The Wild West

Sir Francis Drake is most famous for his role in defeating the Armada of 1588 and saving England from a Spanish invasion. By that point in his life, he was already a wealthy and famous seafarer: the first Englishman to sail around the world, knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in recog ...  Show more

The American singer-songwriter and musician Bob Dylan is one of the most important recording artists on the planet. A cultural icon, his work has had a profound influence on popular music since the 1960s. First gaining fame as a folk singer with songs that addressed the subjects ...  Show more

Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, John Wayne. We've seen them roping and wrangling and defeating their enemies, all by the time the credits role.

But what was the role of cowboys in the real wild west? What was the role of black men in this industry? And how have they ...

Podcasting’s answer to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - that’s Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook of course - explore the Wild West in both fact and fiction. Does the romantic representation in both fiction and film bear any resemblance to the historical truth? And why are we ...  Show more

It’s the swinging sixties and London is home of fashion, pop music, and celebrity scandal. But beneath the glitz and glamour is a dark underbelly of gangland crime. Emerging from the ashes of a war-torn city; two brothers would forge a criminal empire from the snooker halls and p ...  Show more

A whole genre of movies is based on a relatively short period of nineteenth-century American history. But what is the real story behind battles between Native Americans and white settlers during westward expansion? In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, settlers flooded to ...  Show more