Tales of History and Imagination

This week, on Tales we return to Thebes one last time to discuss what happens when others even the field, the life and death or our two heroes, a young man named Philip - and a giant lion..  

This is part three of a three parter. 

Content Warnings: Battlefield injury and death, some depictions towards the end are quite graphic. Political violence, slavery and hostage taking. Assassination. Suicide-adjacent fatalism. Mass burial. Di...

This week, on Tales we return to Thebes, to see how their Sacred Band is working out for them. We learn a little bit about Spartan King Agesilaus’ lost love, and we meet a warlord named Jason.  

This is part two of a three parter.  Content warnings: historical ableism, homophobic attitudes, warfare, assassination, battlefield death, executions and forced displacement.   

Sources Include:

James Romm’s ‘The Sacred Band’ Plutarch’s...

This week, on Tales we journey to ancient Thebes, a Greek City state suddenly - unexpectedly - under the control of their foes, Sparta. When you have lost your freedom to a despot, and are fighting for your very survival, what can you turn to? First you have your foundational myths, and second - if you are Thebes - you have some of the toughest gay men ever to exist. 

This week, in part one of a three parter, we discuss the formati...

This week, on a much waylaid episode of Tales we return to the Tichbornes,’ as Tom Castro makes his play for the land, money and titles. Does it turn out he was, in fact Roger Charles Tichborne - long thought lost at sea - or was he some larrikin on the lookout for an easy life? 

This is part two of a two parter. Apologies all, I lost a good month and a half to a bout of pneumonia just after Christmas.  

Content warnings: I said n...

This week on Tales I am still, technically, on holiday - and was hoping to re-release one of five old episodes still left from the first season. This plan has been derailed somewhat. My voice is still recovering from my bout of pneumonia; and I’ve written at least a million words since I did those episodes. I opened those old scripts and realised to be content with them I’d need to completely re-do those episodes… 

Not so much out ...

This week on Tales we enter the vaults to revisit - and re-record - one of the five early episodes still on here that was recorded on my cheap, starter microphone. (We’ll knock the other four off next year in mid-season breaks.) 

With Christmas just around the corner this seems as good a time as any to follow a young Charles Dickens around Canongate Graveyard in Edinburgh Scotland looking for ghosts… And we meet the man who - most ...

Quick note all: This episode is approx 29 minutes long… I’ve accidentally left some background music or something muted at the end + will delete that and re-upload once home again… Sorry all, there is no secret Easter egg at the end of this episode, it’s ok to hit stop when the end credits roll…  This week On Tales we return to the Australian outback - this is the last time we visit my neighbours to the west of Aotearoa/New Zealan...

This week On Tales we return to the Arctic, the year 1871. Charles Francis Hall has passed on, mysteriously, after drinking a suspiciously sweet, yet metallic coffee. What will happen to the expedition as power passes to the hard-drinking Sidney Buddington? Today we’ll find out. 

This is part two of a two parter. Apologies for the delay in getting this one out there - it took some of my neighbours a week to run out of fireworks bou...

This week On Tales we take a slight detour from the Polaris Expedition: I think where that Tale goes IS shocking, but not terribly in a Halloween horror kind of way… So this week we’re taking a ride to the town of Halifax, England to meet The Halifax Gibbet - someone’s wild solution to petty thievery.  

We’ll return to The Polaris in a fortnight. 

Content warnings: Beheadings. Sources Include: Daniel Defoe’s A Tour Through the Wh...

This week On Tales we travel back to 1871, to take a journey to the top of the world. Our intrepid hero, Charles Francis Hall has dreams of becoming the first man to stand on the North Pole - but dreams can sometimes go horribly awry. Just what happened to the Polaris Expedition? 

This is part one of a two parter (part two will follow after we take a brief intermission for a Halloween special episode.) 

Content warnings: Death. Gun...

Last week when I covered the Tale of Spring Heeled Jack, I mentioned a couple of people in passing without explanation… Apologies all, I’ll be coming back to a few of those people sometime in the near future… But with regards the Hammersmith Ghost, there is a Patreon minisode from back in 2022. I re-recorded the episode over the weekend. 

The following minisode comes to you by way of the generosity of my backers on Patreon.       

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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. 

Support Tales on Patreon for $2 US a month and get acce...

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...

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 ...