The Great Stink

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persi ...  Show more

At the Hay Festival, Misha Glenny and guests discuss the impact of the Norman invasion on the people and land of Wales and across the modern border with England in what became known as The Welsh Marches, march being a term for a militarized borderland. Hay was one of the first Ma ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the stench from the River Thames in the hot summer of 1858 and how it appalled and terrified Londoners living and working beside it, including those in the new Houses of Parliament which were still under construction. There had been an outbreak of ...  Show more

The ‘Great Stink’ - when the stench of untreated human and industrial waste was amplified by a particularly hot Summer - reached a peak on 15th July, 1858, when members of Parliament lead by Benjamin Disraeli rushed through an emergency cleanup bill, kickstarting a transformative ...  Show more

In the summer of 1858, a heatwave dried up the Thames River to a trickle in London. As centuries’ worth of human waste, animal carcasses and other nasty things cooked in the sun, a stench arose that was so horrific it got its own name: The Great Stink.

📝 Get FREE Episode Worksheet 🧐 Take English Level Test 👄 Improve Your Pronunciation In this episode, Charlie invites Martin on the show to talk about the "Great Stink" in London in 1858, focusing on the city's bad sanitation and how Sir Joseph Bazalgette's new sewage system he ...  Show more