Empire: World History - Welcome to the Empire Club

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Empire Club. Do you want bonus episodes? Do you want discounts on the books mentioned in the weeks podcast? Do you want reading lists? Do you want ad-free listening? Well now you can. All you need to do is join the Empire Club to access all of these benefits and more. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. So, and welcome to a very, very special Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. A bit more energy, bit more pep, bit more Vim. Wish a VIN man. This is a very exciting and exciting.

announcement. And me, William Duremberg. That's better. That's better. Yeah, much better. This is really exciting because, do you know what we're doing? I'm an Al-Anseid or would I be queues as spoiling the story? No, this is the moment where you get pleased with my hands together, joined in supplication, announce the announce. That we are launching a membership club for our Empire listeners. Absolutely. It's happening. It's happening. You asked. We did it. So look, we've been wanting to do this for a while and there are so many add-on bits that you've been asking for and we thought, well, how are we going to do that? Well, a club, of course. You are already in a great gang, but now there'll be a club as well with added benefits. What will people get who sign up?

Well, those who sign up will get the chance to support the podcast, which of course is very important. And here, fortnightly, bonus episodes where we'll tell more historical tales, discuss the episode. in further depth and have all your historical questions answered. And if you keep listening, we'll hear the first part of the bonus today. How we like to tease you. Yes, the bonus episodes are largely going to be yarns of years ago. I was trying to find some way of sort of pithing it up a bit, but basically we're just going to do some extra bubbling about extra stories that we think are really interesting and that we haven't covered in the main body of the series.

And I know, I know, I know so many of you, hundreds of you, thousands of you have been asking for reading lists. So you know what? We agree. We should. We talk very, very fast on this podcast. So we will amass a reading list for you. And very excitingly, we've done die-ups. So you're going to have discounts on the books mentioned on the week's podcast. And if the tweets we get are anything to go by, we know you're spending quite a lot of money on books from our podcast. So every little helps. If we can give you a discount, we will give you a discount on those books. I think that's definitely the thing that we get more tweets about than anything else, isn't it?

It's reading this and how much people are spending on books having listened to this. Yeah, so hopefully this will help because we know how many of your avid, avid readers. And, you know, it's a pleasure, actually, isn't it? William, and you're a bookman. It's a pleasure to send these books out into hands that'd want them. I just got back to Delhi, and I'm sitting next to my groaning wall-to-wall, wall-to-ceiling, shelves that are about to tumble down and fall on me. So yes, this is a possibility now of everyone being crushed to death by books on empire. By literature. What a way to go, though.

What a way to go. And there are other benefits as well, aren't there, William? Tell us what else people are going to get. You can listen to the pod with that ads. Also, you receive a weekly newsletter, which we're going to write, with additional empire content and, importantly, additional reading suggestions. We're going to really take this reading thing seriously. And we're very keen to get people reading about all this. There's so much that's published that's so good on all these subjects. I'd say one of the great pleasure, I know that you agree with me a little bit, one of the great pleasures of doing this has been reading all the stuff. And particularly the last month for me, I'm in Russia is something that I've circled around rather than ever specialized

in and having the chance to really sit down and read Seabag's books properly or Anthony Beaver's fantastic books properly. And it's funny you should mention Anthony Beaver and Seabagulls books, William, because what do they have in common? Well, what indeed do they have in common? Could it be? Could you be indicating, Anita, that they are both available this week at a discount for our Empire Club members. We will be sending around discount codes in the first issue of the Empire Club newsletter, which allow people to get money off for these books, along with Al-Apabam's fabulous Red Famine and her recent book, Twilight of Democracy. But there is more, isn't there, Anita? Apart from this sort of monumental reading community, and it will be a community, by the way,

because you'll gain access to a chat community where you can talk about the episodes with other fans of the show. Talk about the books that are listed. Talk about the things that you get from those things. And you will get first dibs on live show tickets. I know, I know we did a live show. We were stunned at how quickly the tickets sold. It was fun.

It was crazy, wasn't it? Didn't you feel a little rock star? I got to go to pulpit. Did a little bit of rock star? Yes, you did. Well, we're not allowed to go in the pulpit. But you did go into the pub. Anyway, we're never going back there again.

We won't be allowed. But look, if we do a new live show, you will get first dibs on tickets. So look, as you can hear, so much to get excited about. And we thought we'd give you a tiny sneak peek into what a bonus episode might sound like. If you like this bonus, you can sign up to the Empire Club at Empirpoduk.com. This whole story of your hero, Dulip Singh, the son of Ranjit Singh, the last younger son, this incredibly handsome young man that Queen Victoria has invited to the Isle of White, had painted, and then dropped the minute he gets into debt and starts wanting his jewel back,

what's the going on, back in his hands. You told us a little bit of the story, which I know you've written about before, when he goes off to meet the Tsar. What's all that about? Well, okay, so by this point, I mean, I think it's more accurate to call him an anti-hero because he's been an absolute Class A-Git to his family at this point, this obsession with paying Queen Victoria back for what he calls her treachery. You know, he ejects his family, sends them back to England.

And, you know, Sophia, who is my hero, who is now sort of living in arguably the best refugee colony, the world has ever known, clareges for a while. that's where Queen Victoria puts up the family. But he is sort of in Paris for a while. We're talking 1889. But he gets it into his head that the way to get Punjab back, to get Lahore back, to get everything back that he has lost to the British is to do a deal with the Tsar, that he will become this very important piece in the great game. And if he could just get to talk to the Tsar, he could promise him that, you know, he will go to India, the Sikhs will rise, up for him and behind him. And the Tsar and he can do a pincea movement from the north of India

and drive the British out of the north and that he will be a friendly figure in power in Punjab. And what he does is he's, you know, he's in France for a while. He's trying to get these meetings sorted out. He gets robbed blind while he's in Paris, which he thinks is British spies who've basically picked his pockets and gone through his room. It is British spies. Yeah. But the hatred that he has in him, it's actually an Irishman, since you ask, who is somebody who befriends him and saying, oh, yes, I'll put you in touch with the Tsar. You know, there are great connections between, you know, malevolence against Britain. My enemy's enemy is my friend. And this guy, Tevis is largely responsible for watching him, feeding back all information to London about his movements, and encouraging him to go to Moscow, just so that he can keep a close eye on him. It reminds me, Anita, of how much we need to do a whole empire series on Ireland at some point.

I was recently lecturing in Kachel in Ireland, south of Dublin, about the empire and Ireland. And of course, like in England, half the people in the audience had ancestors who were working with the British in India. And the fact that the spy, effectively, that the British put on to Dulip Singh in Paris was an Irishman. is absolutely part for the course. There's this very complicated relationship with Imperial Britain at this time. And it's not the case, as one would assume, that every Irishman is against the British Empire. And as you know well from the Emirates' story, many Irishmen were in senior positions, not only the Army, but in the Imperial Civil Service. Lieutenant Governor from Tipperary, no less.

Anyway. So what happens is, Dilip Singh, who's sort of largely penniless, this time, who's ejected his wife and children, but he's shacked up with a second wife now. And this is also an interesting story and why he has just become such a dissolute figure when he finally gets to Russia, is he has now set up home with a former chambermaid from the Cox's hotel in London. He was a known playboy throughout his life. And this very pretty young woman called Ada Wetherall has caught his eye, not just caught his eye, but captured his heart. So she becomes his second wife. Ada Wetherall sounds like a character in a Sherlock home story,

doesn't she? It does, isn't it? And she's very much like that. You know, she's, she's beautiful. She is smart, but she's very much of the streets of Lambeth. You know, she's a proper, tough cookie. So she stayed with him in France, in Paris. She's loving the life they're having. And when he announces that he's going to go to Moscow and meet the Tsar, she's all for it. Because, you know, this ars got a lot of money too. And she can move in ever increasing circles. But, what happens is when they get to Moscow, everything he's been told by Tevis that you're going to be welcomed with open arms, because whatever has been going on in the background to discredit him, he's just left alone. So he and Ada, who now have very little money left, they check into a

boarding house, a really sort of down at heel boarding house called the Bilois Boulchoy. It's kind of in the shadow of the Borshoy Theatre. And they're waiting and they're waiting for Zara Alexander. At some points are Alexander is going to send a note or a carriage even better to go and pick up a Duleep Singh and take him into his trust and his confidence and build him up and enable him to go back to India like a hero. If you want to hear the rest of this episode as well as gain access to reading lists, discounted books, ad free listening, a weekly newsletter and join our chat community. Just sign up to Empire Club right now. What are you doing? Get on with it. All you need to do is go to www.empiropoduk.com and you can sign up there for all these amazing benefits and plus

make us very happy. We'd love to see you. That's www.mpirepoduk.com. Look forward to seeing you there.