After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Dan Snow joins After Dark to reveal the brutal reality of life of sailors during the golden age of sail. From the cat o' nine tails, to the pressgang, from scurvy to mutineers. How did people survive the most extreme conditions imaginable?

Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick and Mariana Des Forges. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhit

The end of Elizabeth I's life was shrouded in darkness and plots as powerful figures circled her throne. How did Elizabeth hold off contenders reaching for the crown? And did James VI & I steal it in the end?

Our guest today is Dr Tracy Borman whose new book The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty is out now.

Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

...

We often think of Egyptian Pharaohs as a glamorous god-king of Ancient times, yet the truth of these people is a lot, lot darker.

Who was the first Pharaoh? What shocking, violent stories surround some of these figures? How did their rule of Ancient Egypt come to an end?

Joining Anthony and Maddy today is the always-fantastic Campbell Price, Egyptologist at University of Liverpool, and curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manche...

There are a disturbingly high number of contenders for the title of Rome's Darkest Emperor - so as you can imagine, things get extremely disturbing in this episode.

Joining Anthony and Maddy to introduce you to a couple of them, is Rome-based historian and tour guide, Alexander Meddings.

Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.yo...

Join Anthony and Maddy as they spend a day - or should that be night? - in the life of a 19th century body snatcher.

Did she do it? Did serving girl Eliza Fenning poison the dumplings she served the Turner family? This is a true crime case from 1813 that brings together class tensions, sexism, the law. have a go hero forensics! It's easy to see why this trial gripped the nation. Maddy tells Anthony the story of Eliza Fenning and the poisoned dumplings.

The Ancient Egyptians had a very different idea about death than most people do today.

On June 16, 1836, in New York City, Mary Jones stood in a courtroom that was a cauldron of hatred. Mary was African American and one of the first known transgender women in US history. Anthony Delaney tells Maddy Pelling the final story from his new book out now: Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers (published as Queer Enlightenments in the US).

Hear a chapter of Anthony's new book, Queer Georgians: A hidden history of lovers, lawbreakers and homemakers. It's out now!

In today's episode, we're taking you inside the towering walls of Ancient Rome's Colosseum to find out the dark reality of what happened there.

What price might a man pay for sex in the 18th century? Well, if it was with another man, he might pay with his life.

Jack the Ripper as we think of him, is an invention of the Victorian media. They took the complete absence of hard facts about the killer, and populated it with the period's anxieties, fantasies and fears.

This episode contains descriptions of execution and torture.

Today we step into the shadowy world of W.T. Stead—a Victorian journalist whose life was as controversial as it was groundbreaking. 

This 1897 New York murder case that has it all - a villain, an incredibly useless police force, and a duck who saves the day. The incredible Dr Cat Byers (@heymorguegirl) joins Maddy and Anthony to tell this story.

Through the industrial fog of Victorian London, in one of the city's most notorious slums, a murder took place that shocked a nation.

It was a murder mystery that gripped 19th century France and changed crime investigation forever.

What happens when you're left on a desert island with a psychopath? This is a story so horrendous it would be hard to believe were it not for the skeletons left behind. Maddy Pelling takes Anthony Delaney through the shipwreck of the Batavia.

For Albert Pierrepoint, execution was a family affair. His father and uncle were hangmen and from the 1940s until the late 1950s Albert was Britain's "Number One" executioner. Which meant he was the one sent to hang the Nazis who ran the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of the war.