Creating History

Mar 05 2025 13 ep. 37 mins 6
Creating History Podcast artwork

From Creating History - the team behind Creating Churchill - comes a gripping new season of high-stakes diplomacy, backroom negotiations, and world-altering decisions. This is Summitry. Twelve episodes exploring pivotal meetings that shaped history. When Hitler met Chamberlain. When Kennedy clashed with Khrushchev. When Bush and Blair stood shoulder to shoulder. When Trump had a shouting match with Zelenskyy. History isn’t just written - it’s negotiated. Hosted by Russell Barnes and historian David Reynolds, Summitry takes you inside the rooms where power, pressure and politics collide. Each episode unpacks a defining diplomatic summit, revealing the human drama, strategic manoeuvring and lasting impacts of these encounters. Featuring expert analysis and rich historical context, this series pulls back the curtain on the meetings that changed the course of history. In an era of fractured alliances and shifting global power, understanding the past has never been more urgent. Because when leaders meet, the world changes… Follow the show at @Creating_Hist on X or Instagram, and send us your comments, voice notes and questions by email to: [email protected] Creating History is a ClearStory production. www.clearstory.co.uk

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Inventing Summitry

Mar 05 2025 31 mins  
In episode 1 of Summitry, producer Russell Barnes and historian David Reynolds explore the backstory of high-stakes diplomacy on the world stage, from the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520)—where Henry VIII and Francis I staged the ultimate power flex—to the Congress of Berlin (1878), where Europe’s balance of power was redrawn. Fast forward to today: with seismic shifts in wo

Creating Churchill: CONCLUSIONS

Nov 30 2024 39 mins  
In the final episode of the series, published on the 150th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s birth, David and Russell bring together the main themes of the podcast, discussing Churchill’s positive and negative character traits as seen through his contemporaries’ eyes and responding to questions and comments sent in by listeners.

Creating Churchill: DEVOTED CRITIC

Nov 27 2024 47 mins  
In this episode, we come to the person who knew Winston Churchill better than any other, and for the longest time - his wife of 56 years, Clementine. Their marriage was a stormy but very successful double act. Through Clemmie’s eyes, we see Churchill at his most vulnerable and insufferable…

Creating Churchill: OPPOSITION

Nov 20 2024 30 mins  
In this episode, we explore Winston Churchill’s relationship with his political opponent Clement Attlee: Labour leader, wartime coalition colleague and eventually Churchill’s successor as Prime Minister in 1945.

Creating Churchill: NEMESIS

Nov 13 2024 37 mins  
Exploring Winston Churchill’s spiky relationship with the Indian nationalist, Mohandas Gandhi - a relationship that shows up some of Churchill’s blind spots and arguably puts him on the ’wrong side’ of history. Churchill notoriously described Gandhi in 1931 as ‘a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a well-known type in the East, striding half naked up

Creating Churchill: THORN

Nov 06 2024 38 mins  
In this episode: one of Winston Churchill’s most prickly and turbulent relationships - with the leader of the Free French during World War Two, and later French President, Charles de Gaulle. Were De Gaulle and Churchill, both men with explosive tempers and a deep pride in their respective national histories which for centuries had been at loggerheads, always bound to clash?

Creating Churchill: ALLY

Oct 31 2024 40 mins  
In this episode: a fateful relationship, that shaped millions of lives in Eastern Europe after the Second World War... Churchill’s relationship with Britain’s wartime ally, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Creating Churchill: FRIEND

Oct 23 2024 48 mins  
In this episode: Winston Churchill’s relationship with the leader of Britain’s closest ally during World War Two, the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, and what it reveals about Churchill’s political skills and also about his very human side.

Creating Churchill: ENEMIES

Oct 16 2024 31 mins  
In this episode: we look at Winston Churchill through his relationship with the adversaries Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, who, in many ways, would define his place in history…

Creating Churchill: RIVAL

Oct 09 2024 48 mins  
This episode explores Winston Churchill’s return to the Conservative party, his time in government in the 1920s and in the political wilderness in the 1930s through the lens of his great rivalry with Neville Chamberlain. Churchill collaborated and competed with Chamberlain in and out of government. Both had their eye on the ultimate political prize, becoming Prime Minister. Chamb