Jam Tomorrow

Oct 14 2024 25 ep. 39 mins 799

Jam Tomorrow Podcast artwork

You probably think you know what life was like in Britain after the war. But what myths do we tell ourselves about the pre-digital world? From coal to contraception and ID cards to school beatings, Ros Taylor delves into the truth about British postwar life in Jam Tomorrow. From the makes of Oh God, What Now?

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Welsh Nationalism: Cymru am byth

Oct 14 2024 47 mins

What does it mean to be Welsh? The writer Jan Morris said Wales was ‘a distinctly separate and often vehement idea’. But what is that idea? Do you need to understand Welsh to grasp it? How is Wales … different? And is it going to become even more unlike England? Ros Taylor talks to Swansea University professor Martin Johnes and Plaid Cymru Senedd member Heledd Fychan about

Ugandan Migration: 90 Days to Leave

Sep 30 2024 43 mins

The expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972 was brutal. Twenty eight thousand refugees arrived in Britain. The government scrambled to find homes and jobs for them. Not everyone was pleased about it. But if Ugandan Asians held British passports they had the right to come here — and most of them thrived. Why did they do well — and can it teach us anything about how we treat re

North Sea Oil: Hit the gas

Sep 16 2024 46 mins

In 1969, three kilometres under the North Sea, drillers found something that would change Britain completely. It would transform us into an oil-producing nation, fuel Thatcherism in the 1980s, feed resentment in Scotland — and yet all of it happened largely out of sight of most Britons. How did North Sea oil and gas change us? What’s life like for the dwindling group of peopl

Women’s Football: Kicking back

Sep 02 2024 33 mins

The Lionesses’ Euro victory captivated English football fans – but this success was once unimaginable. In 1921, the English Football Association banned women from playing on any of its pitches, a ban that would remain in place for 50 years. Who were the women who fought back? How did they defy all odds to get the women’s game to where it is today? In for Ros Taylor, Jade B

Rationing: Milk and no honey

Aug 12 2024 40 mins

Mock cream. Lord Woolton Pie. For 14 years the government put draconian restrictions on how much Britons could eat. Each meal had to be carefully planned and every scrap of food eked out to avoid waste. But at the end of it, Britons were healthier than ever before. Was it the best of times or the worst of times? Turned out it could be both — depending on who you were. And the r

Concorde: Feeling supersonic

Jul 29 2024 39 mins

Some say it was the greatest ever feat of European engineering. A few even think that we wouldn’t have joined the European Economic Community without it. Others complained it ate up ten times as much as its original budget, and no-one else wanted it. Why did we decide to build Concorde? Why did we almost abandon it? And how did it become both an object of national pride and an

The Green Belt: Fields forever?

Jul 15 2024 44 mins

The Green Belt is a powerful symbol of rural England — and Labour knows it. The new government says it wants to build on unlovely bits of green belts. A lot of people don’t like that. Who decided there should be Green Belts? What are they really for? How did they get so big? And how is the government ever going to overcome the opposition of homeowners who treasure their view

Women’s magazines: Dreams on paper

May 13 2024 48 mins

In their heyday women’s magazines sold 12 million copies a week. And at their best, these magazines changed women’s lives. They advised, they inspired, they gave us a glimpse of a different way of being — and that was as true of Cosmopolitan as it was of the feminist magazine Spare Rib. In our Season 2 finale, Ros Taylor talks to Sam Baker, who edited Just Seventeen, Compa

Suez: The end of an empire

Apr 29 2024 30 mins

When it comes to intervention in the Middle East, there is one word that sums up British hubris. And that word is Suez. But did Britain learn from one of our most infamous mistakes in the Middle East? Far from it. From opposing the construction of the Suez Canal, then repeatedly going to war to defend it, and most recently bombing Houthi rebels trying to disrupt Red Sea trade, Brit

This way out: Decriminalising homosexuality

Apr 15 2024 42 mins

In our latest look into postwar history: decriminalising homosexuality. In 1967 — for the first time in more than 400 years — two men over 21 were legally allowed to have sex, in private, with each other. But the fight for equality was very far from won. Campaigner Peter Tatchell and Hugo Greenhalgh, whose book The Diaries of Mr Lucas: Notes from a Lost Gay Life is published th