This is my chronological retelling of the story of the English in regular chunks. It’s been going since Christmas Day 2010, so there’s enough to keep you off the streets for a while and hanging around the local shopping precinct. But look, you can dip in and you can dip out too.

There's all the great trends, events, and drama you’d expect, all set in the context and attitudes of their time; and on that same vein, as often as possible, the series takes some time to set England’s history in the context of her neighbours and the shared culture of Europe. The great and the good are there, because that’s important, but we also walk the highways and byways of ordinary lives and hear their voices - religion, culture, making a living, society and how people lived, globalisation, law - all that stuff

You can listen from start to finish; but do did in and out if you wish. Here's a guide:

• We start with 31 episodes on one of our foundation stories, the Anglo Saxons.
• Then there’s 37 episodes on the Normans and Angevins, 1066 to 1215, Hastings to Magna Carta basically.
• The Plantagenets are next up, to the usurpation of the throne by those dastardly or saintly Lancastrians – tick as appropriate
• From episode 134 we have a real hooley – the Wars of the Roses. We did have fun with the squabbling chaos, death and destruction, very much like a normal family gathering at Christmas really, without the drowning in a VAT of malmesy wine thing hopefully, and we devoted 62 episodes to it all - 1399 to the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 basically.
• From episode 196, we are then on to the Tudors, and that’s a monster, 137 episodes on the Tudors so if you are a Tudor lover fill up your boots.
• We then reach my personal favourite, the Stuart age at Episode 325, starting the British Revolutions at episode 369

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This episode includes an introduction to Series 1, the Anglo Saxons, and then a discussion of the sources we have available for the settlement period. We then spend some time on and the way that historians and others have seen and interpreted the Anglo Saxon period.

Series 1 on the Anglo Saxons covers the period from about 400, until 14th October 1066 in just 31 episodes

Episodes 1- 1.4 Cover Romano Britain and the settlement period

Episodes 1.5 - 1.11 Cover the conversation, the formation of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms - and the dominance of Mercia

1.12 1.18 Tell ther story of the Viking invasions, the Gteat Heathen army and the near destruction of the Anglo Saxons; until the rise of Alfred's Wessex, and the conquest of Southumbria by his son Edward

1.19 - 1.21 Tell the story of the golden agre of Æthelstan and Edgar in the 10th century

1.22 - 1.31 See the Æthelred, the second Viking invasions, the restoratio of the House of Cerdic and the disaster of Hasting and end of Anglo Saxon England

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.