
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

Agent Twister – The life and faked death of John Stonehouse – Explaining History
- Agent Twister – The life and faked death of John Stonehouse
- The SAS and World War Two: In conversation with Damien Lewis
- Isaac Murphy and the Reconstruction Era (1861-96): Explaining History in conversation with Katherine Mooney
- Los Angeles and Core – The Freedom Rides 1947-61
- Save the last bullet – stories of Hitler's child soldiers 1943-45
- Asian Nationalism and the end of the British Empire – 1945
- Habsburg Strategic Challenges – 1914
- The Life of John Burgoyne – In conversation with Norman Poser
- The American neoliberal counter revolution 1971-80
- The post war women's movement: a global perspective – 1945
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Latest Posts
The British Suffragist Movement and its publications
Suffrage And The Printed Word The popularisation through film and television programmes of modern history obviously has immense scope for engaging new generations with the past, but it also can have the effect of narrowing and simplifying complex historical processes and movements. The women’s suffrage movement that existed between the 1860s and the First World…
Understanding GDR’s Holocaust Revisionism: A Brief Overview
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was a communist state that existed in the eastern part of Germany from 1949 to 1990. During its existence, the GDR had a complicated relationship with the Holocaust, which was the genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. Although the GDR publicly condemned the Holocaust…
The GDR’s Control of Education, youth movements, and the state’s revision of history.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), a socialist state that existed from 1949 to 1990. The government controlled all aspects of life, including education and youth movements. The state’s revision of history was a key component of its efforts to control the population. One of the main ways the GDR government controlled education was through the…
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