Podcasts by Historical Fiction

Introducing: On Jimmy's Farm from 2022-02-01T09:05

Join celebrity farmer, ecologist and conservationist, Jimmy Doherty, on his farm as he talks to eco-experts and well-known faces about trying to live a greener life.

From bug burgers a...

A Serial Killer Rocks Ancient Rome: The Grove of Caesars from 2020-09-30T16:00

In 1st century Rome, public gardens created by Julius Caesar have become dangerous haunts, especially for women alone. When her husband has to leave the city, Flavia Albia is left to supervise...

Degas in New Orleans: Estelle from 2020-09-28T16:00

When the painter Edgar Degas visits his French-Creole relatives in New Orleans in the 1870s, his cousin and sister-in-law Estelle encourages him to make portraits of their family members. One ...

Constantine’s Conquest of Rome: The Conqueror from 2020-09-23T16:00

In the year AD312 Rome is teetering on the brink of war and Constantine's army is on the move. On the Rhine frontier, a Germanic pagan joins the Roman army as a spy, while in Rome itself the pio...

The Rise of Richard the Lionheart from 2020-09-21T16:00

In 1179, rebellion was brewing against King Henry II. The King’s son Richard earns his name ‘Lionheart’, crushing rebels in Aquitaine but treachery and betrayal lurk around every corner. In his new...

Nazi Collaborator or Victim: Finding Klara from 2020-09-16T16:00

In the aftermath of World War Two, Clara – once a Nazi icon and heiress to the Falkenberg Iron Works – finds herself on the run, accused of complicity in her father’s war crimes. When she returns t...

Philopoemen: The Last Greek from 2020-09-14T16:00

In 209 BC, as the most powerful empires in the world brawled over the spoils of a fading Greece, Philopoemen had a vision to stop the anarchy and endless wars. To preserve the homeland he loved, he...

A Young Girl in Restoration London: The Strange Adventures of H from 2020-09-09T16:00

In 1660, with Charles II restored as King after Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, an orphaned girl named H arrives in London, for a happier life with her Aunt. But the Plague and the Great Fire ...

Evacuating Museums in World War II: The Animals at Lockwood Manor from 2020-09-07T16:00

In August 1939, Hetty Cartwright is tasked with taking a natural history museum’s collection of stuffed animals out of London, to protect it from impending air raids. When some of the animals ...

A Jewish assassin, a boxer and Kristallnacht: Champion from 2020-09-02T16:00

On 7 November 1938, 17-year old Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan shot a Nazi official dead at the German embassy in Paris. The repercussions triggered a calamity which has been called the opening...

A Viking Dystopia: Loki’s Wager from 2020-08-31T16:00

In an alternative version of reality, Britain’s culture and traditions are rooted in the legacy of Norse pagans, the Royal Family are of Scandinavian descent, and Norwegians lead the crusades. ...

Marketing Hitler: Propaganda, Power and Post-truth from 2020-08-26T16:00

Adolf Hitler understood that persuasion was everything and was the prime mover in the propaganda regime of the Third Reich. For Hitler, everything was a propaganda medium – from typography to ...

Forgotten Novels of World War II from 2020-08-24T16:12:21

In 2019 four novels that had long been out of print were re-published in the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics series. It aims to give forgotten novels set in the Second World War a new lea...

Scandal, Intrigue and the Orange Revolution: Independence Square from 2020-08-19T16:00

Once a senior British diplomat in Kiev, Simon Davey lost everything after a lurid scandal. Back in London, still struggling with the aftermath of his disgrace, he is travelling on the Tube when he ...

The Deadly Dad’s Army: In Spite of All Terror from 2020-08-17T16:00

In September 1940, as Britain faced an imminent Nazi invasion, handpicked groups of ordinary men – known as scallywags – were trained in top secret to act as saboteurs and assassins. In a new serie...

Napoleon: Propaganda and The Theatre from 2020-08-12T16:00

Few historical figures have made as much of an impact on the arts and popular culture as Napoleon Bonaparte, portrayed at times as a heroic visionary, and at others as comically short and bossy. Bu...

Love and Loss in World War II: The Lost Lights of St Kilda from 2020-08-10T14:15:27

In 1940, the thoughts of a captured prisoner of war return to the isolated Scottish island of St Kilda – where he once took a summer job – and to the island woman he can’t forge...

Queen Anne’s Favourite: The Real Sarah Churchill from 2020-08-05T16:00

Sarah Churchill – Duchess of Marlborough – was the politically influential intimate and then, blackmailer of Queen Anne. Sarah Churchill was vividly brought to life in the film The Favourite, in wh...

Radar and The Winning of WWII: Under a Wartime Sky from 2020-08-03T16:00

As the threat of war with Germany hung over Britain, Winston Churchill gathered the country’s brightest minds at a remote gothic mansion in Suffolk to work together on an invention that could help ...

Marie Curie on Film from 2020-07-29T16:00

The new film Radioactive charts the life and career of double Nobel Prize-winning physicist/chemist Marie Curie, woven together with the scientific developments and disasters that emerged from her ...

The Lost Words of Lady Jane Grey from 2020-07-27T16:00

In July 1553, 16-year-old Lady Jane Grey became de facto Queen of England and Ireland for just nine days. In a new novel Before the Reign Falls, a group of friends renovating...

The Year Without Summer: 1816 - One Event, Six Lives, A World Changed from 2020-07-22T16:00

In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, impacting the weather throughout the world. The Year Without Summer imagines its impact on six separate lives, thousands of miles away. They include a f...

Forgery, The French Resistance and The Book of Lost Names from 2020-07-20T16:00

Inspired by an amazing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in an unforgettable historical novel. History Hit's Rob...

Power and Intrigue in The Court of Henry II: The Irish Princess from 2020-07-15T16:00

In 1166, the King of Leinster in Ireland is forced into exile and throws himself at the mercy of Henry II to help regain his kingdom. His biggest bargaining tool in getting England’s support is his...

The Search for a Forgotten Artist: The Pelton Papers from 2020-07-13T16:00

Artist Agnes Pelton lived through the early days of modernism in America. Fame seemed inevitable but the shy and retiring Pelton retreated to a contemplative life in the California desert where she...

A Writer's Guide to Ancient Rome from 2020-07-08T16:00

Have you ever thought about writing an historical novel? Perhaps you fancy setting it in Ancient Rome? But how would you start researching, for example, what the different classes of Roman would be...

The Name Beneath the Stone: Secrets of the Unknown Warrior from 2020-07-06T16:00:10

What would happen if the identity of the unknown warrior, entombed in Westminster Abbey, was ever uncovered? This new novel tells the story of Sarah Harding, who discovers letters from the trenches...

The Haunting of the Titanic: The Deep from 2020-07-01T16:00

The Deep gives an eerie, psychological twist to the sinking of the Titanic, and the fate of her sister ship the Britannic. The American novelist Alma Katsu spent 35 years as an intell...

Cleopatra - On Stage and in Fiction from 2020-06-29T15:07:23

Cleopatra was one of the most famous women of all history. For centuries she has been presented by writers and artists as a seductive temptress, a femme fatale, the tragic lover of Julius Caesar an...

The Royal Princesses in World War II: The Secret Guests from 2020-06-24T17:58:13

Set in 1940, The Secret Guests speculates what would have happened if the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were sent to a remote stately home in Ireland to get away from the Blitz on London....

Witch Hunts in 17th Century Norway: The Mercies from 2020-06-24T17:57:08

In the winter of 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø was thrown into a reckless storm. The men of the island, out fishing, perished in an instant and Vardø became a place of w...