
Modern history podcasts and study guides for students and enthusiasts. Get ten years of recordings on every aspect of modern history and A level history guides.
I have a note on my desk that reminds me what Explaining History is for. It says:
“Create useful stuff for students and teachers”
And that’s what I am trying to do here. Each video or audio podcast is created for students to help them not just master modern history so they can get good pass marks, but to become fascinated by it. To become absorbed into it, enmeshed in it, connected to it. As we move away from the 20th Century (which my work is predominantly about), it becomes harder to understand this brutal and yet enigmatic period. The meaning of the 20th Century is highly contested and hard enough for professional academic historians to grapple with, let alone mere history teachers such as I.
For exclusive extra content, please visit the Explaining History Patreon page below, the work is a labour of love, and it happens through the kindness of patrons around the world.
Investigating the 20th Century

The Dulles Brothers and Eisenhower – 1954 – Explaining History
- The Dulles Brothers and Eisenhower – 1954
- American Empire and the framework of modern capitalism
- Soviet Society and the Great Terror: 1937
- A revisionist approach to the U-Boat War 1939-45
- Nationalism and identity in the Austro Hungarian Army 1914
- The afterlife of Leon Trotsky's politics 1940-1982
- Explaining History Study Extra: Lenin's Death and its consequences
- Churchill, Asquith and Lloyd George – 1916
- Explaining History Study Extra: Social division and the origins of Italian fascism
- Sir Mark Sykes and the Eastern Question – 1915
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Latest Posts
The Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was a key conflict during World War II, lasting from 1939 to 1945. It was a struggle for control of the Atlantic Ocean between the Allied powers (primarily the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada) and the Axis powers (led by Germany).
The Conservative Party’s War on International Law
Britain is abandoning its commitments to human rights and the protection of refugees, established after the Second World War. Brexit has given the extreme right of the Conservative Party an opportunity to persecute the world’s most desperate people.
The Tsar Liberator and Russia’s Peasants
Hi folks, here’s a quick video I’ve put together for students on the long term causes of the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary period that began in 1861 with the emancipation of the serfs.
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