You're Dead to Me - Philippe, Duc d’Orléans (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in 17th-century France by Dr Jonathan Spangler and comedian Tom Allen to learn all about Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, Louis XIV’s younger brother.King Louis XIV is one of the most famous monarchs in French history: the man who built and presided over the glittering court at Versailles, established himself as an absolute ruler, and whose 72-year reign is still the longest in European history. But what about his younger brother, Philippe? Who was the man who grew up and lived in the shadow of the Sun King? Raised to defer to his brother at all costs, his promising military career was cut short when it seemed like he might outshine Louis. When all eyes were on him as heir to the throne, he would wear dresses to provoke shock at courtly balls. He balanced his marriage to his witty German wife, Liselotte, with a decades-long relationship with his aristocratic male lover, the Chevalier de Lorraine – and other men of the court. And he maintained an image as a louche and irresponsible courtier while increasing his personal wealth through clever financial management. This episode explores the complexities and contradictions of Philippe’s life, and examines the difficult position of second sons in royal history.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Emma Mitchell Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are slipping into our ballgowns and sauntering over to 17th century France to learn all about Louis XIV, less famous but more fabulous brother, Philippe duke d'Aulian. And to help us, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, he's a senior lecturer in history at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he specialises in the aristocracy of early modern France and its neighbours. Luckily for us, he's also an expert on royal courts and is the author of Monsieur Second Sons in the monarchy of France. It's Dr Jonathan Spangler. Welcome, Jonathan. Hello, thanks. It's great to be here today.

Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner. He's a top-class comedian, writer and presenter. You'll know him from loads of comedy TV shows, as well as from Bake Off and Extra Slice, The Apprentice You're Fired. Maybe you've read his hilarious memoirs. No shame and too much. Or perhaps you've listened to one of his podcasts, Like-Minded Friends and Pottering.

It's Tom Allen. Welcome to the show, Tom. Greg, thank you for that lovely welcome. I'm so excited to be here, especially with Jonathan, whose speciality is exactly what I'm interested in, second sons in aristocracies across northern Europe. Actually, any kind of aristocratic life,

I think, because I've always fancied myself as an aristocrat. Oh, really? Yeah, which is unfortunate, considering I went to a comprehensive school in Bromley. But much to my family and friends chagrin, chagrin, I've often tried. to try to pretend I'm an aristocrat and been very quickly knocked down. Maybe that'll change today.

I mean, you dress beautifully. So I think you certainly, you've certainly passed muster on the looks. They're going out on the BBC, aren't we? We are. Some of us like to keep standards on this broadcasting corporation. So I think I would like it if all Radio 4 presenters and announcers still wore a dinner jacket. Right. I'm so sorry. Well, Greg, I was going to spoil it for the listener I was going to say.

I'm so glad you've stuck to that tradition. I'm in a bowl gown. Tom, are you a history lover? Do you enjoy history? I have always loved history. I almost did it at university, but then rather precociously. Like a second son of any French aristocrat, decided I didn't need it. I said it didn't go, but I nearly, I went to interview at Clare College in Cambridge.

Oh. Of course applied there because I thought it was the nicest building, as any fool would, and applied for a very popular course there. and did not know what I was doing and was very roundly rejected. And that sort of put me off a bit. And so I think I decided to pursue showbiz instead, which I think probably was the right thing. So, what do you know?

This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I guess what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And Philippe is perhaps best known for lavish dramas about his brother, Louis, King Louis. In the film, A Little Chaos, Philippe is played by a suave, Stanley Tucci. In The Man in the Iron Mask, he and Louis are reimagined as twins and both played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

But my personal favour, of course, is the TV drama Versailles, shown on the BBC, which I got to discuss every week as the co-host of BBC 2's Inside Versailles with Professor Kate Williams. Bonjour. But was Philippe more than just King Louis' chaotic little brother? What's it like to grow up as the spare?

And how long can you really keep a menageretoir going? Let's find out. Right. Dr Jonathan, let's start at the start. When little Prince Philippe, was born, who were his parents? Presumably, kings, queens. Yes, that's right.

So if you're a prince, generally your parents are a king and a queen. And in this case, France is often very boring in that they always choose the name Louis. So his father's name is Louis the 13th. His mother's name is Anne of Austria, which is a bit confusing because she's from Spain. But the House of Austria governs in Spain. And so that's the way they call her Anne d'autrician in French. So Louis and Anne are his parents. He's born in 1640, right in the middle of the 17th century almost,

and he had an older brother who was called Louis the 14th eventually, about the time he's called the Dauphin. Philippe and Louis were both born after over 15 years of marriage for his parents. And so there was this miracle moment in 1638 when Louis the 14th is born. And so they, of course, name him, the Diodonnet, which is the God-given son. Oh, how lovely. That's what people said about me, actually. And it's quite an entrance into the world, I think.

So even as the spare, young Prince Philippe, you know, the second son, but it's still a prince, he's having, presumably a very prestigious upbringing. He's going to be educated to be a king, or does he get a different education? Well, he's being educated to be a king because in the 70th century, infants often died after only a year or two or nine or ten. So Philippe was always called the spare. He was always the next one in line. So he had to be raised the same way. They had a governess, they had tutors, they had horse riding, fencing, military history, military strategy. At the same time, there was always a bit of a limit in that Louis XIV was always the first.

And Philippe always had to defer to him no matter what. So their psychological relationship was set up from the very, very start. And when you say defer, what would that have meant on a day-to-day? Well, it would have meant that if Louis the 14th stood up, well, let's call him the dauphin, Louis stood up, Philippe would have had to stand up. I mean, that kind of thing. Right. But we also have stories of them being boys and throwing things at each other

and fighting on the floor. And then Philippe is chided because you can't strike your older brother. He's the dofam of France. That's, I mean, can you imagine that? Mom! I told you. A tragedy strikes very young for these two boys.

France loses its king, right? Louis XIII dies. The boys are four, three? Right. So four years old and three years old. It's the middle of the 17th century. there are wars raging both with Germany and Spain. France has been at war for over 10 years. Their mother, Anne of Austria, tries to take the reins of government with Cardinal Mazarin by her side,

but the old elites, the princes, the dukes, they don't want to have anything of that. They think they should be running the government as well. So they stage a battle, a civil war called the Fronde in France, and it gets to be so scary that at one point Anne takes the boys and just escapes the countryside to Saint-Germain-Laye in the western parts of Paris. The other character who's revolving around in the background that I think we shouldn't forget is Louis the 13th's younger brother. So there's another generation of all this. Gaston is still alive. Gaston is dashing and lovely. He's one of my favorites.

But he is at the head of this rebellion. And not to put everything into popular culture, but is he the one in the three musketeers? I'm actually not talking about the film. It probably is. I think of Doctanian. Dogtagnan. Yeah. That famous documentary.

Yeah, I don't know if that's one that you study a lot, Jonathan. You're right. There is a Gaston, isn't there? I'm aware of it, but I'm happy. It's dubbed in English as well. So Uncle Gaston, it's nice to know that every family has a problematic uncle, even in the 17th century. Yeah, should we get into that? The one thing we do need to address, and I'm curious whether this is gossip rumor. There is this sort of story that Philippe is dressed as a girl.

Yeah. So the idea, really. is that while Gaston still alive, Philippe needs to be trained how to be different because Gaston was involved in civil wars from the 1620s all the way to the 1650s constantly rebelling. And they thought, well, let's do something different.

So later historians, I think 19th century Victorian historians are to blame, said, oh, well, they emasculated him. They made Philippe gay so that he couldn't challenge the throne. And I think that's ridiculous. Because why would you do that? Yeah, that wouldn't have served the... Well, particularly given that Louis XIV could have died at any moment. Yes, yeah.

And then suddenly you are stuck with, oh dear, what have we done? He's the backup plan, right? He's the future of France if Louis gets a cold. Yeah. Yeah. So logically, it really doesn't make sense. But I think the Victorians like that idea. Okay.

So he is a bit freer and is a bit different. And I think his character, he's written about it is much more energetic, much more fun, much more unpredictable, I think. But sometimes people also critiqued him for being too frivolous, too childish, not serious enough, not, you know, you're supposed to be the second man of France. He's fun with his friends. He's having a laugh, but maybe he's not quite growing up fast enough. It's a tough one though, isn't it? Being an understudy like that. What is rehearsing for a gig, you're never going to... Exactly. You're never going to perform. I mean, there are stories of him showing up to court in a

ball gown. Yeah. So one of the best memoirs we have at the time, which is very much worth a read, is the memoirs of his first cousin, whose name, guess what, is La Grande Mademoiselle and her memoirs are hilarious because she thinks she's the most important person in Europe and her memoirs start that way. They say, well, I'm writing these memoirs because everyone should be reading them. In that sort of sense of self-importance,

I think is so fascinating in an age when we're encouraged to be quite meek and quite sort of muted. She was anything but. So she's Gaston's daughter, by the way. She's like an Instagram influencer. Yeah, okay, so she's Gaston's daughter and she's telling us that Philippe shows up,

dressed as a shepherdess? Yeah, well, they did together. Oh, right, okay. They were often paired together to come to balls or dances as a, as potential partners, you know. Right, okay. They may have gotten married, even though she's 20 years older than he. But yes, she describes in her memoirs how quite clearly there's an event where they turn up together as shepherdesses, and they sort of parade around. They seem to love shepherdesses because later on, Marianne, Trenna. That's right. Good knowledge.

There's some, like, thing in the French court, like, what do you? dresser like sort of tarts and vicars party. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. So the upper class dressing as peasants and shepherds is quite funny. Oh, I see. That was the thing they did. Yeah. Yeah. It's the ultimate role reversal, isn't it? It's interesting to me that we talk about like drag or we talk about kind of people, yeah, wearing different clothes and then society might expect of them. And it creates this uproar.

But I kind of do think, well, for a long, long time, particularly wealthy, powerful people, have worn the most flamboyant things. You can imagine much more flamboyant than anything, anybody would wear today. Well, we did an episode on the history of high-heel shoes, which were first invented for men. Right, yes. And so, yeah, the history of the gendering

of that type of shoe is really interesting. It goes back and forth. But let's talk about Philippe as the spare, right? So he's the understudy, which is awkward enough, but I suppose he has to be ready. Louis, the King, does feel, he gets very, very unwell in 1658,

and there is the possibility he's going to die. Yeah, so this is one of places where I think people thought Philippe might become like Gaston and would champion a rebellion at a court coup was kind of brewing because Louis XIV was very sick. And Philippe doesn't really play the role he's supposed to. There's a whole coterie of people gathering around his bed saying, now's the time, now's the time. And he just starts crying because he loves his brother so much. And if Louis had died, of course, Philippe would have become king. But I think right away it shows that Philippe is of a different character

to Uncle Gaston in that he doesn't really want to see his power. But obviously in 1661, King Louis has a son, which means Philippe's role as spare, immediately he's no longer needed, right? Right. He's now the understudy to the understudy. Yeah. So he's kind of, he's had the uncle Gaston treatment. Yeah, he's been Gaston. He's been Gaston.

Yeah. Oh, no. We haven't really mentioned romance. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned the shepherdess. Does that work out? So, yeah, there is a plan to marry Monsieur with La Graham and Moselle. And there is another cutting line from her where she says, having seen what he is like, I think I'd rather marry no one at all.

No, I thought they were great friends. Well, no, they were great friends. But, I mean, she's a smart woman and she realizes that his interests already are not in women. In 1660, 1661, France needed a new ally across the channel. So Louis XIV, looked to his cousin, Charles II, who was the king of England and Scotland. And he arranges a marriage with Charles's sister, who is called Henrietta Anne or Henriette. in French. He has been promoted. He's now a duke at this point because Gaston has died. Uncle Gaston has gone, which means his title is up for grabs and King Louis says,

all right, you get to be the Duke of Orleans. Henriette is now the Duchess of O'Leon. So Mr. and Mrs. O'Ollion, I don't know, whatever the rules are. Do they have kids? Yeah, right away. Did they? Yeah. So much to everybody's surprised, probably. They have a daughter called Marie-Louise right away. And then there's a boy who doesn't live very long called the Duke of Valois, and another girl, a bit later, called Marie Anne. So they do have children.

So we get the scent Henriette and Philippe. There's love there, but there's also real rivalry there and petty jealousies. There's a guy called the Comte de Guiche, who's this very handsome man who comes in. Comte de Kish. Kishlerain, what? And Gishe is very violent. There's stories of him sort of being beaten almost by Gish, which are a little weird. But Henriette sweeps in and takes him as her boyfriend.

And the idea of, I suppose, labelling is also not really happening there, that people aren't coming out. Right. So there was no concept really of homosexual. There was no concept of an identity that you would choose or not choose. And I think we should be clear to say this is a very upper class thing. So middle class people, they're tutting away. Yes. The job is almost always, if you can keep this.

inside the court, that's fine. Have your quiche. Have your quiche and eat it. Well, we go from quiche to Lorraine because actually the next man is the Chevalier de Lorraine. Oh my goodness. On ITV at 9 a.m.

Yeah, well, yeah. Have you ever heard of the Chevalier de Lorraine? The horseman of Lorraine? No. Yeah, the knight of it. The knight. Oh, yeah. Is that right? No, I haven't actually. As I say, only his quiche.

It's a delightful thing. I mean, Jonathan, this, I think, I think it's fair to say is Philippe's great love? Yes. Other men come and go in this story, but the Chevalier de Lorraine and Philippe are together for about 40 years. Really? Yeah, which I've never found an example like that in the 17th century of two men together

like that. And so the Chevalier de Lorraine is a great character because he was good looking, he was charming, he was from a really old family, the oldest family in Europe, but he had no money at all. So he was totally dependent on Philippe. A 40-year relationship. In some regards, lovely, beautiful, wonderful. In other ways, he is married. How do you think Henriette, his wife, dealt with...

Yeah, I know, you did. How do you think she dealt with a chevalier? How do you think she handled him? But she still... Isn't she off with... What's his name? Kiche. Kish.

Yeah. She's having a kish and eating it. She's... So she's... Is he still knocking around with him? No, they've sent him off to the front. Oh, God. Once it got two scandalous, he had to be sent away.

Sent off the war. To hopefully get shot. hopefully, you know. Yeah. Oh, so imagine she's furious then. Yes, she's furious and the Chevalier and Henriette don't get along, and they're always throwing barbers at each other. But then the interesting twist comes along when she decides really that she wants to be a lot more politically active. And so Louis XIV needed more allies.

So he sent her off to England to meet with her brother. And Henriette and Charles have a tete-a-tete in Dover. They sign a treaty. She comes back to France In triumph Everyone is saying What a great job she's had And this is June of 1670

She suddenly becomes very sick After drinking chikery Which is sort of like hot chocolate And dies Very soon and after Oh no We have now Philippe The father of children

No longer married With a stable boyfriend There's no real reason for him to remarry Not necessarily no But Louis the 14th only has one son and even though the Dofant is now 10 he still could die.

Chiquary happens. Chiquary happens. And Louis XIV needs new allies there's a state called the Palatinate which controls the Middle Rhine and so Louis the 14th gets a girl from the Palatinate who is a wonderful character

who we'll talk about a bit more now called Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate we call her Liza Lata which is not really correct it's what the Germans call her. Lizzie with a Z. She's called Madame Palatine by the French. Lisa Lotta is a fantastically enjoyable character. Her letters are incredible. They're so funny. She herself, how does she describe herself, Jonathan?

So we are so lucky as historians that she left behind thousands of letters. Almost every day she wrote letters to relatives, either in England or in Germany. And they are hilariously funny. And she even has a very funny letter where she says, you know, I've always made fun of my ugliness. Quote, my father and my late brother often told me how unattractive I was. I laughed it off and never cared. My brother called me badger nose and I laughed even harder. Bless her.

She sounds like a lot of fun. I have a lot of time for her. Yeah. He's not getting the memo, and 1672, he's back in the life. And he sort of, you know, ruins the honeymoon period with Lisa Lotta. I bet he absolutely hates poor old Liza Lottor. Yeah, maybe. It sounds like she's funny than him, which gays hate.

They suffer tragedy, the couple, right? They lose a child. Yeah, so there is another boy that's born, but he only lives a year or so. And so they do suffer this tragedy, which brings them together. And I think throughout all of it, even if he has this boyfriend and other boyfriends, they do feel like a really good couple for the rest of their lives. So it's a very strange kind of three-way relationship. But then once the child-rearing age kind of passes,

I think the Chevalier decides now is my time again, and I want to be really the head of this household. Really? Yeah. So he's quite ambitious. He is very ambitious. And all the commentators say he runs Philippe's household. The children, we should mention their names.

It's another Philippe, little Philippe Duke de Chard, and Elizabeth Charlotte. or Charlotte. So after 1677, their relationship is struggling. But we need to talk about something that might be a little surprising. We've talked about Philippe as a man of great flair and laughter. My goodness, have we?

Yeah. He's also a great warrior. Warrior or warrior? Oh, that's a good point. I mean, technically, probably a bit of both. But warrior, warrior. Oh, he's a good fighter. He's a lover and a fighter.

A lover and a fighter. Goodness me, yeah. He goes to war. Yes, so that's one of the very interesting shocks of the life is that they go to war. It's boringly called the Dutch War in the middle of the 1670s. But at one point in 1677, he's in Flanders on his own and the king isn't there. And it's a small village called Castle.

And our good friend William III, who's also in favour of boys. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. They face each other on the battlefield and, surprise, surprise, Philippe trounces him. Oh. Yeah. So William III would of course be King William of England, right? Right.

Not yet. Not yet. So in 1677, he's the stat holder of the... Netherlands. He's the Prince of Orange. But he will be William, as in William and Mary. Right. In 10 years time, he will become William and Mary in this country. So Philip wins a huge victory at the Battle of Castle, but do you know

what he was doing at the start of the battle? His nails? Almost. He was adjusting his wig. The battle had started. His men were fighting and he was still in his tent. Oh, which I absolutely respected. I think the men would have respected him for that as well. You can't go to battle with a loose fringe.

Absolutely, yes. But this is Philippe's shining military moment and he gets He gets back to Paris, back to Versailles, and his brother the king says... Basically nothing. Oh, no. So I think in the history of their relationship, Louis, between the brothers, Louis and Philippe, this is really the high point of Louis being a really, I think, awful brother to Philippe and not treating him very well. And that carries on then for the next decade.

He doesn't give him another command ever again. Because I think he's embarrassed, and he doesn't like little brother having done so well in a battle. Okay. So what do you think Philippe does to find a new path to independence from his brother? What's his new career move? Musicals. Or crypto? Yeah, crypto's big.

He sort of goes into finance and business. Oh, okay. He's suddenly very good with his pennies. Yeah. So the other rather surprising turn, you might say, for someone who was so frivolous in his 20s, now he's in his 30s and 40s. He develops his lands, his eponage, and he builds a canal. He builds agricultural systems.

He makes the land that he's been given profitable, doubles its income. And then he gets a big windfall because, guess what, La Grandmaezelle dies. Oh. Still unmarried. And he gets it all. Really? Oh, so she did like him in the end? Yeah.

Yeah. She gives him all the money. And it's not tied to the crown the way his other money is. So he becomes financially independent. Oh, so it's his private wealth? It's his private money. Oh, lovely. And that's hugely different.

Heaven. Still married to Lisa Lotta, of course. Lisa with a Z. And Lisa Lotta, Lisa Lodzer now. Yeah, yeah. Wow. So there, and Chevalier's still knocking about in the background? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So the three of them. Yeah? There's three of us in this marriage. Yeah. Mighty word. Yes, there is.

And by the 1680s or 90s, they do sort of have a modus up around. They do kind of live together. It works. Happily. They've sort of found a way of existing. together at court. She's most interested in her letter writing and her dogs. Oh, fair enough. Tom, given all you know now about Philippe, how do you think he died? What do you think did him in the end?

Ham sandwich. Like Mama Cass. Yes, exactly. Or a fellow tripped up on one of his antiques. No, it's quite sad. He had a big argument with Louis. and the stress kills him, Jonathan? Yeah, that's one of the stories. Some people say maybe not,

but it seems at least it contributed to it because in the 1690s he ate a lot. And he sat around a lot. And he gets redder and redder in the face. And there is a story that he goes to Versailles and argues with Louis about Schart, not being given a job. And then he's so angry and shouts at Louis,

which is incredible, if you think about it, shouting at Louis. Nobody does that. The most powerful man in Europe at this point. And, yeah, the 14th is unbelievably powerful. Yeah. And then goes back to San Clu. His house has a heart attack and dies.

What we know about the death of Philippe is that the king can't be present. So he had left and gone back to Versailles. And Philippe dies at San Clu. And the first thing that his wife does, as she later tells us, she walks straight into his rooms and burns all of his private letters, which are mostly from his male favourites. Because that would have created further scandal for the children, presumably. Right.

The other thing that happened right after Philippe died, was that his son, who's the new Duke of Orleans, offered the Chevalet de Lorraine, use of his apartments in the Palais Royal, for as long as he wanted. And so he did live there happily, not being turfed out. But he then died as well a year later. The nuance window!

But it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Tom and I sit quietly to plan our masquerade costumes. I'm going Chepardess, how about you? For two minutes, while Jonathan holds court and tells us something we need to know about Philippe, Duke of Orleans. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Dr. Jonathan.

Okay, thank you. What we've been talking about today, in a nutshell, really, every royal dynasty in history has been faced with a similar conundrum. If you have too many heirs and you cause infighting over the succession, but if you have too few heirs, then your dynasty could go extinct. So you have an air and a spare, which is good practice. But you then need to give the spare something to do. Otherwise, he, and in France it's always a he, could go rogue and try to car.

out a niche for himself, potentially challenging the power of the older brother of the king. Philippe D'Orlion found himself in this position. If he did nothing, he was accused of being lazy and unworthy of his princely title. But if he was active in politics of the military, he was accused of being threatening. And so it was a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. So, Philippe chose a different path to some of his more aggressive predecessors. He was fiercely loyal to the king and focused his energies away from politics and more into patronage of the arts, building up. his palaces, his gardens, and generally being an additional ornament to the French monarchy.

He did his duty in marrying to advance France's diplomatic affairs and in producing extra heirs for the Bourbon dynasty, but he also was a source of potential scandal and disrepute for the French monarchy in his fairly open affairs with men. History has remembered this prince as a fop and a playboy, but we need to view him more in the context of his times, a loyal supporter of his brother Louis XIV, a patron and a collector, and a collector, and a a savvy businessman who laid the foundations for the powerful Aureon dynasty that endured four generations. Amazing. Thank you so much. Tom, final thoughts on Philippe? I suppose what's an inspiring person to teach you that even if life hasn't given you the most prominent position,

you can actually make a heck of a lot of what you get up to. I mean, it helps, of course, if you are, the second son of the most powerful dynasty in Europe at the time. But that aside, go to show. You can still do something. My advice is by antiques. That's good advice, yeah. Or inherit your spinster cousin's vast fortune. It really helps if you've got a spinster cousin. Yes, absolutely.

The richest woman in Europe. Make sure to be a nepo prince with a very connected family. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Tom, for coming on. An absolute pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Jonathan. Listener, if you want more fascinating French royals, check out our episodes on Catherine de Medici or Marie Antoinette.

For more LGBT history, listen to our episodes on Benedetta Carlini, the saucy sexy nun. and of course the Bloomsbury Group with Susie Ruffle, your friend Tom. And remember if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else.

And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And I'd just like to say, of course, a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner for the Manchester Metropolitan University. We have the superb Dr Jonathan Spangler. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you very much.

It's been fun. It's been fun. And in Comedy Corner, We had the terrific Tom Allen. Merci you Bucco, Tom. Durya. Beautifully done. And to you, lovely listener,

join me next time as we give another spare from history the attention they deserve. But for now, I'm off to go and buy a shepherd-esque costume and a week. Bye! Hello, I'm Alan Davis. And on BBC Radio 4, we're off into alternate realities mapped out by science. This is Life Without,

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