Dan Snow's History Hit - Best of 2020 Part Two

Episode Date: December 31, 2020

Part Two: a compilation of the best podcasts of 2020.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. This is part two of our 2020 best of. I say best of, these are just

episodes and conversations that are stuck in the memory of me and the team. On this episode, we got profs, we got toffs, we got veterans. I hope all of you are taking advantage of our special offer on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. You go on there, use the code January, January, and you get our ridiculous Boxing Day January sale offer, which is a month for free. And then for the first three months, you only pay 20% of the subscription fee for those first three months. So basically, if you're looking ways to get you through lockdown, stay at home orders, wherever you are in the world, then I think this is a great opportunity, great opportunity for you. So head over there and make sure you use the code January

to get that unbelievably sweet deal. We've got a great documentary on there about the Haitian revolution at the moment and obviously the Winter Truce documentary that I've been banging on about. Lots of you have listened to the podcast. Please go and check it out on there. I think it's probably the best piece of work we've produced so far and that's partly because I'm not in it. There's probably a correlation there. So enjoy this episode where you'll be hearing from some of our past champions.

And all I can say, everybody, is thank you for another year. Year five, going strong. Thank you to the millions of people that download, listen to this podcast all over the world. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I'm incredibly, incredibly grateful. You've made this guy very happy and very fulfilled. To get started, I thought we'd hear from Professor Fred Loggeveil. It's been a big year for US politics. And Fred has just written a magisterial biography of JFK. Heard of him? Thought so. And I thought we'd get started with a kind of discussion of why JFK still matters so much. I think the reason fundamentally why I think he's held in such high regard, and I think maybe we need this message today, frankly, given where we are

in our politics, is that he believed, Kennedy believed in government, not that it would solve all of our problems, but that government had a vital role to play in creating a more equitable and just society. He believed in politics and gave, I think, Americans a heightened belief that government could speak to their highest aspirations. There's something about that idealistic message that I think matters too. And he remains, as you say, the kind of platonic ideal form of a young charismatic politician that seems to have endured. It's fascinating. But let's talk about the Kennedys. that seems to have endured.

It's fascinating. But let's talk about the Kennedys. We talk days after one Kennedy descendant, not descendant, sign of the Kennedy family was just foiled in his attempt to snatch a Senate seat off a fellow Democrat in Massachusetts. So who are the Kennedys? Who were the Kennedys when this young man was born? Well, it's one of the reasons I decided to write this book

is that I find it an absolutely extraordinary story. It is one of the great American stories. I really think it is. We have Joe Kennedy, the patriarch, and we have Rose Kennedy, and they have nine children. Irish Catholics, they become fabulously wealthy, in part because of Joe's masterful insider trading, but they amass a huge fortune and they become kind of American aristocracy, but nevertheless have to be sort of outsided in, if I can put it that way. What did you find out about his military career that in many ways, the sort of foundation myth, if you like, of JFK as this youthful, topless, bare-chested, was it a patrol boat captain in the South Pacific? Yeah, he was a commander of a PT-109 was his number.

It was 1943 in the South Pacific. And I suggest in the book that, and I'm not the first, I think, to do this. It was a profoundly important experience for him because I think now he was a leader of men in combat. The PT boats were pretty flimsy boats with mahogany shells. They were kind of floating infernos. If they were hit by Japanese aircraft, you were a goner, basically. And so he's in a dangerous situation. The boat infamously is rammed one night in August 1943 and they survive, all but two of them survive and it becomes up to Kennedy to then try to figure out what to do to save his crew and it's a rather epic story in which they do save themselves

by swimming a long distance to an island and then swimming to another one, and then ultimately they're rescued. But the point is that for Kennedy, I think the experience matured him. It also had one other interesting result. I think forever after, Kennedy was leery of the military, of the military as an instrument of policy. I think we see this later on in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which will be in Volume 2, that he's reluctant to take the advice of his military chiefs. And I think some of that skepticism about the blunt instrument of military power,

I think it goes back to World War II. So it has a lasting effect in that regard too. And I always struck what's interesting about him in the patrol, but is you have more autonomy. He's a junior lieutenant, but he's actually in command of his own vessel, isn't he? Had he gone as a junior lieutenant on an aircraft carrier, he's a tiny cog in a giant machine. There's a sense of that kind of slight wiggle room,

the autonomy that he enjoyed in the Pacific that must have shaped his leadership, his style. Oh, it's such a good point. You are exactly right. And I think that he talks about this in some of his letters. His closest friend, really right to the end in Dallas, was a fellow named Lem Billings. And he writes to Lem, basically that. He says, you know, if I had been on an aircraft carrier in a junior position, he writes this while it's going on. He says, I wouldn't be having this freedom. I wouldn't be able to, because he was a very experienced sailor,

so he loved being out on the water in command of his own vessel. He now got a chance to do this. I think his father's influence also made a difference here. It's interesting, his father was adamant that his sons not have to be in harm's way. But to Joe Kennedy's credit, when Jack said, no, I want to command a PT boat, Joe didn't stand in his way. And I think he had friends in the Navy. And though I can't prove this, I do think that Joe Sr. pulled some strings to get Jack that PT command, and then he was on his way to the Pacific. hegemony, superpower, some people call it hyperpower, that the US experiences really over the course of this young man's life and now he's into politics. How do you think he does embody that? I think he, that's a really interesting question. I think he does embody it. I think he

himself, as we've been saying, is youthful. He's full of energy. There is a kind of powerful marriage of idealism and pragmatism in the young John F. Kennedy. And I think you could say those things, maybe this is stretching it a bit too far, but you could say those things about this young nation, relatively speaking to the other great powers, that has seen this incredible rise, partly because of demographic and geographic reasons. I mean, it's where the United States is situated. It's the protection provided by the two oceans. It's this extraordinary burgeoning population with immigrants coming in by the millions. And then the resources of the country that make it, I think, inevitable. I mean, even Tocqueville early in the 19th century

saw the time when the United States was going to be dominant over a large part of the world. It happened, and it happens to be when John F. Kennedy, as you say, is rising. But, yeah, I think he embodies that in his persona. Maybe that's the wrong way of putting it, but he embodies that in a really interesting way. politicians after the First World War who flirted again with isolationism. Kennedy, this was America passionate about global engagement. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really good point that that debate, which is a really vociferous one that I go into in some detail, between the isolationists and the interventionists, both of those terms are a little bit problematic, but we use them. They were used at the time. I'm using them here. That was a really bitter debate.

And I think we see in this younger generation that's coming up, so John F. Kennedy, as you say, as compared to his father, that shift. And it's not to say that there aren't isolationists after the war. In fact, there are. I talked a little bit about Robert Taft, for example, a very prominent Republican who could well have become president. Taft and his supporters are in many respects retaining that attachment to an isolationist position, a kind of fortress America position,

whereby the nation will not be in a leadership position in the world, but will mind its own business at home. So one doesn't want to say that 1945 ends this debate in any sense. But nevertheless, I think Kennedy and many of those who come of political age, who come to power in Congress after the war, embody this new position which says, no, the United States, working in concert with other nations, has to be in a leadership position. We've got a new threat in the Soviet Union, and we, this is Kennedy speaking, but it could be others, we have to take a leading role. No question. Okay, so last question. I have to ask anyone who writes biography because they fall in love with their subjects. You've got to tell me the worst, what's the worst thing you found out about JFK? You know, I think he could be heedless of people.

To some extent, and I say this, I think, in my preface, he and many of the other Kennedys tended to see people as interchangeable. It was family first with the Kennedys, and others would sometimes be shunted to the side. That said, he also had friends who were deeply loyal to him, and he was loyal to them throughout his life. So I don't want to overstate the point. Two other things. I'll say that he was cautious to a fault on some policy issues, on McCarthyism, the scourge of Joe McCarthy. JFK, to my mind, and I talk about this, was much to, even if he had to, he had to be mindful of the fact that Massachusetts had a lot of McCarthy supporters, a lot of Irish Catholics in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, he was cautious there.

He was cautious on civil rights to look ahead a bit. The big thing, I think, is that he saw women as objects. His father had, you know, done the same. His father had said to Joe Jr. and to Jack, in so many words, I expect you to be a skirt chaser, I expect you to get as many women as you can, that's the name of the game, look at how I'm doing. He would on occasion bring a mistress home for dinner when the boys were growing up, which I think must have confused them no end. But I can't say that it's the father's fault, because if I'm going to argue in the book that JFK is his own man, with respect to politics and with respect to philosophy, worldview,

then I must also argue that he should be able to be his own man in this area. And so that treatment of women, and he's very successful with them, and I should say, at least in this first volume, there's nothing predatory about JFK's pursuit that I can see. Later, I think that will become more problematic in volume two when he's in the White House, and that incredible power differential must matter. But, you know, he cheats on Jackie before their wedding, and he cheats on her afterwards. And that's something to reckon with, especially in the Me Too age, but I think even apart from that. To a different type of aristocracy now, the British hereditary aristocracy. I had a very

memorable chat this year to Lady Anne Glenconner. She was Princess Margaret's lady-in-waiting, as you'll hear, among lots of other wonderful things about her. She recently wrote a refreshingly candid autobiography about life as an aristocrat and life within the orbit of the royal family. It's absolutely brilliant. And our conversation was hysterical.

Now, we are looking at each other on Zoom and you are sitting in the most extraordinary room. Where are you in the world at the moment? I'm sitting in the saloon at Holcombe. To my left is a marble hall. Have you ever been to Holcombe? I have. I've been around as a tourist. Well, I'm sitting in this wonderful room. Tom Lester, my cousin, said, you know, he was doing it in the saloon, surrounded by really wonderful pictures, Tom Lester, my cousin, said, you know, he was doing it in the saloon, surrounded by really wonderful pictures, paintings, and I'm looking out. It's the hottest day of the year. I'm

looking out onto the fountain, which is playing, and right up the park. It's the most lovely position I'm talking to you in. Is it the earls of Leicester have lived there for generations? Yes, absolutely. My father was the fifth earl of Leicester, so I became Lady Anne Cook. It's spelled Coke, but it's pronounced Cook. And my ancestor, who founded the family, really, was the Chief Justice in Queen Elizabeth the first day, and he prosecuted Guy Fawkes,

and also, I was going to say invented, perhaps isn't the right word, common law. And when I go to America, they are thrilled because the law in America is still common law that was created by him. And our crest is an ostrich with a horseshoe in its mouth because he always said that the crooks can digest anything. We live very near Sandringham, so the royal family have always come over here.

And that's when I first met Princess Margaret, when I was three, and she was, I think, four. My family have always been part of the royal family. My father was an equerry to the Duke of York before he became king. My mother was a lady of the bedchamber at the coronation to the Queen. Of course, I was a maid of honour. My uncle, Jack Cook, was Lord in waiting to Queen Mary, you know, and so on and so on. So we've always been part like that, worked for the royal family. Is that something that you feel has changed in your lifetime?

I mean, if you look around now at your wider family, there's not an immediate assumption that great-nephews and nieces, the grandchildren are all going to sort of knock about with royalty in each other. I mean, presumably that has changed has it it's changed completely yes and nowadays they marry who they like really you know because when i came out just after the war we met i mean we had coming i had a wonderful coming out dance here where my father had a sort of special list of all suitable young men that were asked. And then we had lots of weekend parties where, again, we met people, friends' children or friends' arsters.

And then we moved up to Scotland to the Highland Balls where then we met all the people who lived in Scotland. But, I mean, you know, it was either Blenheim or Boughton, you know, all these big houses used to have weekend parties. And that's how we got to know each other. When you look back on that, in one way, it was probably very socially isolating and you had to behave in a certain way. But when you look at your grandchildren or other people's grandchildren of that circle, do you miss that sort of social world and that sort of sense of being part of an elite?

Or do you rather like the freedom that your descendants now have? Well, no, I don't agree at all with when you say freedom. Now, it isn't because they shack up with one boyfriend. When I was young, we went out with a different man or boy or every night when you read my book, my nightmare honeymoon. I mean, I was completely naive about sex, for instance. I mean, because we didn't do it, there was no contraception. I was terrified of getting pregnant. I mean, we just didn't do it. And now, I mean, because we didn't do it, there was no contraception. I was terrified of getting pregnant. I mean, we just didn't do it. And now, I mean, they have so little chance. I mean, one of my grandsons who lives in Scotland met his girlfriend at university. He's still with her.

He's never actually had a chance to, you know, meet other girls. And I think that's very sad. I'm so glad that I lived when I did. We have so much more fun, really, you know, playing the field. Oh, that's a tough hit on her future granddaughter-in-law. Hope she doesn't listen to this podcast. Anyway, let's get back to her totally normal honeymoon. And then on your honeymoon was a bit of a shock. Appalling shock. Why, Colin thought. I mean, I was, I suppose, very naive, because in those days, I mean, all the young men and fathers used to take that. So there's a sort

of upmarket brothel run by Mrs. Featherstone Hoard. Do you know about her? No, I have to say. You probably would have gone there too. I mean, that's what young men did, you know. So Colin, I don't think he'd ever made love to a virgin. I think that was a trouble. And so, for some unknown reason, when I thought I was being taken off to the Ritz, you know, put on my best dress, he took me to this absolutely appalling seedy hotel

where we went into this room. I mean, luckily, we sat in two wing-back chairs because I sat with my eyes closed. It was an appalling sight in front of me, these awful pasty bodies squelching into each other in front of us. And I thought, this is simply nightmarish. The honeymoon after that wasn't all that easy, but it did improve. The thing about Colin was that one was never bored.

He had a very quick, he was very clever, amazingly well read. He always had slightly mad ideas, some of them, but he always had ideas. In fact, he was a very exciting person to live with, too exciting sometimes. What does Lady in Waiting mean? What do you do for Lady in Waiting of Princess Margaret? Well, she chose on the whole friends, because a lot of the time you're alone with her. And the thing is, when you first join, you're asked if you've got any charities you're really interested in. You see all her charities, and you pick ones that you feel you'd like to work with.

And therefore, then once in charge of those charities, they write to one. There is an office too, and you go into the office, and then you write all the thank-you letters. Say, after Australia, I went round Australia, I mean, I wrote a lot of the thank-you letters. But the great moment is you're with the person, with Princess Margaret the whole time,

and in the evening, you know, when we used to go upstairs, we used to talk over the day, we'd laugh. She had a wonderful sense of humour, Princess Margaret. And sometimes when I was with her, in front of other people, she'd make me laugh, you know. I tried not to. And I'd say afterwards, Mammy, please don't make me laugh. I couldn't keep a straight face.

And I had her to stay. I mean, I lived with her for a whole year at Kensington Palace because I was doing up a flat. Colin, being very flakyaky he always sold our houses without telling me and then he'd say oh Anne I've just sold the house today we've got to get out in a fortnight. I got used to that but anyway I then in the end bought a flat for myself. And Princess Margaret said do come and I said well it'll be about three weeks. Turned out it was a year I really enjoyed

being with her and she had a very difficult husband and at the end of it we both said well really we got on so well by that time she was divorced so much easier to be with each other than having this very difficult husband I want to come on to Mystique in a second but just quickly with Princess Margaret her reputation is of a sort of socialite and drinker. And what would you have to say about that? Was she a sort of hardworking member of the royal family? I hope that's why I wrote my book, actually, because I was so fed up of people writing rubbish about her.

They didn't know her. So I wanted, from my point of view, I put that over quite well in my book, because judging by hundreds of letters I've had with from people saying I'm so glad you have shown a different side to Princess Margaret I mean with me you had to I was all rude way putting it handle her properly you know I mean to me she was very royal I mean she was brought up her father was king emperor half the world was pink when she was brought up. There was only four of them. And, you know, she was very royal. And I didn't mind those sort of royal moments which she had occasionally.

But the great thing was to ask her what she wanted to do. As long as she knew what she was going to do, people didn't bring surprises on her. She didn't like that. And ask her what she wanted to eat. I mean, to me it seemed quite simple. If you're going to have somebody like that, you want to please them, you want to say, what do you want to do?

And quite often she went to stay with people and they'd arranged the mayor and the chief of police and the bishop to come to lunch on Sunday. You know, she said, you know, weekends are meant to be my time off. I found, perhaps because i knew her and i really loved her i didn't find her difficult i could what i call steer her sometimes you know like i did when we were in australia and she refused to go on to bondi beach oh she said i can't possibly have sand in my shoes and they always come to me that's part of being a

lady in waiting they always ring one up saying me that's part of being a lady in waiting they always ring one up saying what she's going to wear what colour because we want the flowers we're going to give her to match anyway this instance they came round me up and said can you do anything you know it's vital in Australia to go on to Bondi Beach so I said well leave it to me and I managed to get a pair of her flat shoes and just as we got there I said look ma'am would you think again because going on to Bondi Beach is all like kissing the blondie stone you know all right man look at my shoes and so I took the flat well I said well actually I got a flat pair and she looked at me and she just said okay Anne you'll win this time

and actually she got her own back later she was asked to hold a koala bear. And she said, no, I don't think I will, but my lady-in-waiting would love to hold it. And this beastly koala bear, wee-wee, peed all the way down my dress. And I said to her, I said, well, you got your own back on me, didn't you? You know, we had a very nice relationship. Fun. It was fun. Something that's so extraordinary to me about inherited wealth

is it can cause such extraordinary chaos within families. Your husband left all his money to somebody else, and a system like yours, which involves passing these houses down and properties and estates and things, that must have been hugely problematic. He'd already given a glen, which is a family home, to his son, Henry, so he was living there. Colin, in the end, lived in St Lucia. He was a resident.

But, of course, what was really difficult for me and the children, because in the West Indies, the will is read the night of the funeral, and we had this amazing Caribbean funeral. I've written about it in my book. He changed his will, I suppose, five months before he died, leaving everything to Kent, who was his valet's servant, really. And that was a final sort of nail in the coffin slightly for me, you know. I've been married to him 54 years, and there's nothing you can do in St Lucia. The law is quite different. So I went, I thought, well, I can surely, you know,

get something. And they said, no, women don't count for anything. So, you know, anyway, I've written a bestseller now, grand old age of nearly 88, making some money for the first time. Well done to Lady Glen Connor. We've got another aristocratic author on the podcast now, Charles Spencer. He is Princess Diana's brother. And he wrote a great book this year on Henry I and the catastrophe of the shipwreck of the White Ship that occurred 900 years ago this autumn. A terrible event with important repercussions. And I was really looking forward to this chat with him after I read the book because I was stunned by the endemic levels of violence in 12th century Europe. And on one instant in particular.

I don't know how they survived, half of them, and of course half of them didn't. I think one of the problems they had was the role of Christianity in all of this. So a lot of the, particularly in England, there was a sort of fight between doing right by the church and doing right as a king. I think that the only way to survive in these times was to have very rigid rules, which you stuck to. And the most appalling episode in my book, in the whole tale of Henry I, is the way he treated the basic laws of hostage taking. He brokered a peace between one of his illegitimate daughters and her husband and some neighbours by making them swap each other's children as hostages. And Henry's daughter lost patience with the boy hostage she was holding and had him blinded. And the father of the boy went, as understandably,

outraged to Henry and demanded his rights. And so Henry agreed that his two granddaughters, his daughters' daughters, would be blinded as well and have their noses cut off as the sort of wrongful part of a hostage situation that had gone terribly awry. And I'm afraid that's the one bit where I just can't get my head around this time. You know, isn't there some way? I mean, here we are. I mean, you'd do anything to observe that the rules have been broken, but to preserve your granddaughters. It's just an astonishing, but to me, it says

these were the rules and Henry I stuck by them. Well, his daughter took matters into her own hands. Tell everyone what she did. Well, yes, she pretended she wanted an audience with her father and then whipped out a crossbow and tried to shoot Henry I, but she missed him. And then she was besieged by her father and then jumped into the moat of the castle in Evry, where she was. And the observers were most shocked that this woman's actually fleeing for her life. And I don't think that dignity was the first thing in her mind. But she showed her legs when her dress was sort of whipped up from her

as she descended very fast into the moat. People were appalled that they could see the lady's legs. Different standards. Next up, I talked to the one and only Paul Ley, editor of History Today. Not only a great editor, though, but a historian in his own right. His award-nominated book about the interregnum in England, in the Isles, was fantastic, and it was great to get him on the pod. Okay, so we've got Cromwell is now the overlord of the British Isles, the Isles, Britain and Ireland. Goodness knows, it's difficult to call them anything these days.

And he is, what's he do? 651. So the army's still in charge. What is his plan to match his military successes with a kind of lasting constitutional arrangement? Well, the phrase that Cromwell uses again and again is healing and settling. And what we have to think about this is when he talks about healing and settling, the constitutional reforms, the constitutional projects, and the religious project of the moral reformation of England are entwined. You simply cannot separate those two things. They are combined.

This presents itself as most extreme or most obviously, with the nominated assembly, which is the first real parliament that Cromwell has. He's not called, he's not protector at this point. There's a nominated assembly of which he's the primus inter pares. And this is the idea not of John Lambert, who's the second in command at this point, but a person called Thomas Harrison, who is a member of a group called the Fifth Monarchists. And they believe that there are going to be five monarchies on earth before the millennium appears, before God returns to earth, those being Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. Rome being both classical Rome and the papacy.

And there will be a fifth monarchy. And this, if all goes well, will be in England. And England, so you can see this deeply religious providential thread running throughout this. And so Harrison becomes the kind of ideological figurehead of this assembly of and it's called nominated because the members of this assembly the mps will be nominated by various churches or at least that's the plan in the end they're not they're appointed in a much more haphazard and one would say more corrupt way than that. But it's modelled on the Jewish Sanhedrin, quite explicitly modelled on the Sanhedrin.

The fifth monarchists are often represented as dominating. It's actually not true. It's actually not a bad parliament. It's lampooned in some way because it's known as the bare-bones parliament after one of its more obscure members who's a city leather trader, I think, called Praise God Bare Bones or Praise God Barbon, which is a very Puritan name.

I forget the full extent of his actual real name, but it's in the book and that's something to ponder and wonder at. But he's actually a reasonably effective one. But there is obstruction from the more mainstream MPs, the Presbyterian MPs, and it ends, as almost all of Cromwell's parliaments do, all of Cromwell's parliaments do by the eviction of MPs by military force. And Cromwell will turn up and say, oh, I didn't realise this was going on, and present himself.

There's a wonderful phrase by Blair Worden, who's the great historian of this period, when he says that Cromwell is practised at not knowing. He always seems to be not quite there or just gone when a dramatic event happens, and yet one can't help but wonder, with great reason, just what hand he's playing. And there's definitely this kind of elusive figure of Cromwell, this political figure. What goes on in the background is always there. One of the great sources, the great source for Cromwell, this political figure. What goes on in the background is always there.

One of the great sources, the great source for Cromwell that we haven't got, we'll never have, are his dialogues with God. And those are the ones that I think, there's this constant practice of Cromwell's to go into prayer, to go into retreat and have this one-to-one dialogue with god it's actually very very well done in a play by howard brenton called 55 days which is set during the 55 days

before charles first execution and you have these imagined conversations between cromwell but he's always searching for the answer to what would God want me to do. You say we don't have that source. Did he write down transcripts which are now lost, or did we just not have it because it wasn't recorded? Well, it was just a private conversation. It's just in the head. It's a shame. Okay, so bare-bones Parliament's gone. What's next? Well, as Thomas Harrison recedes into the background again, John Lambert comes to the fore, but not as a military figure this time, although, of course, the army is always there in the world, which is called the Instrument of Government,

which essentially tries to settle the Republic on firm or firmer foundations. So essentially it replaces the old trinity of king, commons and parliament with a sort of kingly figure, or a sovereign shall we call it, a council and a parliament. And that's the new settlement. Now, who is going to be the king-like figure? The original offer is that it should be Cromwell, that there should be a kind of house of Cromwell. But Cromwell resists this,

and instead he's offered the title of Lord Protector, which obviously has some semblance in English history. There is a tradition of it, but it's essentially as a guardian of a future monarch, as you know. But he takes on this title of Lord Protector, which is controversial. takes on this title of Lord Protector, which is controversial. And he takes on a mantle of royalty.

You know, there's no great ostentation at this point. You know, he goes to the opening of Parliament in Puritan black, although actually, ironically, black is actually quite expensive. The Puritan wear is actually quite expensive, relatively, because black's a difficult colour to achieve at that time. But he takes our kind of mantle of monocanism, which really upsets his loyal Republican figures, people like Henry Vane, Thomas Hesselrig, and, of course, Milton, who responds and asks questions about this man

who was the greatest among us. We keeping an eye on you and we watching how this unravels. But by this point Cromwell's in charge. His council, which is often made up of his family members, people like Desborough, people like Lambert, his sons around, particularly Henry, not Richard, but Henry, Fleetwood. There's this, they're interrelated, they're married together. You have this very, very small elite, Puritan elite, that's gathered around the sources of power in Whitehall and Parliament. And it's beginning to resemble a kind of Puritan. Aristocracy is pushing it, but there's no doubt that these are now important intertwined, interlocked figures. And there's a kind of

regime about it. But it's on this foundation of the instrument of government. So speaking of aristocracy, how's the Isles? How have they been governed in practice? I mean, are traditional, some manorial practices still going on, but different people? Or is there now government, state, you know, state paid for troops in every town and village? I mean, it's early modern Britain.

The military presence, I mean, it's early modern Britain. The military presence... I mean, this is a place that's recovering from civil war, remember? It's had famine, it's had all kinds of stuff, but it's getting towards stability. And I suppose there's, with most people, there's a kind of Hobbesian kind of belief in the strong arm of government. This is a strong government.

Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Now, regular listeners will know that I like to get veterans, activists and politicians on here, as well as historians.

And few of those veterans have been better than Christian Lamb. She was a naval officer during the Second World War. It was great fun. It was a lovely time. Went to the theatre a great deal, too. During the Blitz, when they had a lovely time. Went to the theatre a great deal too. During the Blitz when they had a... You could hear the whistle of the bombs coming nearer and nearer and the whole audience would blinch like that and sort of lean over.

Then it would pass me, all right again now. Amazing. And you must have had lots of boyfriends. It must have been great going to parties and things. I didn't have very many boyfriends somehow in London. There were a few parties, but they tried to make us go back at four o'clock before it was dark, when the Blitz began,

which was not until the late summer, really. You were at London during the Blitz? Yes. And then where did you go after that? Well, then I had decided I didn't want to be a coder, which I had originally volunteered for, because I thought it sounded mysterious and interesting, but it was terribly boring. I discovered plotting was much more fun, so I volunteered for that.

And after I got my commission, I was promoted to an officer, having been an ordinary Wren. Then I was a leading Wren as well before that. an ordinary Wren. Then I was a leading Wren as well before that. And I was sent down to do this amazing job at Coal House Fort, which was degaussing. It's about measuring the ships for their

magnetic emission. And that was done by this range, which I had to run the office. I was a leading Wren, age 20. It was really quite exciting. But after I was there for about a year, and then I went down to P a year, and then I went down to Plymouth, and there I was plotting officer at Mount Wise, which was wonderful. So you did the degaussing. Now tell me what plotting involves. Well, plotting involved, it was, we had a huge,

big operations room in Plymouth, Mount Wise, and it was divided into two. The RAF had one lot, Mount Wise, and it was divided into two. The RAF had one lot, Coastal Command had one side, and there they had four WAFs running their plot, which was a big flat table with a sort of wax top on it, and it was very exciting. They had all the convoys, all the huge ship salinas and things like that all going at about 26 knots, and convoys going at about three knots.

Everything had to be kept up to date, which was very exciting. There were four girls on each side of the table with telephones and they were in communication with the radar stations around the coast. And they took us to see a radar station so we had some idea of what was going on which made it much more interesting. So you were in Plymouth plotting? Yes. And Plymouth must have been destroyed. Plymouth was very badly bombed so you must have been bombed there as well? No it was bombed before I got there I'm glad to say so when we got

there it was more or less flattened but we made a lot of friends with submariners there. There we did have a lot of boyfriends and parties and things, which was great fun. Parties in their ships were rather fun because the officers' mess was so small. And I remember one time, Eve and I, she was a wren with me, and we used to wear our evening dresses for weekends, parties and things. We only had two each, so we used to exchange them. And one time

the officer said to us, why don't you wear our dinner jackets in exchange? We're so tired of your evening dresses. I can't remember whether we did or not. So that must have been great fun. It was great fun, yeah. And then you got posted up north. Well, then the whole of Mount Wise, the whole of the Western Approaches headquarters was moved up to Liverpool. And I moved on from various other places before I ended up in Belfast, which was another very

interesting plot, because all the convoys would gather together and get mixed up and ready to sail from just north of Belfast in a place called Rock there, I think. It was a place they all gathered, and then they set off. And what was Belfast like during the war? Well, Belfast was very good. There was no rationing, so you had masses of food there. Nevertheless, we went down to visit Dublin from time to time by train and they always searched everything you bought on your way back.

It was very difficult. And what about your trip in the aeroplane? We had to do a course in Bath. I have no idea what the course involved, but I do remember when I was coming back, I missed my train. And I never, ever did such a thing. I was always terribly punctual, always early. I was horrified at this.

And I was actually talking to a Polish man who I'd been at a party with the night before. And he said, shall I give you a party with the night before. And he said, shall I give you a lift back in the old crate? I said, what old crate? Oh, he said, my aeroplane. So I said, oh, good heavens. And I was so thrilled to answer,

yes, absolutely, passionately. Can you imagine a Miles Magister, an aeroplane, which was open to the winds, you know? I mean, I'd never flown in anything before anyway. A thrilling moment, absolutely wonderful. So we dive-bombed lots of cows and things, which he thought would frighten me, but I loved that. And I was really hoping he might loop the loop,

but perhaps it was just as well he didn't as I might have fallen out. So you were plotting, you were moving the little marks on this big map and it was your husband's ship that you were plotting? Yes and we were receiving signals all the time. It wasn't like if we had television we'd be able to see the battle otherwise we'd just waiting for signals all the time to hear what was going on and the news from each, what was going on and the news from each we've just it was just luck being able to pick up the news from various places but yes i was plotting the battle and my friends all tried to make me go home but i couldn't i had to stay there and then when they'd rammed it and so on they could only go off at i think they had the speed of 12 knots which they could just about do to get to the other side and have a new bow fitted. Lots of women that you served, it wouldn't have been as lucky, I mean you must have had friends that lost husbands and

boyfriends at sea. I had one friend who was bombed and killed. She was my great friend. It was horrid. It was very horrid. She was bombed, Then in the inheritance, imagine, killed, just there. And so you always felt that you were up at the sharp end of the war. It never felt the war was distant and something apart from that. No, and what's more, I did a job which I enjoyed and which was useful. I felt it was useful doing the degaussing. It saved people's lives from being blown up by magnetic mines.

And plotting was interesting because if you saw a radar blip, which might have been a submarine or a motorboat from Germany on the southwest coast, then you would send a motorboat out to investigate. So it always felt useful.

And then speaking of useful, so you helped win the Battle of the Atlantic, then you helped victory at D-Day as well. Well, that was very exciting because I was working on the actual maps of the landings. There were five landings, as you probably know, all those places on the Normandy coast. And of course, they had to be deadly secret because we were trying to persuade the Germans that we were going to use the Pas- Calais and not the Normandy coast and so everything had to be very very secret so I had my own little office in the

basement and nobody else was in it but me and the whole of the walls were covered in those huge ordnance survey maps of France and I had to draw a map of every compass bearing like that of every from each landing place to see what people would be able to see like a motorway or a train service or a chateau or something like that on every all over France so it was quite an interesting job. And I hoped it was, I don't know whether they were used by maps, but there they were. So these are maps that when the men landed on the beaches,

they could sort of orientate themselves? When the ship arrived in the place where it was the actual landing place, they would look at my maps in theory and be able to identify where they were that was the plan Was that rather a lonely job or was it a good team? It was quite interesting because I was in this place which was opposite the horse guards in Whitehall and Churchill was working in the top of this enormous building

and we could sometimes see him going up and down stairs which was very exciting but otherwise it was just the most amazing place where they had these extraordinary inventions for everything. They invented these wonderful harbours, which they made and took over. There were hundreds and hundreds of pieces of them. Each piece had to be made in probably a different harbour

and sunk below the wall so it couldn't be seen from the air. And then eventually all had to be put together extraordinary behaviour extraordinary do you feel that the women who worked in those buildings and worked everywhere do you think the women have been a bit overlooked when we talk about the war commemorate the war it's difficult to tell because an awful lot of them did the most boring jobs like looking after the rellery and cooking and boiling water, that sort of thing, you know. But I think, I mean, when you think of the job that they did

with the Perisher's Course, which was the biggest training, the most sophisticated training for captains of submarines, it was called the Perisher's Course, and the man who ran it was a distinguished submariner captain, DSO, DSC, everyone you can think of. He ran it, and he ran it with half a dozen sailors normally to help him with the course and all the equipment and so on. And he decided one day he could perhaps replace them with Wrens. And I found one of the first wrens who'd done it with him was a girl who lived in Cornwall,

and I met her and got her to write in the description of how she'd done it all. So that put it in my book. So lots of wrens and wafts and all sorts of interesting jobs. Exactly. Amazing jobs. And cleaning torpedoes. I mean, they did all sorts of jobs like that. And servicing machinery.

They were all trained to do it. And they loved being given these interesting jobs to do. A real treat way back at the start of the year was chatting to Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. I asked him how deliberately he'd chosen to set his brilliant film 1917 in that retreat to the Hindenburg line in early 1917, because history geeks like me kind of immediately realised it gave him that rare thing on the Western Front. It gave him a little bit of mobility in which troops could throw off,

albeit briefly, the kind of stalemate of the trenches. He could set a story to time when mobility had very briefly been restored to the otherwise very static battles of the Western Front. I was looking and looking for a way to have a journey that wasn't 300 yards long, you know. So I had to, and unless I found that, I couldn't have made that, I wouldn't have written the script, I wouldn't have made the story. It was that realisation that there was that moment,

that perfect moment, which is why the movie is played over one day and it's very specific which day it is. And indeed, that was the day that there was this confusion. They were beginning to mobilise to move up to the new German line, but some sections of the army had no idea what was going on and that's the situation we come into. You know, you have this combination, as you know, in the First World War,

the first war that begins with horses and infantry and ends with tanks and machine guns and weapons of mass destruction, the beginning of modern warfare. But at the same time... Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great

stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. No communication.

There isn't a commensurate degree of sophistication in communication. There is no way of telling someone. So, you know, even people 30 yards away from orders being delivered can't hear and die. And this happens over and over and over again, the sort of level of the awful perfect storm of the sudden development of industrial warfare and the lack of industrial level of communication is a hell, really. And so you're trying to find that kind of fulcrum point where suddenly, through a keyhole, a keyhole of one man's experience, you're able to suddenly see the vast panorama of death and destruction.

The whole movie is based on the idea that through the micro, you can understand the macro. Through just two hours of real time on one man's or two men's experience, you can see and begin to understand the sheer scale of the war. It struck me even on No Man's Land that the scale is not expressed going from the British line to the German line, because that's almost visible. In many cases it was visible 200 yards away.

The scale is best expressed looking down the lines, because that goes on for miles and miles and miles, hundreds of miles. And sometimes you have to find different ways of looking at things in order to find a way to articulate the vastness of the chaos that was the Great War. Because we're so stuck in clichés, so stuck in repeating images, you know, over the top, die, over the top, die, back in the trench, over the top, die. I mean, you know, it's almost impossible to break out of that. And I was looking for a way to try to break out of that.

But at the same time, we do have that. You know, there are trenches, there is no man's land, there are people who go over the top at the end of the movie. But it's trying to unlock other areas of history. Well, the technique that is so revolutionary and deserves every award in the book is obviously shooting it as if it's on one steady shot the whole way through.

And what's so brilliant about that is it lends itself, first of all, like nothing else. You see the back, the rear areas, but they're all asleep in the grass and flowers and poppies, not poppies, but flowers having a nice time. And then they kind of get their stuff together and they go through the communication trench

and then they end up at the front line and then they go over the front line and it's all a one-er and you see thousands of people and you do get that sense of geographical scale but um and i'll ask about the technical stuff in a minute but i have to ask every director comes on the history podcast about how annoying are historians when you wanted to do something did they go well it didn't really go like that and how do you ever rule them is does the filmmaking come first was history how important was history to you? Very important.

I mean, we had two historical advisors, Andy Robertshaw and Peter Barton. Both of them were brilliant. Legends. Yeah, and both different, you know, areas of... I mean, they both obviously know pretty much everything about the First World War, but they also had specific areas

that I would sort of set them on, like attack dogs, you know. Andy would talk to the men all the background about what was in their packs and their kit bags and how to use their weapons. We had another military advisor called Paul Biddis, who himself had been in the military but also knows about the First World War, who was training them and talking to them about all sorts of psychological

elements to what they were expected to do and what they would have been through just to get to the front line. Peter Barton was the one who pointed out, I said, look, I want you to pick holes in this everywhere you possibly can. And it was brilliant.

And he made a huge impact on it because even if it's just throwing a spotlight on cliches, the men waiting to go over the top knowing they're about to die he says nonsense most men went over the top

thinking they were going to victory you know but that's a huge thing when you're talking to 500 background live you know just reminding them of that

yes they're adrenalised yes they're frightened but they're not knowing they're going to die this is a myth and that's something we impose upon it with a kind of nostalgia of hindsight and our knowledge of the war and all.

So, you know, there are those aspects. And then, you know, just geography. Where is a coast? Where is the land? You know, how far would they, how much of a trench would they have been able to dig in 24 hours, you know, even en masse, all of these things. And a lot of those things went into the script,

went into the way that we approached it. We adjusted all sorts of details because of historical... So in a way, you know, it was crucial. But then, of course, there are things that I said, you know what, I'm going to ignore that because, you know, film necessarily is a compression and this is not naturalism it's kind of poetic naturalism

there's a sense and I don't want to give it away but even though it takes place in two hours of real time that time is at one point irrelevant Central character doesn't know where he is anymore, doesn't know what time it is, even if he's been asleep or knocked out for two, three days you know central character doesn't know where he is anymore doesn't know what time it is even if he's been asleep or knocked

out for two three days you know and he physically doesn't know where he is in the landscape so you don't

want to be you don't want to be over literal about distances and over literal about time because the film

operates in a dreamlike way at times as well which is you know which is film. And it's not, otherwise I'd have made a documentary or written an essay, you know.

It strikes me that you, so you had a story, a narrative idea about this movie and you wanted to get across the scale, but it feels like technically you obviously, the cinematography, you wanted to absolutely kick on. And for me, it felt as big a shift

as the first time I ever saw Saving Private Ryan when that ramp goes down and suddenly you see sort of bullets for the first time in film you know whizzing around and and talk to me a little bit about some of the techniques that you use and whether you must have pioneered did this film need it did the film did your story your script need you to make all these innovations to realise it? Yeah, the two things happen at the same time you're searching for a perfect marriage of form and content, you know

you want the form to match the content and if you're telling a story in two hours of real time and your goal is to lock the audience together with the characters for those two hours, make them experience every second passing with the characters, take every step with them, then it seemed like a natural step to not edit, to not cut,

to not give an audience any sense that there was anything except this single dance between the camera, the actors and the landscape, which is the choreography that we're engaged in the whole time. But if you haven't seen it, it's difficult to imagine it because I think everyone's worst version of that is the cameras trotting along behind two people

and seeing what they're seeing, basically for two hours, or seeing their faces as they react to it. The truth is, it's a constantly shifting movement from the subjective camera to the objective camera, from the intimacy of understanding their emotional reaction to what they're seeing and also showing the landscape, the journey, the scale of the journey, understanding distances.

And then there are these other characters. As I said earlier, it's nature. This is a land that, yes, it's been raz raised to the ground largely by the Germans, but it's French farmhouses and towns and canals and rivers and orchards and streams and woods and the spring re-emerging. And so there's this other life that comes back into the film that you also want to kind of pay homage to. So it's that dance is an instinctive thing that you and the... I had one of the greatest cinematographers of all time

shooting this film Roger Deakins and I've worked with him three times before and this is our fourth time and most of prep for us was just talking talking talking talking trying it out talking again storyboarding it trying it out talking you know and then an endless amount of rehearsals because if you think

about it well you have to if you write a scene that says they go from a quarry to a woods, down a hill, through an orchard to a farmhouse, that's all very well. But when you can't cut, the distances have to be exactly the length of the scene and the scene has to be exactly the length of the set. And only when you've measured it

can you then start building the orchard, building the farmhouse, digging the trenches. So you have to get out there on open fields before you do anything holding a script just marching up and down with a bunch of people sticking flags in the ground saying well this is where the trench starts this is where the comms trench enter this is the left turn this is when this is the dugout this is where they have a little fight this is and there were all these so there were white posts marking the trenches and then there were orange posts marking events within the trenches. And the same for No Man's Land, German Dugout, etc.

Right the way through the film. So if you ask George Mackay now, who played Schofield, he could walk the journey of the movie for you still, step for step, because it's so in his muscle memory. We literally did it for months because there was no way of moving if we hadn't if we didn't know that it was you know because if you build an orchard that's two times longer than you need you've got a long scene with no dialogue you know you just run out of things to talk about or if it's too short they're standing still for a section of

the scene because they know they can't move anywhere so it has to be exactly the right length. And that was really a challenge. And then rehearsals, those actors. I mean, as someone on telly, the stress of getting something wrong at the end of the scene, I mean, it must have been awful. Can you reveal how many takes you had to do on certain things? Oh, we had to do multiple takes, 30, 40, 50 takes sometimes. But, you know, these are eight-minute scenes, so that's a lot of shoe leather

and travelling distances all the time. But the truth is that all the rehearsals in order to build the set and plan the camera rigs meant they were very, very familiar with it. And in a kind of way, that meant that they were living it by the time we came to shoot it rather than acting it. And i kept saying just ignore don't think about where the camera is very occasionally i'll say just in that moment look over your right shoulder you know um and they would you know by that time they were so comfortable with it that it was easy and then you know what you want though is this very odd combination of things you want incredible precision in the camera

work but you don't want incredible precision in the physical movement of the actors you want them to not be thinking about how they're moving not be thinking about how they're being with each other just simply being so you want spontaneity in front of the camera and you want precision behind the camera so that balance was always the most difficult thing because sometimes you know take 10 takes to get the precision in camera by which time they've done it 10 times and they've sort of lost their spontaneity often the directors will tell you the first two or three takes are the ones where you get the most electricity and sometimes you don't need any more than that but here that didn't happen very often you know there's no

there's only one scene which is the first take in the movie you know and um but most of them were you know after sort of 20 and so the job is then to keep the actors alive literally but also I kept saying look if mistakes happen just keep going because some of them are just human you're slipping in the mud, you're falling over

at one key moment at the end near the end, one of the characters is nearly delivering a message and he gets literally knocked off his feet that was a mistake exactly, because i just said if that happens to you get up and keep running you know and he did and it's in the movie so those are happy accidents that you would hope for on normal movies but you're able to kind of get that those rough edges really which which give a feeling of life rather than acting.

One of the best books I read this year was Toby Green's A Fistful of Shells about the pre-European encounter history of West Africa. And I told him that I was really struck by the hugely important trading and cultural links that West Africa had long enjoyed before European seafarers arrived in the 15th century. Yes, it was. And I think that's one of the important, I suppose, rebalancings that the book tries to do. That yes, this wasn't a region which somehow emerged into history

in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries once the Europeans started trading down the West African coast and increasingly enslaved. It was a region which was already connected to parts of the Ottoman Empire, for example, to Saudi Arabia, to places like Iraq, and also, interestingly, connected to places in Spain and southern Italy, even before the 15th century as well. So yes, it was a region which had important trading

and political connections in its own right before then. That's right. And I think that's something which persisted throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries as well. You actually find diplomats from, for example, the Kingdom of Dahomey in Portugal or in Brazil in the 18th century. One of the bits which I found fascinating was when I found this document which described the ambassadors of the Kingdom of Dahomey in Lisbon in the 1790s, the bill

at the restaurant where they ate, they went to the opera house every night for a month and this kind of thing. And it's not the impression that, if you like, school history syllabi have given us of West African history. That's one of the things that the book tries to look at. But it does have a unique geographical position with advantages and disadvantages in terms of trade and state building that come from that. Tell me, how do these empires and polities grow, flourish and then decline in the space we now call West Africa? Well, that's a very important question because the things which affect the rise and fall in the way of these empires and kingdoms

relate to changing geographies, for example, the expanding of dry seasons, which happens in what we call the medieval period, but also from around 1630 onwards. That has a big impact on politics in the region. Also elements of geography such as the savannah areas of West Africa, which are more open to being controlled by cavalries and so on, which allow for bigger states and regions nearer to the coast

because of the different geography there, have different types of political formations. So all those things are relevant, as also are the openings which trade offers or closes in that period as well. So West African political systems arise on their own terms, but of course white political systems all over the world are also related to other factors of trade and global connections. And the Sahara, in terms of sailing,

it was quite hard to sail between what we now call Morocco and West Africa, was it? So we're talking about trans-Saharan trade. Yes, so to start with, you have this trans-Saharan trade, that's right. And, for example, 30 or 40 years ago, a lot of the history which was written about this, particularly in Portuguese, actually talked about the conflict between the caravel and the caravan. So you had the caravan, which obviously is the Saharan trade. And yes, there were very complex networks.

There are maps from the 14th century, actually, which show these networks, because it's crossing the Sahara through the oases and so forth. And then, yes, from the start of the 15th century, the Portuguese begin to sail down the coast of Morocco. They didn't actually have the navigational equipment, the quadrants and such, to make it easy to sail out of sight of land that was one of the reasons once you sailed south

of a particular Cape which was known as Cape Borgia door at that time you had to sail out of land to return to Portugal that was one of the reasons that people didn't do that because they were terrified of it so it took quite so it took quite a long time for this for the for the if you like the competition to really take shape between the caravan and the caravel. One of the things which is difficult, I think, with writing history over such a long period of time is that we can compress time.

We can think, oh, you know, it was inevitable that in the course of the 15th century this would take place. Well, actually, you know, at the time it wasn't inevitable at all. You know, for people looking at it, 50 years in the future was a hell of a long time, as it is for us today. So I try to take account of that in the book too does racism bluntly and the impact of the and the shadow cast by the slave trade where we think it's what technologically very sophisticated white people turning up and sort of dragging you know natives out of the bushes with no you know what bushes and then taking them out against their wishes to the new world.

Has that racist thinking allowed, discouraged us from looking at the kind of sophistication of the kingdoms and polities that have gone before? Yes, clearly African history has always been thought, in Britain in particular, for about 200 years through the lens of the history of slavery since the abolition movement. In the abolition movement, in the abolition era, you had set up two obviously opposing camps. You had the pro-slavery movement,

which portrayed Africa as a benighted continent and slavery was saving these people from that continent. And then you had the abolitionists who portrayed Africa also actually as a benighted continent, destroyed by the wars of the slave trade, and therefore you had to abolish slavery in order to ameliorate that. Of course, one of the ironies of that narrative is it set up an idea of African history as solely related to slavery,

and it didn't allow any scope for any of the other elements of African history is solely related to slavery. And it didn't allow any scope for any of the other elements of African history to come through, such as art, literature, oral and written, architecture, elements of technology, medicine, in fact, all those things which you could write about and which there is evidence of, which weren't written about. And of course, the other irony is that these wars were very much an offshoot of the state-building process, just as they had been in Europe. Europe's state-building process in that period of history

was also marked by innumerable wars and conflicts, just as was the case in Africa, which is one of the parallels which the book tries to look at. And then in that case as well, why is it just a quirk of navigational technology? I mean, this is one of the big questions of history, is why on earth do these Western Europeans, who've played no particular role in human history so far,

go and expand like a virus across the entire world in the space of 150 years? Why was it that the African states, technologically advanced, culturally sophisticated, why did they... Why did it prove so unequal? That's a very good question. That's one of the reasons why the book looks at a long period of time. I think it's over a long period of time

that you can get some answers to that question. To begin with, why was there an interest in that trade in the first place? We have to remember that the coast at that time, where the Portuguese arrived from the mid-15th century onwards, in that trade in the first place. We have to remember that the coast at that time, where the Portuguese arrived from the mid-15th century onwards, they were backwaters. They were sub-provinces of the centralised hearts. For example, Senegal, which is where the Portuguese first arrived,

the kingdoms around the coast there were provinces of the Empire of Mali. And Mali would have faced north and east into the Arab world. It was facing much more in those directions, that's right. But for the rulers, the viceroys of the provinces on the coast, it was to their advantage to trade with the Portuguese. They could begin to challenge and vie with the central power for supremacy. And that happened, for example, in Senegambia. It happened in the Kingdom of Congo as well with the province in Soyo. And there are various different examples of that.

So when we start breaking down our idea of Africa, in quotes, to the different constituent parts, it makes more sense as to why it was in some people's interest to begin trade. And then how did this trade mesh with a rise in inequality between African and European political actors? The book makes a case that one of the reasons for that is looking at this as a trade, looking at the history of money and how the types of money which were used in West Africa

and which were traded by Europeans, so a lot of the early trade is in currencies, is in copper, iron, cowries, which are used as currencies in West Africa. And the value of those declined over time, whereas what Africa exported, which was gold, to begin with, a lot of gold, and then subsequently captive labour, which was used to accumulate value in the Americas, grew over time. So that's the case that the book makes

as to why that led to a rise in inequality. And so when you look at these kingdoms, like the Kingdom of Mali, Kingdom of Congo, what are the sources like? Again, how hard is it for a historian to push aside that curtain of that bookend of the slave trade and actually see what was going on before it? Another very good question.

It can be hard. It depends. The answer is different in different regions of West Africa. Congo is a good case. In Congo, there's a huge amount of written sources. The Congolese kings and ruling royal families converted to Christianity very early. A lot of them became literate in Portuguese very early

and wrote in passion letters in Portuguese. Tragic. Yes, and some of them also later in Kikongo from quite an early time. So we have those sources. And some of those sort of recounted oral histories of the foundation of the kingdom from an early time too, but at that time in the late 1400s, in the 1500s.

So Vilama Kongo is very well documented from that time. Mali, we have a lot of Arab accounts in Arabic of Mali dating from the 13th century, 14th century, and more manuscripts are being found. We discussed before, actually, Dan, you've been to Timbuktu, you saw some of those, and there are more of are being found uh we discussed before actually dan you've been to timbuktu you saw some of those and uh there are more of those being found uh and then there is a history in most of west africa is an oral genre it's retained orally and sometimes and i've had this experience myself uh it's possible to corroborate oral and written sources from an early time from the 16th century even but that's a slow process so that was toby green a great place to finish up thank you again listeners everyone that's put up with me and this podcast over an extraordinary year i hope that all of you have some cause for optimism

as we move into 2021 we'll be there podcasting every day see you on the other side. Hi everyone, thanks for reaching the end of this podcast. Most of you are probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour. Head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

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