Origins of Fairy Tales

Was Elizabeth I really as angry and bad tempered as history has always claimed? How did some of her most secret state letters come to be penned by a Spaniard, while England was at war with Spain?Professor Suzannah Lipscomb breaks the news of groundbreaking research that proves El ...  Show more

How did the French Revolution, built on liberty, become ruled by fear? And how did Robespierre - the man who had sent kings, nobles and priests to their deaths - himself end up beneath the blade of the guillotine?Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Professor Marisa Linton explore the ...  Show more

From Cinderella to Beauty and the Beast, the roots of fairy tales stretch back thousands of years — to the dawn of Indo-European languages and beyond.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by author and journalist Laura Spinney to explore the origins of mytholo ...  Show more

In The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales (John Murray, 2022), Nick Jubber unearths the lives of the dreamers who made our most beloved fairy tales: inventors, thieves, rebels and forgotten geniuses who gave us classic tales such as 'Cinderella', 'Han ...  Show more

Greg Jenner and his guests uncover the gruesome truths behind some of our most-loved fairy tales that have kept children and adults enchanted for centuries. In comedy corner, we have the wickedly funny “evil queen of comedy” Sally Phillips, who we all know as a comedian, sketch-w ...  Show more

Fairy tales are for kids right? Well not at first they weren't. They were dark tales of murder, rape, incest, cannibalism and mayhem geared toward adults. What changed? Chuck and Josh will drop that knowledge and more in today's episode.