It’s the summer of 1953, and, across East Germany, angry people take to the streets. This isn’t a polite street protest. This is a furious, red flag ripping, police beating, office burning rampage. The crowds demand: - better living conditions;

AH 11 Operation Unthinkable - Churchill's plan to attack Russia and start a Third World War

Jun 15th, 2017 23m 8s

According to Field Marshal Montgomery, rule number one on the first page of the book of war is ‘do not march on Moscow’.In April 1945, Winston Churchill ordered the British Chiefs of Staff to rip up the rule book and plan for an attack on their

AH 10 Louis of England - history’s forgotten King of England

Jun 1st, 2017 23m 19s

In August of 1216, the King of Scotland rode down the entire length of England to pay homage to a new English king at Dover. The Scottish monarch bent his knee to a warrior prince who was the pride and hope of his dynasty. His name was Louis

AH 09 Princess Mary Tudor's flight to freedom

May 18th, 2017 21m 56s

In the summer of 1550, Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was packing her belongings and preparing to flee her home.Her Tudor brother was the figurehead for an increasingly Protestant regime. Mary clung to her mother's Catholicis

AH 08 Cancelling Christmas and the Plum Pudding Riots

May 11th, 2017 12m 59s

In 1647, the new puritan government tried to cancel Christmas. People in Canterbury protested in a peculiarly English way, with a destructive game of football followed by a mass brawl. The city’s Plum Pudding Riots led to a royalist revolt thro

AH 07 The Prince of Poyais - settling in the country that never was

May 5th, 2017 22m 12s

In 1822, Gregor MacGregor committed what The Economist newspaper has called the ‘biggest fraud in history’ and ‘the greatest confidence trick of all time’.Investors, many of them Scottish, put forward vast sums towards creating a colony in cent

AH 06 A wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama

Apr 27th, 2017 18m 55s

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland sank a huge chunk of its national wealth into an audacious scheme to colonise central America. become a more equal partner with England under the Stuart crown. The colony was to straddle the

AH 05 Roosevelt's third term and the voice from the sewers

Apr 21st, 2017 17m 33s

In the first half of 1940 only one question mattered in American politics. Would Franklin D. Roosevelt break with tradition and run for a third term as President of the United States? The New York Times proclaimed it as 'the all-absorbing polit

AH 04 The British Hindenberg disaster and the demise of Imperial Airships

Apr 13th, 2017 22m 11s

Imperial Airships would bring the far flung peoples of the British Empire closer together than ever before. Every day, blimps would slip their masts near London carrying passengers and freight bound for Montreal, Cairo, Karachi, Singapore and S

AH 03 Hitler’s dreams to unify his empire with a monstrous railway

Apr 7th, 2017 16m 51s

In 1941, Adolf Hitler issued orders to Nazi Germany’s railway officials. He wanted them to develop a new type of railway. It was to be bigger, far bigger, than anything that had ever been seen.Trains the height and width of a suburban house and

AH 02 Draining the swamp -Garibaldi's plan to diver Rome's river

Apr 6th, 2017 13m 1s

In 1875, Rome came close to losing its river.In that year, the liberator of Italy, General Giuseppe Garibaldi, visited and announced plans to clean up the Eternal City. His main target was the River Tiber. Garibaldi would solve problems from po

AH 01 Achtung! Achtung! Dystopian adventures with Nazi TV

Apr 6th, 2017 15m 52s

What if … ... Nazi Germany had been able to roll out the television equivalent of its inescapable radio network?Everywhere you turn, you see the unmistakable face of Adolf Hitler. His voice echoes in your head, broadcast from a thousand loudsp

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