History Cafe
True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building...
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- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 32 minutes
- Episodes
- 294
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
#30 ‘A tall and desperate fellow’ - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
The night before - 4 November 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic with experience as a soldier fighting for the Spanish, is found with matches and fuse powder in a storeroom under the House of Lords. He’s ‘…
00:33:19 |
Wed 16 Dec 2020
#29 The king's fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder plot
As his father had done, Cecil built his entrapments around a germ of genuine plotting. We uncover a small Catholic rebellion in Warwickshire in response to the king’s tougher anti-Catholic laws. And …
00:32:09 |
Wed 09 Dec 2020
#28 ‘A formidable network of secret agents’ - Ep 5 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
We dig deeper into the animosity between the king and Cecil whom he bullied and called names. And we see the Gunpowder plot in the context of the previous plots hatched by the Cecils against their en…
00:31:52 |
Wed 02 Dec 2020
#27 'Hellish miners' - Ep 4 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
To avoid any possible blame for the plot falling on himself or the king, Cecil procures confessions saying the seven gentlemen plotters began excavating a tunnel under the House of Lords long before …
00:33:26 |
Wed 25 Nov 2020
#26 Why blow up Parliament anyway? - Ep 3 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
The parliament of 1604 refuses to grant the king money. They’re still paying for the effects of the last plague. But this is Cecil’s job. What to do? On 5 November 1605 the assembled MPs and peers ar…
00:30:27 |
Wed 18 Nov 2020
#25 ‘Here lieth the Toad’ - Ep 2 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
We take a look at James I’s shadowy chief minister Robert Cecil who manages to implicate most of his Catholic enemies in the plot. Cecil was so desperate to improve King James’s dire view of him (his…
00:34:50 |
Wed 11 Nov 2020
#24 ‘There is no state trial so totally devoid of reality’ - Ep 1 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot
We look at the story the government published as The King’s Book, more than 500 witness statements and other contemporary sources and conclude, like the Victorian antiquarian Jardine who wrote up the…
00:32:25 |
Sun 01 Nov 2020
Café Bite: What was great about the Great Reform Act of 1832?
Was Britain any more democratic after 1832? Is it any more democratic now?
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00:02:36 |
Tue 27 Oct 2020
Café Bite : Why the US lost the Vietnam war
In May 1967 US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara reported that the war was un-winnable because of the strategy of the North Vietnamese army and not because of the Vietcong in the South. That was two …
00:02:36 |
Tue 27 Oct 2020
#23 the last million men? - Ep7 WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
One day after Britain goes to war - ‘at sea’ - on 4 August 1914 the first War Council unceremoniously throws out the army’s secret plan to send a few divisions to meet the Germans head on and win qui…
00:36:33 |
Tue 27 Oct 2020
#22 The bullying of Edward Grey - Ep 6. WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
A right-wing anti-German contingent call their campaign for war, the weekend of 31 July-2 August 1914 a ‘pogrom’. All talks of peace are, in their words, a German-Jewish plot to keep Britain out of t…
00:30:13 |
Tue 20 Oct 2020
#21 8pm 1 August 1914 war in Belgium and France is off - Ep 5 WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
8pm German time the Kaiser orders champagne, halts the German advance towards Belgium, and sends a telegram of congratulations to his cousin George V at Buckingham Palace. The Liberal British Cabinet…
00:33:44 |
Tue 13 Oct 2020
#20 Hanging on Russia's apron strings - Ep 4 WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
In 1912 a deal between War Secretary Haldane and the German chancellor Bethmann-Holweg to allow Britain to retain naval supremacy if they both remained neutral (if neither side had started the war), …
00:22:49 |
Tue 06 Oct 2020
#19 Bicycling holidays along the French-Belgian border - Ep 3 WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
How did what friendly chats between British and French generals since 1905 turn into a commitment to send a small British Expeditionary Force to France at the start of a war with Germany? A commitmen…
00:29:06 |
Tue 29 Sep 2020
#18 ‘Spies of the Kaiser’ - Ep 2 WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
We look at anti-German hysteria in Britain 1906-1909. The British publishing phenomena of 1906 was The Invasion of 1910 (by Germans), serialised in the Daily Mail and marketed by men walking around …
00:26:06 |
Tue 22 Sep 2020
#17 The elephant in the room - Ep 1 WW1: how much was it Britain’s fault?
Britain’s main problem by 1910 was Russian expansion towards its Persian oil and India, the jewel in Britain’s crown. So why did Britain go to war to SUPPORT Russia and AGAINST Germany which was its…
00:34:49 |
Tue 15 Sep 2020
Café Bite: The Last of the Magicians?
Café Bite: The Last of the Magicians? by Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe
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00:02:55 |
Tue 08 Sep 2020
#16 The men behind the myth - ep 7 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
Within days of 28 October 1962 two journalists publish the official but untruthful White House account, as instructed and edited by the President. They also call-out a political enemy for daring to c…
00:21:04 |
Tue 08 Sep 2020
#15 ‘The Fourteenth Day’ - ep 6 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?
28 October 1962: by holding his nerve Kennedy defuses the crisis in just 13 days. He says it’s over although he’s unable to verify whether Khrushchev ever withdraws his missiles or not. The last miss…
00:29:59 |
Tue 01 Sep 2020
#14 ‘Eyeball to eyeball’ - ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuban Missile Crisis?
22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine’ nothi…
00:31:29 |
Tue 25 Aug 2020
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