Political history audio

Find podcasts relating to political history. Includes guides to cabinet papers, treaties and MI5 files.

The Children of Henry VIII

John Guy tells the story of the family drama of England’s wealthiest and most powerful king. It is a tale of jealousy, mutual distrust and often bitter sibling rivalry, simmering beneath the magnificent pageantry and stormy politics of the Tudor ...
Authority, Legitimacy and Orthodoxy: the Accession of Henry V in 1413

Henry V has been described as ‘the greatest man that ever ruled England’, yet the circumstances of his accession 600 years ago in March 1413 did not hint at his future successes. Disputes over foreign policy and a strained relationship ...
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 ...
How to research a famous person in The National Archives

Join records expert Mark Dunton for a step-by-step explanation of how to research a famous person in The National Archives. Taking the case study of Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the podcast goes through the key steps to ...
Hunting for Spies in The National Archives

In our first Writer of the Month talk, Times journalist Ben Macintyre talks about his latest book Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies (Bloomsbury, 2012) and how he turned his research into a published work. Ben Macintyre ...
Ugandan Asians in Britain: journeys across three continents to find a home

It is forty years since Idi Amin arbitrarily decided to expel over 70,000 Asians resident in Uganda. Given only 90 days to leave the land-locked East African country, most were forced to abandon homes and businesses, taking with them only what ...
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 ...
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, ...
An introduction to the third tranche of colonial administration records released at The National Archives

The National Archives is working with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to transfer and begin releasing colonial administration records, referred to as the ‘migrated archives’ between April 2012 and November 2013, in accordance with the published timeline on the ...
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 ...
‘An impenetrable tangle or an under-used mine of information?’ The Court of Common Pleas and its records, c.1200-1875

The Court of Common Pleas was the busiest court in England for almost all of the medieval and early modern period, dealing with tens of thousands of cases a year at its height, and continued to be an important arena ...
England and Scotland at War, 1296-1513: sources at The National Archives

At a time when the position of Scotland in the Union is the subject of renewed debate, this podcast reminds us of the outright hostility that underlay the relationship of England and her northern neighbour during much of the medieval ...
Magna Carta: What more is there to say?

The University of East Anglia’s Professor Nicholas Vincent is a leading authority on the world of Magna Carta. Here, he discusses the work of the consortium of scholars and computer scientists who have recently been granted £1 million by the ...
Sedition, transportation and treason: the case of the London Corresponding Society

How did a small group of men discussing democracy in the coffee houses of London of 1792 lead to one of the most sensational treason trials of the eighteenth century? Using newly catalogued Home Office correspondence this talk will explore ...
The Golden Stool: cataloguing Colonial Office records from 1900

In 1900, war broke out between the British and the Ashanti in the Gold Coast. The Colonial Office records from this year have recently been catalogued by volunteers at The National Archives. This talk, given by the volunteers themselves, shares ...