Content warning! I discuss a violent death in this Tale, and allude to another.

When John Whiteside Parsons – Jack to his friends – died suddenly in an explosion, one may have expected platitudes to the man. As a pioneering rocket scientist, the world -  and the future would owe much to his innovations. Instead, all anyone could talk about was the gossip about his lifestyle – and membership to a cult which worshipped a man known ...

This episode we attend a meeting at Greenwich palace, the date, some time in September 1593. The ‘Fairy Queen’ of England, Elizabeth I, awaits the arrival of one Grace O’Malley – the pirate Queen of Connaught. The two rulers had been at loggerheads for decades and in some ways they seemed wildly different characters – one a genteel Law-lord in charge of a nation.... the other a swashbuckling Warlord from beyond the Pail. Were they ...

 This week's Tale takes place in 63 BC. The setting, the kingdom of Pontus – a once powerful Black Sea empire – now a region of Eastern Turkey. Mithridates VI Eupator paces, knowing his time is up. Like Hannibal, he spent decades at war with Rome – and like Hannibal he would meet his end like a caged lion. A renowned freedom fighter, he was also a genocidal despot. A paranoid megalomaniac, raised to believe a series of comets a...

This week's Tale is a quick, bonus tale. I’ll be back with proper episodes 21st April. Content warning this episode is all about premature burial – and was first posted Halloween 2020.

You can read the episode here.

Yes, voice is scratchy... someone in my bubble keeps passing round a cold, I've been checked and it is a cold...   Also, yes I did ditch on the proposed episode – apologies for that. ‘Ungern's Army’ is r...

What do pirates, Lombards and 80s cultural phenomena have in common? Besides the time I bundled three short Tales from history together for a quick blog post (hey! I was exhausted that week) .... possibly nothing?

This week, three short Tales, which do examine elements of human behavior, set in very different settings.

This week’s episode was originally published October 20th 2020. You can read the episode here.

If anyone is ...

Today’s tale is set Hanover, a small Germanic Duchy whose royal family would go on to become kind of a big deal. The date, July 1st 1694. A handsome young man, aided only by moonlight, sails along the Leine river till he reaches the Leineschloss – the palatial riverside home of the duke and his family. He moors his boat, then cautiously enters the property. Little does he know at the time, but within hours he’d disappear without a ...

This episode is based on two blog posts, with a unified theme. Apologies for the croaky voice this week. Let's discuss some Messiahs and aliens.  One. The year is 1666, the setting Adrianople in the Ottoman Empire – modern day Turkey. A middle aged preacher named Sabbatai Zevi, held captive since his arrival there, mulls over a difficult choice. Tomorrow he will be brought before the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV and be told to mak...

Today’s tale is set in the former province of Gevaudan in South-Central France. The years between 1764 and 1767, following the bloody, and costly Seven Years War – a Proto World War if ever there was one – which had left deep scars in the psyche of many a European nation – France included- and left many a monarch broke in its’ wake.

An isolated, rugged, rural spot – The terrain rough and mountainous – it is far too rocky to grow ...

The Flannan Isles, sometimes referred to as the 7 Hunters, are a tiny group of islands on the outside of the Outer Hebrides – a string of islands in the North of Scotland. Uninhabited, hilly and rocky, covered only by grass … people generally had little to do with these islands. For centuries Shepherds would use the islands to store sheep away from poachers. They themselves never stayed overnight – folklore warned of malevolent spi...

One day, a young prince named Tipu went out hunting in the jungle with a friend – sometimes portrayed as a French mercenary in the service of the prince’s father – the fearsome Hyder Ali. While tracking a local deer or antelope the two men were surprised by a giant tiger leaping out at them from the undergrowth.

This fortnight’s tale focuses on the Mysore Kingdom’s ruler Tipu Sultan, and his macabre taste in musical instruments.

Today’s tale is set in the Asiatic town of Libyssa, in Bithynia – on the periphery of what is now Turkey. The date, some time around 182 BCE. Hannibal Barca, perhaps one of the all time great generals in world history is pacing the room like a caged Barbary Lion. His life, from the age of nine had lead to this point – ever since his father made him take an oath he would “Never be a friend of Rome.”  How did it all come to this for ...

Martial Bourdin

At 4:45pm precisely, GMT, on 15th February 1894 the grounds of Greenwich Park, London – home of the Royal Observatory, and a clock we’ll discuss later – are shaken by a resounding boom. Staff at the observatory recalled a “sharp and clear detonation, followed by a noise like a shell going through the air”. They peered out the windows in trepidation attempting to work out what just happened. A park warden and a grou...