The National Archives Podcast Series

Trailer: On the Record at The National Archives

Want to hear more from The National Archives? We'd like to introduce you to On the Record, a new podcast bringing old stories to life.

Join our experts and special guests as we dig deep into the peop…

00:00:52 | Thu 20 Oct 2022

Annual Digital Lecture 2020: The death of anonymity in the age of identity

The global datafication of economy, society and politics has rendered humans into constellations of datapoints. Technologies measure, monitor, predict and classify to enable personalization in the on…

00:28:55 | Tue 02 Feb 2021

Cholera! Public health in mid-19th century Britain

The 1848-1849 cholera epidemic in England and Wales was described by a government report as if a ‘foreign army’ had ‘held possession of the country, and slain 53,293 men, women and children’. In the …

00:40:27 | Tue 02 Feb 2021

The rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, introduces his ground-breaking biography of Thomas Cromwell, the self-…

00:43:14 | Fri 18 Dec 2020

Who dares wins: Britain 1979-1982

In this talk to mark the latest volume of his epic history of post-war Britain, television presenter and best-selling author Dominic Sandbrook recreates the strange world of early 1980s, taking in ev…

00:54:40 | Wed 16 Dec 2020

Rebecca Gowers and The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns

Rebecca Gowers uncovered a fascinating story within her family tree – that of Harry Larkyns. She learnt that Harry was an attractive cad who lived a charmed life, right up until the moment he fell in…

00:54:27 | Wed 25 Nov 2020

Trevor Barnes and Dead Doubles

Trevor Barnes is the author of a new study of one of the Cold War’s most notorious spy cases – the Portland Spy Ring. In this ‘Meet the Author’ talk, Trevor is joined by Professor Chris Andrew of Cam…

00:53:09 | Fri 30 Oct 2020

Nancy Astor: First steps towards a better balanced world

Opening up the electorate in 1918 to some women voters naturally triggered a conversation about female parliamentarians. Under the 1918 Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, Nancy Astor was the fi…

00:40:57 | Tue 13 Oct 2020

Dermot Turing and The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park

In this ‘Meet the Author’ event (recorded over Zoom), Dermot Turing discusses his latest book, The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park, with our Collections Expert, Mark Dunton. The book examines the live…

00:41:50 | Wed 30 Sep 2020

Hidden Love: LGBTQ+ lives in the archives

The National Archives’ collections offer a valuable insight into how the government interacted with and viewed LGBTQ communities in the past, at a time when the State played a major role in repressin…

00:39:45 | Wed 19 Aug 2020

Gerald Aylmer seminar 2020: Co-production and collaboration in the archive: Session 4: Outcomes – what is the value of co-production?

What are the opportunities, and challenges, of working collaboratively with archivists, academics and community groups?