Tales of History and Imagination

This week - Adrian Carton de Wiart was a lifelong soldier; acknowledged for his bravery across the 2nd Boer War, the Somaliland Campaign, Poland’s several wars for independence - and both World Wars. The man started out with a cavalry sabre, and was still writing reports back to high command in the Atomic Age - advising of the risk of a war in Vietnam. He also had the aura of invulnerability - having survived eleven life-threatening injuries, several plane crashes, and single-handedly tunnelling out of a Prisoner of War camp. Today I just felt like telling his story. Sources Include: Happy Odyssey by Adrian Carton de Wiart And The Life and Times of Lieutenant General Adrian Carton de Wiart… by Alan Ogden Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Quick Admin note: sorry for the lateness all, I’ve been a bit run off of my feet of late… and the episode following this one will more likely than not be three weeks’ from now. After that we should be back on track again…. Sorry all. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we travel to the Germanic Duchy of Hannover, the year 1694. Under cover of darkness, a dashing, aristocratic young soldier named Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck makes his way to an illicit meeting with his lover; the deeply unhappily married Princess Sophia Dorothea of Celle. Before the night is done one of the lovers will disappear mysteriously. Sources Include: Great Mysteries of The Past - Readers Digest. Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman This National Geographic article by Becky Little Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

Trigger Warning: Death by misadventure, and an execution by guillotine. I make no concessions for calling Aotearoa… Aotearoa. I mention this as in Aotearoa (New Zealand) news sites are having to shut down comment sections on Maori language, Maori achievement and Maori culture over racist morons getting upset by this news. If the use of Te Reo names over those of colonizers upsets you, this show really isn’t for you… This week is a bit of a departure from my regular plan. I’m still working on the episode planned for this spot, so put a triptych of shorter tales together. First, we meet Harold Davidson - the Vicar of Stiffkey. A man well known in Britain’s newspapers in the 1930s, who, if he was remembered today would probably be known for something else entirely. Then we briefly meet Polynesia’s great navigators. And finally we discuss Father of modern Chemistry Antoine Lavoisier’s final experiment. Sources Include: Sorry all, I’m running late this week and will backfill this later. Harold Davidson’s tale came to me years ago via Mike Dash’s original blog site - and this is one of a number of pieces no longer up - but it is preserved on the Wayback Machine -so I’ll link to it. Michael King’s The Penguin History of New Zealand, and several articles on NZ History’s site and Te Ara, the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand were used in The Navigators. The Lavoisier piece is an old blog piece jumbled together from a bunch of sources, I don’t recall all of them, but will take a shot at finding them on the weekend. Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

Trigger Warning: Talk of executions, religious extremism and cannibalism. This week we return one last time to the city of Münster. With everything going to hell in Münster, Henry Gresbeck risks his life in a dash for freedom. The Prince Bishop has given orders to kill all men who show up at the wall - but Gresbeck has a secret that may just unravel the siege. How does this play out? Who will survive, and just what is a Wagenburg anyway? Sources Include: There are very few book out there on this topic so I mostly worked from. The Tailor King by Anthony Arthur And Freaks of Fanaticism and Other Strange Events by Sabine Baring-Gould Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we return to the city of Münster, in the Holy Roman Empire. Now we’ve got all the context out of the way - let’s discuss the war between the Prince Bishop, and the city’s new rogue Prophet - the Tailor, Jan of Leiden. This is Part Two of a Three Parter. Sources Include: There are very few book out there on this topic so I mostly worked from. The Tailor King by Anthony Arthur And Freaks of Fanaticism and Other Strange Events by Sabine Baring-Gould Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we travel to the city of Münster, in the Holy Roman Empire. The year, 1534. Tensions have ratcheted up between the City’s Prince Bishop, the City Council and a rogue preacher to the point where the people have gone rogue - having rebelled, locked the gates and set up the cannons for war. Over the following two episodes we’ll break down what happened during the siege of Münster.. This is part one of a two parter. Sources Include: There are very few books out there on this topic so I mostly worked from. The Tailor King by Anthony Arthur And Freaks of Fanaticism and Other Strange Events by Sabine Baring-Gould Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

Hi all, I’m technically still on holiday (Tales will be back for Season 5 on 1st February.) - but I was on the mic on Sunday, and had a little downtime … and a spare script or two. This week we meet Charles Lightoller, a remarkable sailor, on what I believe must have been his worst day ever? Sources Include: I wrote this to the blog in early 2020… so …. pass, sorry. But articles probably included. This History Channel article - Author not listed. This Encyclopaedia Titanica article looks very familiar… Author not listed … And this Dunkirk 1940 dot org article… Another anonymous piece. AND I’m 100% certain I used an article from the Liverpool Museum website… But it appears they have taken that article down some time ago?? Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing normally yours truly. I probably unintentionally interpolated from Tom Lewis’ ‘The Last Shanty’ in the background music this week - so credit where credit is due. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

Happy Holidays all! This week we travel to Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950. It’s four in the morning when a policeman comes across a young couple huddled together in their car. Like another young couple a few millennia before, they tell him they have come to town, only to find no room left at the inn. Little does the officer know, but he’d stumbled across a theft hundreds of years in the making. Sources Include: As I couldn’t find any books for this one, there were quite a few online articles - including. A copy of a news report two days after the theft. This ‘The National’ article on the Battle of Culloden, and the genocide that followed, by Hamish McPherson This Smithsonian overview of the Scottish Independence movement by Meilan Solly A Britannica entry on the Stone of Scone A BBC Article (no author listed) on Alexander III of Scotland. The Stone of Destiny (History UK) by Ben Johnson A My Heritage page listing Tea Tephi This ‘Tomorrow’s World’ article on the Prophet Jeremiah and his alleged arrival in Ireland. This University of Glasgow article on Ian Hamilton and the Removal of the Stone of Scone Another religious article (author not mentioned) about Jacob’s Ladder, his pillow, and his stupid claim God promised him Gaza. This BBC article by Steven Brocklehurst about the Removal of the Stone of Scone This Royal UK piece on James II Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

Hi all apologies for the delay. I’ve been unwell for a couple of weeks, and am only just bouncing back now. This week, on what was originally planned for Transgender Day of Remembrance (two weeks ago) we continue my annual Trans history episode. In 2022 I started this series replying to a foolish claim Trans people were a recent phenomenon. My take, there have always been people we’d now recognise as Trans. My list of examples veered from groups, like the Galli, to individuals - like Eleanor Rykener. Society once had places for Trans people - more often than not religious orders - but the church dismantled a lot of this at the Council of Nicaea. Or at least they did so for Trans women. How did the church react to history’s Trans men? Today, with a little help from a couple of historical Trans cowboys and a few others, we take a look. Sources Include: The last six or seven minutes of this episode owes a huge debt to Nate Hale’s The Conspirators episode ‘The Secret Life of Pope Joan.’ Nate does this way better than I do, and in much greater detail. Go check his episode out. Susan Stryker’s ‘Transgender History’ was invaluable. I used this English Heritage. Org article to fact check the Galli. This American Battlefields article on Albert Cashier This NY Times article on Charley Parkhurst And this National Women’s History Museum article on Deborah Sampson, written by Debra Michals. I’ll add a handful of other articles later. Much of this episode was put together from leftover notes from the TDOR 2022 episode. Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we meet two prophets, separated by half a world, and three centuries. One is the self appointed son of God, the other talks with Aliens. What happens to prophets, and more importantly - their followers, when prophesies fail? (This episode is a re-do of 2021’s Dorothy Martin’s Flying Saucer.) Trigger Warning: I hadn’t scheduled this with the current situation in Palestine/Israel in mind, but the episode discusses a claimant for the role of Jewish Messiah. I don’t know if this needs a trigger warning, but better safe than sorry? Sources Include: I wrote this a long time ago, and can only say on polishing the old script, I reopened When Prophesy Fails by Leon Festinger. and Madame Blavatsky by Marion Meade. Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing mostly yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we travel to the Kingdom of Abkhazia, a Black Sea land nestled amongst the Caucasus. At a date lost to history, but believed to be around 1860 - hunters trap what they believe is a monster in their bear pit. The creature is shackled and brought to a nobleman named Edgi Genaba. This week is all about monsters - but the monster may not be who you are thinking of. Trigger Warning: This Tale contains discussion of rape and dehumanisation. Sources Include: In The Footsteps of The Russian Snowman by Dmitri Bayanov. This DNA Explained article on Zana (author not listed.) This travelogue on Abkhazia. This Weird NJ article on Oliver the Humanzee by Mark Sceurman. I referred to Britannica to confirm several details that were already in my head And came around a dozen news articles from 2015 with much the same text one to the next… Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we travel to the Bagradas River, Tunisia in 256 BC. Rome are in the midst of the Punic wars against Carthage, and are in the process of launching an all out invasion on the Carthaginians. As 14,000 Legionnaires, led by Marcus Attilus Regulus make their way towards the capital, they encounter a foe they were not expecting. Just what was the Bagradas Dragon? Apologies all, this week came out around ten minutes shorter than I planned in editing. I had no plans of dropping a minisode this week, but it needed the cuts to make it flow. Also my voice was the worse for wear when recording and does sound a little strained... Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we return to medieval England for part two of our two parter. We finally get to Hereward, but first let’s talk a little about William the Conqueror and the final years of Edward the Confessor’s reign. Welcome to Hereward the Wake: Part Two - The Confessor. Sources this week include: I promise I’ll get this done in the coming days… A lot of info from these two episodes come from older blog posts I’ve taken down some time back, which I need to work back from… but the main newer sources were The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris Femina, A New History of the Middle Ages… by Janina Ramirez The English and Their History by Robert Tombs Cameos from English History from Rollo to Edward II by Charlotte M Yonge And the following two are a bit odd… A Book of Giants by Henry Lanier (mostly folk tales of mythical giants, but has a chapter on real world giants.) And Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter Pyle (There are a lot of near giant or legit giant men in this tale, so I fact checked their sizes as best I could through these two dusty old books.) Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, AND an Ad-Free Feed… Try our 7 Day Free Trial today. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week we go back to medieval, Anglo Saxon England for a two parter. I’ve got a Tale to tell of an outlaw, a resourceful Wolf’s-head who leads a guerrilla war against a cruel, unjust King - a man some might say robbed from the rich to give to…. Well, we’ll get to that - but before we do we have a Confessor, a Bastard… and a slew of other characters to deal with first. Welcome to Hereward the Wake - Part one: where today we’ll delve into the Wessexes. Sources this week include: I promise I’ll fill this in tomorrow morning… The episode is already a day late, and it is a bit of a list. Sorry. Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week Tales goes true crime - as we travel West Point Military Academy, January 1950. Cadet Richard Colvin Cox receives a mysterious visitor identified only as ‘George.’ A week later, Richard would disappear without a trace. The investigation would uncover several intriguing scenarios, but ultimately are we any closer to knowing what happened to Richard Cox? Sources this week include: I started off with Harry J. Maihoffer’s ‘Oblivion, The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox’ And found two podcasts this week far more useful This episode of Robin Warder’s The Trail Went Cold is excellent. And this episode of Disappearances was decent. Much of my information on West Point came from an old, unpublished blog post I’ve had saved to drafts for three years - I’ll be releasing it as a minisode on The Eggnog Riots for my Patrons on Patreon in coming days. I referred to this LA Times article. And this article from Ohio Wesleyan University Jim Underwood’s articles, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. This West Point Alumni article And God knows whatever book I first picked this tale up from more than twenty years ago… Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales of History and Imagination a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week, we travel to Baltimore’s Gunner’s Hall - the date October 3rd 1849. A disheveled man is found outside the bar “…in great distress and… in need of immediate assistance.” It turns out the man is none other than the horror and detective fiction pioneer Edgar Allan Poe. Today we discuss Mr Poe’s passing, and the case of the mysterious ‘Poe Toaster.’ Sources this week include: I wrote this as a blog post to commemorate 50 posts on the blog, way back in 2020 - apologies, I never took down my sources at the time. Though in re-writing I ALSO referred to Josh Hrala’s ‘The Man Who Defamed Edgar Allan Poe.’ Several articles on The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore’s website. This National Parks Service piece. Natasha Geiling’s ‘The Still Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe’ Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. | Patreon | Please leave Tales of History and Imagination a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week on Tales we return to Infernal Machines and a shadowy merchant of death who sold them - a man who built a great fortune on the death and suffering of millions. What can we actually say on the life of the mysterious Sir Basil Zaharoff? Sources this week include: Man of Arms; The Life and Legend of Sir Basil Zaharoff by Anthony Allfrey This Time Magazine Article This Library of Congress article on J.P. Holland This Cecil Bloom article in Liberal History And Mike Dash’s The Mysterious Mr ZedZed; the Wickedest Man in the World. I’ve got another dozen or so articles to share on Ottoman ‘firefighters’ and submarines that I’ll get up tomorrow. Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Threads | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Though I made a quick arrangement of ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’ (Henry Clay Work) this episode. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

This week on Tales of History and Imagination, we travel from The White House to Coney Island’s Luna Park, from the jungles of Cameroon, to the Bosphorus Strait in the age of Justinian… to the battlefields of World War One - to tell five short tales of animals who also inhabit this world. Sources this week include: The Periplus of Hanno the Navigator Fortean Times World’s Weirdest News Stories. Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Book 7 of Procopius’ The History of the Wars This excellent blog post on Porphyrius. Stories to Wash Hands by, from Nate Di Meo’s The Memory Palace Topsy the Elephant was a Victim of her Captors by Kat Eschner And This Smithsonian write up on Cher Ami Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. | Patreon | Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

In June Tales of History and Imagination is on holiday… Well, technically I’m writing new scripts for the second half of the year. In the meantime I’ve recorded a couple of minisodes, the second on Charles Lennox Richardson and The Namamugi Incident. Sources? Honestly, I never noted them when I wrote this in 2019, sorry. Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. Not sure if you want to invest? Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |

In June Tales of History and Imagination is on holiday… Well, technically I’m writing new scripts for the second half of the year. In the meantime I’ve recorded a couple of minisodes, starting with the Tale of Frau Troffea and Medieval Dancing Plagues. Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. Not sure if you want to invest? Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Please leave Tales a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | YouTube | Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I heavily borrowed from Toni Basil’s Mickey (M. Chapman, N. Chinn, (T. Basil should have a co-write for the cheerleading bit) ) Visit Simone’s | About Me | Twitter |