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This is the first of a multi part exploration of protest music in America during the late 1960s, beginning with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio, written to mourn the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio, in May 1970. By the late 1960s, the pressure of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement had led to a progressive radicalisation of the new left and also a reactionary backlash from America’s lower middle classes, who flocked to Nixon in 1968
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Fear and solidarity defined both Austro Hungarian and Germany societies in August 1914. The pace of mobilisation meant that over three million soldiers in Germany alone were in uniform in just twelve days. Soldiers said emotional farewells to loved ones and took last minute photographs with sweethearts, and both German and Austro Hungarian economies were plunged into crisis by the disruption of war, with families losing most of their income from the loss of a breadwinner. This podcast looks at t
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In 2002, the British public decided by a considerable margin, in a BBC poll, that Sir Winston Spencer Leonard Churchill, Prime Minister from 1940-45 was the greatest Briton of all time. This, culturally, was a watershed moment in many ways. Firstly, it was the culmination of a war fetishism that had been developing for decades (at least since the 1950s), and which found its deepest expression in the two decades that would follow the BBC poll. Secondly, it came at a time of immense fragility for the British national psyche. A country that had been fighting wars, both hot and…
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History as entertainment has shaped, for many, the understanding of the past. Mythologisation of key moments of the past crafts powerful and often misleading national stories that provide simple and often comforting notions about the past. In his new book Fake History, Otto English takes many of these fantasies to task, and today we explore one of the most enduring myths of all, the fantasy figure that is Winston Churchill. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critica
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Throughout the 1930s the forces that led to a year of terror in 1937 had been gradually developing, from the trials of bourgeois specialists in the1920s to the murder of Sergei Kirov. The regime initially looked to the population at large to show their anger and rage at figures such as Iuri Piatikov, who as a former ally of Trotsky, was cast as a saboteur and wrecker. Others were characterised as corrupt embezzlers as well as foreign agents. In a time of constant setbacks in industry and society
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Hi guys, after ten years my MacBook that I’ve done hundreds if not thousands of recordings on has finally died. I’m writing trying to find an alternate way of recording the podcast (of which there are many, I have no doubt. Please be patient and the podcast will be up and running again in a couple of days. If anyone has a spare MacBook they don’t need with Garage Band, I’d be keen to hear from you… Nick