International

Find podcasts that relate records in The National Archives to places and events around the world, from the first American settlement in Jamestown to the partition of Punjab, India.

Australia in War and Peace, 1914-19

The ‘Australia in War and Peace, 1914-19′ research project is a major collaborative research project between the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies (MCAS), King’s College London and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in Canberra, Australia. The ultimate ...
The policy agenda of the British Government, 1945-2008

Peter John talks about his research mapping the policies the British government has been concentrating on since 1945. Using the Queen’s Speech, laws and budgets he shows how the attention of government has shifted, taking into account the crisis in ...
Rawdon Brown and the Brown Archive in The National Archives

Rawdon Brown was born in 1806 and, from 1833 until his death in 1883, lived in Venice, virtually without a break. There, he quickly became a self-taught expert on the city and on its records and came to be employed ...
Geography, art and the sinking of the Mary Rose

King Henry VIII watched as the Mary Rose, pride of his Navy, suddenly capsized and sank whilst engaging a French invasion fleet off Portsmouth. This talk brings together Tudor art, geography, history and archaeology to better understand a few desperate ...
Tracing Huguenot ancestors

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, many thousands of refugees fled from religious persecution in the Low Countries and France. These refugees left descendants in Britain and many people have family stories of Huguenot descent. This talk will help you ...
The strange journey of Edward Swarthye, an African in Elizabethan England: from the Spanish Caribbean to rural Gloucestershire

In 1597, an African man named ‘Edward Swarthye, alias negro’ appeared before an English court. He gave evidence that, at the command of his employer Sir Edward Wynter, he had whipped another servant, John Guye, in the hall of his ...
Morbidity and mortality on convict voyages to 19th century Australia

Between 1803 and 1853 some 67,000 convicts were transported from England and Ireland to the British penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, later renamed Tasmania. Using a detailed reconstruction of 278 voyages (82 carrying female convicts and 196 male) this ...
Security Service file release October 2012

Professor Christopher Andrew, author of ‘The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5’, introduces highlights of the 29th release of Security Service records to The National Archives. Among the 77 files released are the ten post-war diaries of ...
Remembering Samuel Coleridge Taylor; African British musician and pan-Africanist

This podcast is an audio-visual presentation on the life of one of Britain’s favourite composers of the early 20th century and the first African to conduct an all-European orchestra. The podcast introduces some of his works, including Hiawatha’s wedding feast, ...
British Malaya

Diplomatic and Colonial Records Specialist Dr Dan Gilfoyle discusses some of the stand-out images from the Colonial Office Library’s photographic collection, recently digitised and put online by The National Archives for its ‘Asia through a Lens’ project. In this podcast, ...
The War of 1812: from the British side

The War of 1812 features prominently in the history of the United States, especially in this bi-centenary year. But it is much less well-known here, overshadowed by events closer to home. In the US, the Federation of Genealogical Societies and ...
The Battle of the Somme: destroying enemy defences

This clip starts with a title card explaining how heavy guns are destroying enemy defences. We then see artillery crews under camouflage preparing a large howitzer to be fired. Context Artillery was already the key weapon in modern warfare before ...
Women’s Army in France

This clip comes from a compilation film of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in France, 1917-1918. In this segment we see women with their sleeves rolled up maintaining or repairing an engine. They may be a female ambulance crew (possibly ...
‘With the North and South Irish At The Front’ Official pictures of the British army in France-Fourth series

The opening titles tell us we are looking at the Ulster Division, probably from 1915-17. We then see huge numbers of soldiers from that division all posing, smiling and waving for the camera. The titles then show us the Royal ...
Dublin After The Easter Rising

The film opens with titles locating scenes of the fighting in Dublin at Easter 1916. Several different shots follow that focus on the huge amount of damage caused in the city. We are shown Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), the ...