying around collecting dust for, I guess years now?? I have actually forgotten what I was writing it for, but can think of a few places I can take this to…. What do you reckon, should I write an episod...

This week we travel to Australia for a game of Marn Grook, to discuss origin stories; perhaps the archetypal troubled sportsman - and horrific massacres.    

Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, colonialism, and to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people listening to this episode - I discuss some of your origin legends as best I can, and play a brief excerpt of a speech from an Aboriginal elder. 

Sources Include:

Australia’s ...

The American actress Ilda Orme knew a thing or two about being cancelled, a long, long time before social media put the cancel button in the hands of the public at large. Her cancellers, she suspected were two hateful former in-laws and a theatre manager in their pocket. 

Her cancellation was nearly literal - culminating in an assassination attempt.  

What does one do when cancelled? If you’re Ilda Orme, you seek revenge in the mo...

On, or around 11th June 323 BC Alexander the Great died in Babylon. While there are mysteries surrounding his passing - did an Indian holy man prophesy his passing a year prior while self immolating in Alexander’s presence? Was he poisoned? Did somebody entomb him while still alive? - He is just a cameo in this Tale. 

This week we travel to Athens - then chafing under the Macedonian yoke - as they make a bid for freedom. 

Trigger w...

On May 18th 1926 the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson took a trip to Santa Monica Beach, California to work, seek inspiration and have a little fun in the sun. However, the day would end in tragedy when Aimee disappeared without a trace. 

Was her disappearance all it appeared?

Sources Include: The Vanishing Evangelist by Lately Thomas

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Hi all, welcome back (again) - sorry it’s a week later than planned… a few ongoing voice issues from the cold. This week we conclude the tale of Sidney Reilly and the ‘Red Terror.’ 

Sources Include:

R.H. Bruce-Lockhart ‘Memoirs of a British Agent’ Sidney Reilly + Pepita Bobadilla ‘ Adventures of a British Master Spy’ James Palmer ‘The Bloody White Baron’

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Hi all, welcome back - sorry it’s a week later than planned… I had a nasty cold. This week we’re in Russia just after the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks have taken over, plunging the nation even further into disarray. They’re determined to exit the First World War. 

Britain, knowing this would be disastrous for their war with Germany need a hero to go in there and upset the apple cart - the kind of talented, yet completely amor...

Hi all, Happy Holidays! This year I’ve got a ghost story for you all. Today we travel to Greenbrier County, West Virginia in 1897. 

Sources Include:

Again this week I’ve gone from a handful of online articles, a few online genealogy pages - and a couple of podcast episodes. 

Including…

‘How The ‘Greenbrier Ghost’ Helped Convict a West Virginia Murderer in 1897’ by Joey Rather.  This website on ghosts in West Virginia. ‘Can We ‘See’...

This week we travel to Tana Island, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) in the midst of World War Two. God has returned - and not a moment too soon. Having abandoned them decades earlier, just as bad men with awful intentions arrived to steal their land - and send their people off to far away locales to be worked to death - he was back, as an American soldier named John Frum.  

Sources Include:

This week a lot of articles (which I had...

This week, how do I sum this up? I was freewheeling a little today, but have I got a tale of resistance, and a weird little man for you all. Anthony Comstock was a weird, joyless guy - and his ‘Comstockery’ ruined many ordinary lives - but hell hath no fury like Margaret Sanger and Katharine Dexter McCormick - our heroines this week. 

Sources Include:

I was free associating things I knew this week, rather than going off a script -...

Hi there all, just dropping a quick note, before I return to the writing desk… USA I’m aghast… and worried, and saddened by recent turns of events.  And tonight I just wanted to send you all my love (well, obviously not all of you… some of you voted for a fascist) and just explain why I’m pulling an upcoming episode… hit play, spoken me explains it all better…  No ‘Sources Include’ tonight - unless you’re in fight back mode - in ...

This week, it’s Halloween! So, naturally I’ve got a tale of… well, historic hotel rooms in Kansas City, Missouri… And a notorious murder carried out in Room 1046 of the Hotel President.. 

Sources Include:

This fantastic article by John Horner, which appears the font of a dozen or so other articles I read through. This post by the ‘Murder She Told’ podcast This article on Tom Pendegast by K.C. Yesterday

And a handful of things fou...

This week we return to Cuba to conclude our miniseries on the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week we discuss arctic explorers, nuclear test sites, saboteurs, spy planes gone awry, submarines and why I think having such power out there in an age where a ‘mad king’ could come to power is still very disconcerting.  

Sources Include: One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

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