The Rest Is History

The Rest Is History

The world’s most popular history podcast, with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.therestishistory.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Here are some of our favourite episodes to get you started: WATERGATE/NIXON apple.co/3JrVl5h ALEXANDER THE GREAT apple.co/3Q4FaNk HARDCORE HISTORY'S DAN CARLIN apple.co/3vqkGa3 PUTIN & RUSSIA apple.co/3zMtLfX

Episodes

October 30, 2024 64 mins
The peaceful figurehead of the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s, Dr Martin Luther King had inspired hundreds of thousands to demand equal rights for African Americans. But by 1968, the once uniting leader seemed to be losing popularity, both amongst activists and in the press. As he grappled with being hunted and threatened by the FBI, he was also contending with a new generation of more militant activists who felt that his...
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"Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.” On the night of Sunday, 31st of March 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, after announcing an end to the bombing of North Vietnam, stunned the world by revealing he would not seek the democratic nomination for that year’s presidential election. The seemingly never-ending Vietnam War had already made LBJ hugely unpopular with his progressive base. But now, facin...
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“Let us march! Let us march! May impure blood water our fields!” Written after the declaration of war against Austria in 1792, “La Marseillaise” was born in the provinces of France, away from the Parisian metropole, and immediately became popular as a unifying rallying cry against foreign invaders, and the enemies of the Revolution. It was the “fédérés” from Marseille, instrumental in the storming of the Tuileries Palace, who had f...
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The war between revolutionary France and the allied powers of Prussia and Austria has reached fever pitch, and in early August 1792, the latter party threaten a terrible vengeance on Paris should harm be done to the French royal family. But far from calming tensions, this threat puts the King, Marie Antoinette and their children in terrible danger. They’ve been kept in the Tuileries Palace since their failed escape, and on the 10th...
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During the "Ancien Regime", royal executioners held an unholy status, and would strike up fear in the crowds as they walked the streets of Paris. But with the Revolution, the role of executioners in society was reformed, and whilst they lost some of their privileges, they were ushered into to a new, universalist France. And as the Revolution brought forward more and more enemies of the state, executioners were faced with more victi...
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“You have shaken off the yoke of your despots, but surely this was not to bend the knee before a foreign tyrant…” It’s January 1792, and one of the largest factions in revolutionary France, the Gironde, is calling for war against Austria. The French people’s hatred of Marie Antoinette has always fuelled suspicion of the Austrians, and at the same time, there has been constant, treacherous correspondence between the French royal fam...
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Welcome to Season 2 of The French Revolution! Revolutionary fervour threatens to engulf the streets of Paris, as demonstrators have gathered on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the removal of the King. Two days prior, the National Assembly had decreed that Louis XVI would remain King under a constitutional monarchy, even after his failed escape to Varennes, an inexcusable betrayal of the French people. The crowd has ...
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In the aftermath of Boudicca’s uprising, the Romans felt they could not withdraw from the British Isles. They sent their most competent fighters and leaders to suppress the indigenous Britons in the south. As the Druids of Wales were defeated, and the resistant Caledonians were massacred, the process of Romanisation in Britain began. London became the urbanised imperial capital, and the Roman love of hot springs saw the development...
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“Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon by a woman...” Few figures have statues dedicated to them in the towns they incinerated. But Boudicca was no ordinary figure. With a name that means “she who brings victory”, Boudicca was Rome’s supervillain. She was a freedom fighter who stood up to the greatest imperial pow...
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Viewed as an idiot by those around him, Claudius felt the need to prove himself. In the century since Caesar had invaded Britain, the mythology surrounding the island had taken hold in Roman imaginations. Stories of sea monsters, terrifying Druids, and human sacrifice by barbarians, instilled fear into the imperial legions. But Claudius was determined, and launched a two-pronged attack on the southeastern coast to immortalise his n...
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Julius Caesar saw the Britons as brutal savages. Yet the Romans romanticised their lack of civilisation, deeming them as untainted by Mediterranean luxury. In 55 BC, after sending scouts along the Kentish coast, Caesar launched an invasion of the island as part of his Gallic Wars campaign. After a disastrous first attempt marred by storms, the “menacing horde of barbarians” of the English Home Counties asked Caesar for help and he ...
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After lying in state in an open casket, Evita’s corpse is taken down to a secret laboratory in the basement. And as the Argentinian Victor Frankenstein, Dr Ara, busily embalms her body, her ghost continues to haunt the nation. Sightings of her face are reported in obscure places all over the country. With Evita gone, Colonel Perón embarks upon an affair with a much younger girl and has a creepily paternal romantic relationship wit...
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September 23, 2024 47 mins
The workaholic mother of a nation, Evita’s health deteriorates and she faints at a public event. A self-proclaimed martyr, she seems to be willing to die for Perón and Perónism, and her supporters see her passion. As she continues her public work, her supporters call for her to run as Vice President in the upcoming election - a position of power no woman on Earth has yet held. Evita’s supporters seem to outnumber Colonel Perón’s, w...
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“There is only one man who can lead any worker’s regime.” Together, Eva and Colonel Perón built a political movement powered by operatic rhetoric. Perónism promised genuine benefits for the working class, denouncing violence and emphasising ritual and spectacle. Eva embodied the working-class migrant to Buenos Aires that Perón sought to attract, and she increasingly entered the role of his partner both at home and in government. ...
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An admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, Colonel Perón rose through the ranks during the 1943 military coup in Argentina. Following a disastrous earthquake in 1944, Perón crossed paths with Eva at a fundraising event. Now a successful radio actress, Eva was 20 years his junior but became completely infatuated with him and swiftly removed her romantic rivals. And despite the relationship being unpopular amongst his army comrades, the two...
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September 15, 2024 43 mins
“Don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is I never left you.” Few political figures have been both hailed as a saint and immortalised through an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The mythology of Evita Perón continues to permeate through Argentinian society, but what’s the real history of her life? Eva and her siblings were born out of wedlock and subsequently shunned by the community in her rural village. Losing her father in a car c...
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It’s August 1944: the Liberation of Paris is underway, and France appears to slowly be extricating herself from Nazi control. But, on the French western shores, in Saint-Malo, the deafening sounds of artillery fire continue to punctuate daily life, with the Germans making a last-ditch attempt to hold the coastal town. And when the U.S. Army arrive to lay siege to the German positions, the last person expected to be among the Allied...
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“I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman, and beards are foreign and breed vermin. Also depend upon it, they will lead to filthy habits.” Europe has had a love-hate relationship with facial hair since the Late Middle Ages. In the eleventh century, beards were celebrated as an expression of fertility caused by men’s “hot breath”. Yet by the turn of the twentieth century, a clean shaven man represented the youth and vigour c...
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What did Marcus Aurelius, Jesus, and Ragnar Lothbrok all have in common? Apart from their notorious and symbolic deaths, all three men boasted luscious beards. Throughout history, beards have posed quite the conundrum for all those able to grow them. While some Roman emperors chose to outlaw beards in retaliation to the Greek penchant for hipster stubble, others chose to grow them long and strong to demonstrate their machismo and s...
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St Crispin’s day, 1415: Henry V stands victorious, after a tremendous defeat of the French forces at the Battle of Agincourt. He is just about to make a historic speech which will be retold by Shakespeare nearly two centuries later. There are mounds of bodies, too many dead for the chroniclers to count. Those who escaped the bloodshed have been taken prisoner back to England, including the young Duke of Orleans, on the day before h...
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