A History of England

Mar 08 2025 235 ep. 14 mins 47

A History of England Podcast artwork

A full explanation of how, over five centuries, England got Britain into the state it's in today, and all in brief podcasts of under ten minutes each. Or at most a minute or two over. Never more than fifteen.

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234. Fall of an iron curtain and the jewel from a crown

Mar 08 2025 14 mins

It was a strange world that emerged from the Second World War.Both genocide and the mass killing of civilians, above all through bombing, culminating with the A-bombs dropped on Japan, had become somehow normalised. They rather weaken the case of the developed nations, which made these things happen, denouncing ethnic cleansing and terrorist bombs when they happen again today.The S

233. Shocks and surprises at the war’s end

Mar 01 2025 14 mins

Following the German surrender in May 1945, the ‘Big Three’ – the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain – met for the third and last time in conference. And this time, appropriately, they met on German territory, in Potsdam near Berlin. It was Soviet-held territory too, perhaps significant given the power with which the Soviet Union was emerging from the war.Indeed, i

232. Bickering allies win in Europe

Feb 22 2025 14 mins

At the Yalta conference, between the US, the Soviet Union and Britain, the tensions between the Allies became increasingly obvious. Representing Britain, Churchill wanted the Allies’ war effort to be directed in such a way as to limit Soviet control over Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviets wanted to make sure they maximised the area they controlled. And given how powerfully t

231. Nazis facing defeat

Feb 15 2025 14 mins

By the time of the Yalta conference in February 1945, between the USA, Soviet Union and Britain, the latter still being treated as a great power though its decline was already clear, there could be little doubt that the war in the west, at least, was heading towards victory for the Allies.The Soviets were sweeping through eastern Europe and were only 65 km from Berlin.The D-day lan

230. From Husky to Overlord, Sicily to the D-Day beaches

Feb 08 2025 14 mins

In 1943, Britain didn’t feel the Western Allies were ready yet for an invasion of France, and with its influence at the highest point it ever reached, it was able to persuade the Americans reluctantly to postpone it for the moment. Instead, they went for an invasion of Sicily, which went well overall, though with significant casualties. Bertram Ramsay, who’d handled the Dunkirk

229. The tide turns

Feb 01 2025 14 mins

The tide turned against the Axis and in favour of the Allies in the course of 1943. Victories at Stalingrad in Russia, in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in North Africa, came on top of American advances in the Pacific, from island to island towards Japan. That relieved some of the pressure on the British government, that had been coming under fire for the all the disasters of 1942

228. Turning points: 1943

Jan 25 2025 14 mins

This is an episode for turning points. The year’s 1943. The Battle of Stalingrad, where the unstoppable German offensive into Russia was finally stopped and turned around, with Soviet forces essentially fighting forwards to the two remaining, and grim years, of their war with the Nazis. The Battle of the Atlantic reached a peak where Britain looked as though it might actually lo

227. Tough times: 1941 and 1942

Jan 18 2025 14 mins

The years 1941 and 1942 were tough ones… Things were going badly in the Battle of the Atlantic, with Germany threatening to strangle Britain by sinking more merchant ships than the British could bear to lose. In the Far East, the Japanese were giving the British, and indeed several other of the western nations previously seen as unbeatable, that they could be beaten by an Asian p

226. Britain rescued by its enemies

Jan 11 2025 14 mins

Hitler, feeling himself obliged to help out his inept ally Mussolini, was dragged into two wars the Italian dictator had started but lacked the resources to prosecute to victory: in North Africa and in Greece. Where the Italians had failed, the Germans moved in with lightning speed, overrunning Yugoslavia and Greece, and driving the hitherto triumphant British into retreat in Libya

225. Blitz

Jan 04 2025 14 mins

Following the Battle of France, came the Battle of Britain. Thanks, though, above all to the fighter pilots of the RAF – 20% of them from other countries, led by Poland and New Zealand – Britain weathered that storm, where France had been overcome by it. There’d been fewer than 3000 of those airmen but Britain owed its survival in the war to them so, as Churchill put it, neve