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During the Second World War the immense needs for labour and military manpower transformed American society and gave Black Americans an historic opportunity to advance themselves. This podcast explores the barriers they faced and the racial discrimination of segregated armies and workplaces, and the ironies of a military power based on racial discrimination conducting a moral crusade against Nazism. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life,
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In the 1850s a medical revolution was beginning with the discovery of anaesthesia and a political and social revolution was still in its infancy in the guise of the embryonic suffrage movement that would emerge in earnest over a half a century later. In their latest novel together under the pen name Ambrose Parry, Christopher Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman explore the world of prostitution, blackmail from the perspective of their medical heroes Sarah Fisher and Will Raven in the fifth Fisher and
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What did Irish Americans make of Roosevelt’s wartime pact with Churchill? What did Polish Americans make of his alliance with Stalin? In this podcast we explore the many complex, conflicted and often divided loyalties as a vast multi ethnic and global anti fascist coalition fought to defeat Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese Imperialism. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author and if that’s your thing
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Wokeness and anti wokeness are inventions of the political right on both sides of the Atlantic. They are confected ideas that are pushed by elite think tank, media and political groups and have been used in different ways since the era of the counter culture in the late 1960s. Their prime advocates claim that ‘woke’ is some manner of threat to either freedom or common sense, but the reality is far more mundane. The well resourced, organised and funded political right in the US and UK seeks wedge
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A century ago, America was the literary and intellectual powerhouse of the world. Black writers defined the black experience in the Harlem Renaissance, F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the glamour and hypocrisy of the jazz age in The Great Gatsby and thousands of detective, western and sci fi pulp novels were published, creating the foundations of modern genre fiction. Today we hear from Tom Lutz, founding editor of the LA Review of Books and author of 1925: A Literary Encyclopaedia and explore this
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When the mandate system was created at the Paris Peace Conference, it became a powerful tool for the British and French to carve up the Middle East and Africa following the defeat and collapse of the German and Ottoman Empires. France took control of Syria and created the state of Lebanon and the British gained Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. This podcast explores the sour relations between the British and French, Britain’s desperate need to self governance to emerge in Iraq to limit the costs
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In the late 1960s the British secret state, bankers, right wing newspaper and TV proprietors and other elite figures sought to remove Prime Minister Harold Wilson from power. They were indifferent to the fact that he had won two general elections in a row and thought that a government that included unelected business figures would save the nation from the economic crisis they predicted. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of
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From the late 1970s onwards China and the USSR were on two very different historical paths and three US presidents, Carter, Reagan and Bush sought to harness the potential of the world’s most populous country as it rapidly became wealthier. China, often cited as having embraced capitalism after Mao, abandoned inward looking autarchy and opened its economy up in the 1980s to foreign trade and investment. In the 1990s and 2000s there would be an explosion of offshoring that has partially created t
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Mao’s ideas presented a clear challenge to western imperialism throughout the 20th Century and became a rallying cry to national liberation movements and anti imperialist groups wiithin western countries from the Baader Meinhof Gang to the Yippees. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author and if that’s your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right here:Help the podcast to con
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In the past two decades successive scandals have revealed that Britain has some of the worst media institutions in the developed world. The ability of ordinary people to interpret the news, use accurate information to hold politicians to account or to gain a coherent sense of the world has arguably never been weaker. In his new book Breaking: Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn’t and Why it Matters, Mic Wright sets out a coherent explanation of this key democratic failing in the UK (as