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History Cafe

History Podcasts

True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location:

United Kingdom

Description:

True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 90+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Language:

English

Contact:

01865655622


Episodes
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#03 'Always carry pepper to throw in their eyes' - Ep 3 Who Really won the Battle of Britain?

12/10/2025
Britain is gripped by fear of invasion. Government leaflet 'If the Invader Comes' calls for pepper and ‘a sharp knife to kill them if necessary.’ Churchill goes on BBC and says ‘we await undismayed by the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight.’ So why in private is Churchill saying he doubts the invasion would ever take place? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:25:02

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#02 A battle for air superiority? - Ep 2 Who really won the Battle of Britain?

12/3/2025
Was the Battle of Britain a fight for Luftwaffe air superiority in order to enable an invasion? The Luftwaffe itself did not think so. It had another agenda altogether. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:29:38

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#01 Waterworld Flotilla - Ep 1 Who really won the Battle of Britain?

11/26/2025
The Germans make extraordinary preparations for the immense task of invading Britain in 1940. Why bother when neither Hitler nor any senior German officer wanted to do it or thought it was possible? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:25:02

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#118 'She will be called a man' (Jerome) - Ep 6 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

11/19/2025
Church Father, Jerome, wrote this about women who took vows of chastity for God. ‘When she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman, and will be called a man.’ What now survives from the Roman Empire – and the Church in particular - only tells one, heavily redacted, medieval version of the past. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:39:45

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#117 The Rich man and Melania - Ep 5 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

11/12/2025
By AD400 all it took to be bishop was to be stratospherically wealthy. There was no demand that bishops even knew their bible until AD787. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:36:18

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#116 Chariot races in church - Ep 4 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

11/5/2025
Chariot races in church. How did we get there? 3rd Century climate change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:40:29

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#115 The Missing Women - Ep 3 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

10/29/2025
What happened to the women? Until the late second century committed, educated women and men who perhaps space in their own homes led informal house churches. But once church leadership became a paid, public role, they were taken by the men. This was not theology. It was the way of the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:38:52

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#114 The Missing Link - Ep 2 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

10/22/2025
What real connection is there between the earliest, informal meetings of the first apostles and their friends, and the mighty, glitzy, authoritarian institution that mushroomed in the 4th Century, and especially after AD320? And is still here today. Is it possible that there is in reality, no direct connection at all? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:31:34

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#113 Whatever happened to Saint Peter? - Ep 1 The Real-Life Magisterium: the secret history of the Roman Catholic Church

10/15/2025
The Church says that Simon Peter was chosen by Jesus as the foundation of the Church. It says that Saint Peter was the first bishop of Rome and that there is a chain of direct continuity from Peter to the present pope Leo. It’s these direct links that gives the Church the right to tell its followers what to do and what to think. But is there any historical evidence? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:33:14

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#16 The Men behind the Myth - Ep 7 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

10/8/2025
Within days of 28 October 1962 two journalists publish the official but untruthful White House account, as instructed and edited by the President. They also call-out a political enemy for daring to consider a humiliating missile swap with the Soviets. But we show how the Kennedys had already suggested this very missile swap to Khrushchev via private backchannels, on condition he kept it secret. Which he did. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:21:20

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#15 'The Fourteenth Day' - Ep 6 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

10/1/2025
28 October 1962: by holding his nerve Kennedy defuses the crisis in just 13 days. He says it’s over although he’s unable to verify whether Khrushchev ever withdraws his missiles or not. The last missiles do indeed leave Cuba on day 48 of the crisis but for very different reasons. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:30:14

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#14 'Eyeball to eyeball' - Ep 5 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis

9/24/2025
22 October 1962: President Kennedy goes on prime-time TV and announces a blockade around Cuba to prevent more Soviet missiles reaching the island. But US sailors call the so-called ‘quarantine’ nothing but ‘grand theatrics.’ Not a single Soviet ship is stopped by the US Navy. What was going on? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:31:40

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#13 'Russian roulette' - Ep 4 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

9/17/2025
15 October 1962: Soviet nuclear missile sites are discovered. It’s only three weeks before the mid-term elections. Kennedy decides that to negotiate publicly with Khrushchev would be a disaster at the polls; as would ignoring them which is what his allies advise him to do. So, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the President chooses ‘to play Russian Roulette with nuclear missiles.’ (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:24:03

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#12 'The only way to save Cuba' - Ep 3 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

9/10/2025
The Cuban Missile Crisis begins not because Castro is a dangerous communist but because he is NOT. Khrushchev tells his ruling council: ‘The only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there’ - not only to prevent an American invasion, but also to keep Fidel Castro sweet. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:22:21

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#11 Fidel Castro was not a communist - Ep 2 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

9/3/2025
1959: The first country the new revolutionary president of Cuba visits is the United States of America. And he’s a big hit. The students at Princeton carry him on their shoulders. Castro wants a trade deal with the American government. So why does Kennedy fight the presidential election of 1960 on getting tougher than the Republicans with Cuba? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:28:44

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#10 'These missiles do not significantly alter the balance of power' - Ep 1 Why did Kennedy cause the Cuba Missile Crisis?

8/27/2025
We have the memo to President Kennedy dated Day 2 of the crisis with his own security chiefs clarifying that the Soviet missiles on Cuba made ‘no significant difference.’ So why does October 1962 develop into the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:31:30

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#112 Loss, love and the struggle to stay alive in 1912

8/20/2025
Jon explains his decision to write an historical novel, A Spring Marrying. He discovered the extraordinary history of the sail trawlers working off the English coast before 1939 whilst making a film for C4. It was the men who crewed them that fascinated him the most. Down in Brixham, Devon, they had four crew – skipper, mate, deckhand, and a cookie who was often only 12 or so. Theirs was an unremitting routine. Danger and death were never far away: it was the most dangerous job in the land. Yet they earned a reputation as supreme, quietly proud seamen, religious, brilliantly able to navigate without charts and survive just about anything. Except, maybe, falling in love with the town’s most complicated young woman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:26:59

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#31 'Remember, remember, the fifth of November' - Ep 8 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

8/13/2025
At the time, London gossip accused the king’s chief minister Robert Cecil of fabricating the entire plot to blow up everyone who mattered and leave the country ungovernable. When Cecil died seven years later, he was remembered as lying and self-serving. ‘The King’s misuser, the Parliament’s abuser, Hath left his plotting… is now a rotting.’ On the first anniversary, 5 November 1606, people were forced to celebrate by going to church and lighting bonfires. Anti-Catholic sentiment has kept the anniversary alive. But if the Gunpowder plot was the invention of a vicious, torturing and intolerant regime, perhaps we shouldn’t be celebrating it any more? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:22:25

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#30 'A tall and desperate fellow' - Ep 7 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

8/6/2025
The night before - 4 November 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic with experience as a soldier fighting for the Spanish, is found with matches and fuse powder in a storeroom under the House of Lords. He’s ‘booted and spurred’, ready for a quick get-away. Or maybe not. The government account keeps changing. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:33:20

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#29 The King's Fear - Ep 6 Blowing up the Gunpowder Plot

7/29/2025
As his father had done, Cecil built his entrapments around a germ of genuine plotting. We uncover a small Catholic rebellion in Warwickshire in response to the king’s tougher anti-Catholic laws. And we examine Cecil’s imaginative embellishment: a mystery letter delivered to a compromised Catholic peer on 26 October warning of ‘a terrible blow this Parliament.’ It was handed to the king to decipher. If anything was designed to terrify James I, whose father had narrowly escaped death from a gunpowder blast, this was it. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:00:32:12