Catherine the Great (Radio Edit)

In this special live episode, recorded at the 2023 Hay Festival, Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Gillian Kenny and comedian Seán Burke to learn about medieval Irish folklore.Greg and his guests discuss the lore and stories from Gaelic Irish culture. Gaelic culture remained the domina ...  Show more

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Spain by historian Professor Nora Berend and comedian Toussaint Douglass to learn about the colourful life and afterlife of the warrior known as El Cid. El Cid – real name Rodrigo Díaz – was a mercenary in eleventh-century Spain who fought for bo ...  Show more

Not a drop of Russian blood. A woman in a world ruled by men. A loveless marriage to a man who lacked even a shred of empathy. The odds were always stacked against Catherine the Great when she arrived from Prussia. But this German Princess and child of the Enlightenment was a pol ...  Show more

Catherine the Great came from minor German nobility to become Empress of Russia and one of the most extraordinary women of the eighteenth century. Dan is joined today on the podcast by Hilde Hoogenboom, translator of Catherine the Great’s Memoirs https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co ...  Show more

Catherine the Great, Russia's most famous Empress, wasn't born in Russia—she was a minor German princess engaged to the future Emperor. But less than a year after her husband ascended to the Russian throne, Catherine overthrew him in a coup with the help of her lover in one of ...

In preparation for International Women's Day this Wednesday, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb takes a look at a Queen whose reputation has largely been shaped by her husband's midlife crisis. History does not see much further than Katherine of Aragon's so-called failure to provide ...