Oh What A Time... - #195 Hymns & Anthems! (Part 1)
Episode Date: August 31, 2026This week we’re discussing some classic hymns and all round total anthems through history. We’ll discuss a favourite on the UK football terraces: The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The true story of... that absolute banger ‘Jerusalem’. And from down under, we’ll have that Aussie smash hit ‘Advance Australia Fair’.Elsewhere, there’s a Greggs on Pudding Mill Lane.. Which other areas have stayed true to their origins? If you’ve got anything on this or anything else, do get in touch! hello@ohwhatatime.comAnd if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hello and welcome to Oh, what a time.
It's a history podcast and boy did I have some history a couple of weekends ago
because I went on a walking tour geared toward kids of the Great Fire of London.
Did you?
Oh, wow.
So you ended up at the monument, presumably.
Started at the monument.
Started at the monument, okay.
And then went east to where the boundary of the fire near the Tower of London.
You get to start a fire, don't you?
on and see how quickly it takes the kids.
Exactly, yeah.
It was very interesting, very informative, but one thing struck me.
So there's the famous fact, you know, the monument in London,
which is obviously the big statue that marks the damage that was done
on the Great Fire of London,
apparently if you tip it over, the tip of the monument,
will lie on pudding lane exactly where the fire started.
That's a great fact that.
Thomas Farroner's bakery, isn't it, exactly?
So we walked over at the start of Thomas Farraner's bakery
and there's a plaque on the wall, Thomas Farraner's bakery would have been here
and we were there on Pudding Lane and I looked up the street
and there before my eyes, almost in tribute to Thomas Farriner, was a Gregs.
Isn't it interesting?
Yeah.
All these hundreds of years later we simply cannot shake the,
this lane is for bakeries.
Surely it should become a street of like pudding shops.
ice cream places, you know, sort of
cupcakes, all that kind of stuff.
It should be the centre of London's culinary heart,
but specifically puddings.
Well, one thing they told us was that pudding,
we now associate puddings as desserts,
but puddings back in the day was like mints.
That is a tough sell to the kids.
If I said, right then, you've had your main,
now it's time for your mince-based pudding.
Some sweetened mints.
They would be absolutely.
Are we imagining that's like in a mint pie, that sort of mint?
So it is a sweetened mince with sugar, I imagine cinnamon and stuff like that.
Is that probably what we're dealing with there?
What is it?
Well, no, because like Yorkshire pudding is a pudding.
Yes.
But it's not as savoury, isn't it?
That's a good point.
Yeah.
I think the definition of pudding has changed over the years.
Well, we're going on answer here.
In 166, the year of the Great Fire of London, pudding primarily referred to a savoury mixture of meat, fat, grains or blood.
boiled or steamed inside an animal gut or cloth bag.
This is what we were told.
There you go, kids.
It's your night's birthday party.
Is someone saying,
do you think we should be less honest on the menu
in how we're describing that?
Do we need to use all of those descriptives?
Wow.
I like the fact there's a Greggs there, though.
I do, though.
I like the fact that that's a great.
That's part of the baking history in their remains.
That's modern baking, isn't it?
I think that must be the most popular bakery in Britain now,
surely.
There's no other bakery like Gregg's, yeah.
Oh, by a mile.
an absolute mile.
Yeah, no one comes close.
London's basically the only city in Britain
where Pretz outnumber Gregs is.
Because until you come to London,
if you don't live in London,
until you come to London,
you won't fully appreciate
just how ubiquitous the Pretta Monge is.
I mean, how far do you have to travel
before seeing a Pret in Central London?
200 metres, 250 metres, at most?
I think it's basically impossible to turn 360 degrees in London and not see a Pratt.
So, like, if you span on your heels, you'll always see a Pratt no matter where you are.
And people who don't spend time in London now think we're, this is hyperbolic for comedic effect.
No, no, it's pure 100% truth.
It is absolutely mad.
And London is a fall of it.
Yeah, completely.
People have got subscriptions to Pratt.
Subscriptions, like it's Netflix.
There's this idea that people are getting moved out of their community.
because of the rise in residential prices
actually because of the incredible amount of prets.
There is not enough housing anymore
because it's 98% prets in London.
Like you've got to where the cities and greggsies are popular.
I can think of quite numerous greggs in Cardiff.
I can think of one or two in Manchester,
off the top of my head.
But the London prett obsession is unlike, it is a plague.
There are two prets in Paddington.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
There are three.
Pretz-Simpannington.
There's the one next to the Elizabeth line.
There's the one as you come in on the tube,
and then there's one next to the taxis.
It's a triple Precht station.
It's a Pratt first train station second, basically, isn't it?
A Pratt cubed.
Yeah.
What do you make of this then?
Josh Wittickham went to Rome last week
and sent me a text message of a photo
from going into Pret and having a Pratt in Rome,
with the sentence one in Rome,
which really made me laugh.
But come on.
Rome is the city of sort of,
it's one of the great coloury capital.
You can't be going to a Pratt in Rome, can you?
I don't know.
Pratt feels like something you're running late.
I like a Pratt,
but only if I'm running late somewhere
and I need to quickly fill myself up.
Not if I'm on holiday, surely.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's a sort of emergency, isn't it?
It's not a holiday treat.
If you said it is he on holiday,
should go and have a Pratt when you're in Madrid or another.
That's disappointing.
Yeah.
That's disappointing.
Can I make an observation?
I think if you took Thomas Farroner,
from 1666 and you popped him in 2026 into a Greg.
He would know 95% of what everything was.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
If you stuck him in a pre, it might blow his mind.
Yes.
I don't think salads,
possibly even toasted sandwiches.
Two boiled eggs and a little plastic pot.
Two boiled eggs and a tiny bit of spinach.
You refer to Greg, sir, as if you went into a Greg,
Do you describe each individual
branch of a Greggs as a Gregg?
And Greg's is a collective term for all of the Greggs.
Do you say, oh look, there's a Greg over there?
Are you saying that's the Greggs?
Yeah, we all have our own favourite Greg,
but we collectively all like Greggs.
Any time you go Paddington, you have to do the Pret hat trick.
Yeah.
Coffee in one, boiled egg in another,
and then whatever you like and the third.
The triple crown
If any listener
wants to do the Pratt hat trick
And send us a picture
I would love to see it
I'm genuinely intrigued
This is quite a sort of normal question
But I do want to hear
What's your go-to Pratt order listeners
I'm intrigued
I just want to know
What the demographics
Of uptake is when they go in there
I'll tell you what mine is
I have a very fixed order
Which is a Swedish meatball wrap
Which is the best thing
That Pret do if you ask me
I like their cucumber
It's probably the most unhealthy thing
Is it that bad?
I don't know
I've checked the stuff
It seems all right.
I mean, I don't think any athletes eat it.
I haven't seen Moses Kiptonoian there, but it's got...
No, no.
But for me, it's fine.
What about you, Elle?
What are you having?
I always have a mango pot because I like mango.
Yeah.
I like the dark chocolate of an almonds.
Yeah.
I also like the pasta with kale because it's so salty.
Right.
I don't mind a chicken and bacon baguette.
I quite like their salad, the sort of salad bowls with chicken and
Do you go dressing or no dressing?
I bet you go no dressing.
No dressing because it's too overpowering.
Raw dog, the salad.
I'm now imagining you naked, by the way.
I'm not hearing no dressing meaning salad dressing.
I mean you're going to go in no clothes on.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, I take my clothes off at the till.
Because obviously, if they haven't got it, I keep my clothes on.
They serve you quicker.
Get him out, quick, serve him.
I buy the salad and I say, and now this is how I'm going to eat.
And I will not take north from.
answer.
My more pressing question actually should have been, to be honest, have you ever got a free
coffee in Pratt?
Because you know, Pratt do this thing where they give out a certain amount of free coffee
to people they like the jib of, or the phrase would be, the look of each week.
I've never got one.
My wife's got them a couple of times.
I've never got one.
Never.
I just don't give off those vibes.
I think, see, I'm always in a hurry.
If I'm meeting from Pratt in Paddington, I'm in a hurry.
And so I'm not walking in.
I'm like, hey!
Which I think is what they want.
as discussed, you're naked as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hot drinks and a naked body are never a good combination.
Genuinely, have you ever got a free coffee?
What's your go-to, Pratt order?
Get in contact with the show and let us know.
Actually, on that, we've got lots of good correspondence yet again.
Should we crack into a bit of correspondence before we do some history proper?
Let's do that.
Our email today comes from Liam Mathuman, and this email really made me laugh.
It's title is lame injuries, okay?
Good day, my learned friends.
I was listening to the Mysteries episode whilst running this.
week where mainly Chris was talking about lame injuries. Chris, you can briefly catch our
listers up on what happened to you at Sports Day. Tora hamstring at the dance race on Sports
Day, pretty sure I broke a rib the week after. Now, almost fully recovered. How did you
break the rib? Playing football in the garden with crane slipped on wet grass and collapsed over.
This is what Liam says, okay? I was listening to the Mysteries episode whilst running this week
where mainly Chris was talking about lame injuries. I have a couple of lame injuries. I have a couple of
lame injuries you may enjoy.
Most recently, whilst loading the family into the car for a weekend away,
I ran back into the house to go for a last minute, double-check everything is off,
and emergency wee.
My dad used to always do that.
He used to always go in to pretend that he always say he's going to check if the taps are off,
and then he wouldn't emerge again for about eight minutes.
Definitely doing a poo, and we'd all sit there in the car.
Yeah.
We haven't got that many taps, Dad.
You must be a bit by now.
It's very quick to turn a tap off as well.
Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anyway, Liam says, I proceeded to trip up the stairs, dislocating my second toe,
which I promptly had to pop in back myself.
That is stuff of horror show for me.
The idea of having to put your own dislocated body part back into place is like one of my great fears.
It gets worse, though.
My partner then had to drive all weekend that I could barely walk unaid it.
So that's the first injury.
So goes into the house to check the taps, falls up the stairs, breaks his toe, can't drive at all.
which partner has a drive for the family.
Thoughtsale?
I've done it lots and lots and lots of times,
but falling up stuff is way more embarrassing
than falling down stuff.
It is, isn't it?
Yeah.
You can sort of partly blame gravity falling down,
can't you?
That wasn't entirely me.
That was science.
Fawley upstairs, always a bit of a rush.
It's sort of a clumsy rush, isn't it?
Well, it doesn't end there for Liam.
My favourite injury, though, was back in my youth.
When after a night of VK Blues and cheap flat lager,
I came home, surprisingly sober, went up to my bedroom, had a final wee before turning the landing light off.
Unbeknownst to me, the dog had laid across the top of the stairs.
And yes, over I went all the way down the stairs this time where I knocked myself out on the tiled floor and dislocated my shoulder.
Basically, if I ever, if I ever need a wee, I'm on high alert.
Keep up the wonderful work you do.
I really enjoy listening to it on my post rounds.
Godspeed, Liam Matthew.
Oh, Liam.
That sounds horrendous.
Knocking himself out, dislocated shoulder bone.
Liam.
Oh, what's your worst drunken injury?
You've ever done anything bad?
Well, you were there, Crane, for my worst drunken injury.
What happened?
It was Josh Whitakam's wedding.
Josh Whitakum's wedding came directly after my daughter had been born
about like six weeks before, and I hadn't been out for like six months.
Yes.
I had zero tolerance for alcohol because I hadn't been out in ages.
And then my wife, Sophie, went home with a baby.
And she was like, stay out for a bit.
Next thing I know, Tom Crane's getting a call.
Where's Chris?
And Tom's like, looks at me and goes, he's right next to me.
me. And then I realized I'd had
way too many espresso martinis.
As I was leaving the venue,
there was a gate into the car park.
My father-in-law had come to pick me up because I'd missed my taxi.
And there was a bar over the doorway out into the car park.
There was a metal bar at the bottom, which I tripped on
and absolutely face-planted in the gravel of the car park.
And I was very much the worst for wear.
Like, I smashed my face up.
So then my father-in-law is who's come to pick up.
hit me up, looks up and sees me a bloody mess
emerging from the gravel of this car park outside a wedding venue
because I've tripped on this iron bar, smashed my face up.
And then I got in the car, I got in the car.
It's like, blood. I've got tissue in my face.
I've got my lip, and I've cut a bit my nose on the gravel.
And he starts driving me home.
And somehow I fall asleep.
And then on the drive home, I totally forgot.
It's my five-in-law driving.
And I, in my stupor, thought it was a local taxi driver.
Yeah.
And so I'll start going,
so do you know where you're going you know where you're going drive drive do you know where you're going
he's like this guy this guy is father of my granddaughter and eventually eventually he got me home
and then the following dad i don't know if you remember this but i was late there was a pool party
the next day and obviously the story of me tripping on the light had been absolutely smashed
and falling over and cutting my face and devour and love and done the round oh yeah if if there'd been a
newspaper for that wedding you'd have been on page one of it would have been on page one
ahead of Josh and Rawls, his wife actually.
I walked into the wedding and everyone's around the pool
and everyone breaks into applause and I look across the pool.
Even Jennifer Saunders, who was there, was applauding me.
Yeah.
For this story.
What you're forgetting, Chris, from that story is actually it was me
who was helping you up on the gravel.
It was me who got you into your father-or-law's car.
That's how drunk you was.
You got me into the car.
I actually was your night in shape.
shining Arna.
And final little point, you were sick on my knee.
There you are.
There's my answer to the story.
What's I?
You were a little bit sick on my knee.
But I'm such a kind of friend.
I haven't brought it up ever until now that we're recording a podcast.
I've decided to mention it.
Yeah.
There you go.
I thought I shouldn't say anything until there's a big enough audience.
Then I'll mention it.
That's what I thought.
So ladies gentlemen, now you know, what a good friend I am.
And I haven't mentioned it.
There you go.
And that's why Tom hasn't worn that lovely suit he wore at Josh's
wedding for so many years because you can't get the smell of skulls sick.
Yeah.
But it's probably hardened now.
You'd probably just peel it off.
Thank you very much, Liam, for emailing in with your double injury stories.
Absolutely love those.
If anyone else has any foolish injuries that have fallen them, do you get in contact with
the show?
Do you know what?
Here's how you do that.
All right, you horrible look.
Here's how you can stay in touch with the show.
You can email us at hello at oh what a time.com.
And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh What a Time pod.
Now clear off.
So every week on this show, we invite our Oh What a Time,
All-Timmers to have their name selected.
And we will figure out where in history this name may have been is one of the benefits
This is of our top tier on Patreon.
Your name this week is one word.
Kalista.
Kalista.
Because it's one word, I can't help but think about 80s pop acts.
Or like a Roman or Egyptian emperor.
Yes.
It's very close, isn't it?
I was thinking sort of Brazilian striker,
Middlesbrough would have bought in about 1999.
they'd had a lot of work permit issues
he'd eventually come in, scored one gold in 36
and failed to keep them up.
That's basically what I'm imagining.
They went through a real period.
There's a lot of those clubs that come up
from the championship to the Premier League
who buy 15 players,
one of them will be called Calista or Edvard.
Genino, Emerson, plays like that.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, those were good ones, but most aren't.
Or the wealthiest individual
in the history of the world.
Yep.
Calista, when he signed for Budersborough,
famously was taken around London tourist hotspots,
like the Tower of London and Madam Toussaint.
And I told them Middlesbrough were a North London club.
Yeah.
By the way, Calista doesn't have a normal job or occupation.
I think yours, I think the closest there, L, is the most powerful,
most wealthy person of all time.
I think that's quite good.
I'm possibly like an Inca, a really high-level English.
That's that sort of period, I'm imagining, ritualised sacrifices, a lot of gold.
Yeah, and, you know, sort of says I'd like a sort of a 5,000 metre high pyramid built in my name, please.
But that will take 150 years, yeah?
Exactly.
But you'll be dead long before it's finished.
Doesn't bother me.
There you can, please.
I want my legacy to live long after me.
So, yeah, I'd like the biggest pyramid ever built, please.
There you go, Kalee.
Your choice.
Middlesbrough signing
or most powerful person ever to have lived, you choose.
Thank you so much, Kalista.
And if you want your name speculated upon,
you can join our patron
where you get two bonus episodes every month
and here's how you join.
Hello again, you horrible lot.
Enjoying the show.
Well, why not show the love
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Well, this week on the show we are discussing hymns.
I am up first with an absolute banger, but gentlemen, what do you have?
I will be discussing the Australian National Anthem.
And I'm going to be talking about one of the great sporting anthems.
Still Santa Day.
You still hear it in stadiums and elsewhere.
I'll be talking to you about the battle hymn of the Republic air,
an instant American hymn classic.
Do you know it?
No, how's it go?
You do know it.
I'm going to sing it for you now,
but maybe for the listener,
we'll play the actual version.
I know this song best
through its association with status quo
in Manchester United.
Oh, okay.
The tune is,
glory, glory, man United,
but of course the real lyrics,
glory, glory, hallelujah.
This is the story of that song.
But for the listeners' benefit,
let's play a little bit.
The melody takes of rapistoric store
He had loose the faithful lightning of his terrible smiths
The melody for this song has been sung at civil rights marches, presidential funerals
And of course, famously football terraces
It was actually played at the state funeral of Winston Churchill,
Who himself had requested it.
It has also been quoted in symphonies
And borrowed for the greatest American Labour anthem of the 20th century.
But it began life as a folk.
song, then it became a hymn, then a marching song, and then in one cold night in Washington
in 1861, it became something completely different. Do you think you're going to request songs
for your funeral, or do you think you're going to be a lot of like, it literally doesn't matter
to me? I'm literally doesn't matter. That point. You can play Barbie Girl by Akko, my family.
It will not. I won't be there. Just do whatever makes the congregation laugh. And fingers crossed,
there is a congregation. Just stick it on. Stick magic effort.
Ben on, I denies.
Actually, put something on that's likely to bring people in who are walking past on the street in case it is a little bit quiet.
Just play some drum and bass.
So that people are going to put their head into the church and go, wait a second.
Insomnia by faithless.
Yeah, exactly.
If you're going past a church.
Get no sleep.
Quite empty church.
You're like, what is that?
I might go in for a second.
It gives the idea of a crowd, isn't it?
Yeah.
Tom, I feel as a former choir boy, there would be a lot of pressure on you to select some good hymns.
What would you pick?
What would you?
What I like, Arveh Maria as a beautiful piece of music.
I've sung at a number of funerals.
I've sung.
Have you?
Yeah, loads and loads of funerals.
And you're going to be singing at mine,
but you're going to be doing insomnia by faithless.
I can't get no sleep.
I'll do it for you.
I do anything for you well.
Oh, thanks, man.
All right.
Well, back to the Battle of the Republic.
So it's actually older than the American Civil War itself.
It began as a revivalist folk hymn in the 1780s and 1790s.
It was often sung at open-air religious meetings under the title,
Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us?
But the bit that everyone knows, the bit that goes,
Glory, glory, hallelujah, wasn't added until 60 years after the song
had already been well-known as a folk hymn.
So the good bit wasn't added until 1850.
Wow, it would be like Paul McCartney adding on the Nana-N-Nabit to Hayd
Jude now.
All Brandon Flowers
adding the chorus to Mr. Brightside
now. Yeah, so
adding the glory, glory
hallelujah bit made the tune way
catchy and very easy to sing and endlessly
adaptable. But what
it lacked was really colourful
lyrics. But by the
outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861,
Union soldiers were marching to a version
called John Brown's body.
The John Brown in the song is a
slightly confused figure. So Dr. Daryl has done fantastic research. I tried to supplement
it with my own. But basically, the lyrics were originally written as a joke about a soldier
called John Brown, who served in a Massachusetts regiment. But the name transferred easily to a
much more famous John Brown, the militant abolitionist who had led the 1859 raid on the
federal armory at Harper's Ferry in an attempt to spark a slave uprising and had been
hanged that December. So to Union soldiers marching south, John
John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on, that became
the rallying cry.
But also, like so many songs, people were adapting it and adding crude alternatives around
campfires.
So you see Union soldiers would sometimes sing, gory, gory, how peculiar, among other lyrics.
Oh, okay.
If this was to be the song of the Union cause, though, you needed to give it a more dignified
set of words.
And this is why I find interesting about this song.
It's like, yeah, so it was around as a folk song in the 1780s and 90s,
and then you add the chorus, glory, glory, hallelujah in the 1850s.
And then it's not until November 1861 that the lyrics we all know are added to it.
And it's an interesting story how those lyrics actually get added to the song.
A well-connected New Englander called Julia Ward Howe was staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
a Grand Bow Arts establishment.
about two blocks from the White House, which makes the song extra interesting.
Howe was born into a prominent New York banking family.
Her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, was a reformer who as a young student had sailed to Greece to fight in the Greek War of Independence.
Her great-grandfather had served in the Continental Congress during the American Revolution.
Yeah, interestingly, Julia was known personally to Charles Dickens.
Ah.
And also a friend of the pioneering journalist Margaret Fuller, a leading American abolitionist,
and later the president of the Massachusetts Women Suffrage Association.
Wow.
Howe was lying in bed and she heard John Brown's body drifting up beneath her hotel window one night
being sung by Union soldiers.
In reality, she had heard the tune earlier that evening at a parade ground on the edge of the city,
but definitely the song stayed with her.
She went to bed at the Willard and later recalled the moment vividly.
She says, I awoke in the grey of the morning twilight,
and as I lay, waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.
Interestingly, as well, like, to hear a song, hear people singing the lyrics and think, I can do better than that.
Like, what this needs is a rewrite.
And for it to really work is interesting.
So she woke up in that kind of morning twilight and she sat down with a pen and paper and basically wrote down the new lyrics.
The result was a set of biblical, apocalyptic lyrics fitted to the tune of John Brown's body.
and it opened with the immortal line.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
The poem was published three months later in February 1862
on the front cover of the Atlantic Monthly magazine.
How much was Howe paid for the creation of this poem, do you think?
Well, you say she's a person of wealth and standing,
all that sort of stuff, maybe it's better than we think.
I would have guessed between either nothing or between nothing and $10.
Well, yeah, $5.
$5 she was paid, about the equivalent of $165 today,
and the response was instantly extraordinary.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic entered American popular culture,
almost immediately becoming inseparable from the Union War effort
and from the abolitionist's cause.
Because the Atlantic Monthly also circulated in Britain,
the song crossed the Atlantic quickly.
One British newspaper called it the Marseillaise of the American War.
Its power came from its imagery of divine judgment, righteous cause,
and from its rhythm, a song sold.
could actually march to. But not everyone loved it. As the United States moved into an era of
foreign intervention at the turn of the 20th century, some people began to see the song as glorifying
war rather than justice. In 1901 in the wake of the Spanish-American war, Mark Twain wrote an anti-imperialist
parody titled Battle Hinn of the Republic Updated. The novelist Stephen Crane used a song in a similarly
critical spirit in his great Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage. Others embraced it,
heartedly, the composer Charles Ives returned to the battle him repeatedly,
most gloriously in the third movement of his New England Holiday Symphony, known as the 4th of July.
But in 1915, the tune took another turn.
A trade union activist called Ralph Chaplin wrote a new set of lyrics to the melody,
producing what would become one of the great labour anthems of the 20th century,
Solidarity Forever.
It became closely associated with the American Labour Movement
and was famously recorded by Pete Seeger and the Ormanac singers on their 1941 hours.
album Talking Union. One further piece of American culture owes its existence to the battle hymn
of the Republic when John Steinbeck was searching for a title for his 1939 novel about the
Dust Bowl migration. His wife, Carol Henning, suggested a phrase from Howe's lyrics from the line,
trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. The novel was called the Grapes
of Rath. There you go. That's a great fact. So it began as a hymn, it became a margin
song and in the end it became a national conscience set to music.
Good story, isn't it?
It's a very good story, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, it doesn't happen very often now that songs are updated 50, 60 years after they
were first written.
You might get cover versions of songs that are 60 years old, but very rarely do they update
or amend the lyrics.
Did they update three lions?
Did they to change the amount of years of hurt?
They did, didn't they?
That is right, isn't it?
Yeah.
Because it wasn't 30 years of her.
They did between 96 and 98.
I think they've given up.
They've given up on dating it soon.
Also it became 32 years of hurt.
No, they just said no more years of hurt in the chorus.
Oh, right.
Oh, is that what it was?
Okay, I thought they were just sort of releasing it with the exact amount of years every time.
36 years of hurt.
38 years of her.
40 years of her, 42 years of her, 44 years of her.
They record them all like the talking clock, L.
Get the next century done.
in one afternoon.
That's a good idea.
108 years of hurt,
110 years of hurt.
What if you could do,
like a 1, 2, 3 style telephone service
that you call it,
instead of the talking clock,
it's exactly how many seconds,
minutes, and hours of hurt they've been.
That's funny.
Well, a lot of people pointed out,
obviously, when it came out in 96,
30 years of hurt,
but they'd won it 30 years previously.
So have the hurt begun?
The day after England
had won the World Cup?
That's a really good point.
Surely the hurt, the hurt begins in 1970, doesn't it, when they get knocked out by...
So how many years of hurt should it have been then, in that case?
So it should have been 26 years of hurt.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
Well, it would be, yeah, 26 years of hurt.
26 years of hurt.
This feels like a GCSE.
England lost in 1970 and the semi-a-where it was.
How many years of hurt has it actually been?
Yeah, maybe let's just rat.
Like, instead of trying to win something, why do we just rationalise the years of hurt
trying to knock as many off as we can.
I think it's going to be easier.
I don't think England fans were hurting in 1966,
seven, eight or nine.
And in the initial stages of the World Cup,
they weren't hurting in 1970.
So I reckon you can definitely knock four years off.
Yeah.
And I think if you're hurting for that long
and you're not speaking to anyone about it,
you've only got yourself to answer to you, haven't you really?
I think there comes a point where you have to take responsibility
for your own hurt and try to seek girls.
If any history and football fan wants to contribute a date on which the hurt began for England fans,
I'd be interesting to see you workings.
So that's it for part one.
In part two, I'm going to be talking about one of the great sporting anthems, the history of it,
and why it is so popular today.
Elle, what are you talking about?
I'll be discussing the Australian national anthem.
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