The National Archives Podcast Series

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Latest Episodes:

Kew lives - reconstructing the past Sep 25, 2015

Show notes

Emily Ward-Willis explains how to research the local history of an area, using the Mortlake Terrace shops in Kew as a case study.

The talk will show how you can use records held by The National Archives, and other archives and local studies centres, to research local history.

This talk was recorded live as part of the Know Your Place festival, a celebration of the heritage of Richmond upon Thames. We apologise for any intermittent reduction in sound quality.

Writer of the month: Peter Doggett - Electric shock: From the gramophone to the iPhone Sep 17, 2015

Show notes

Peter Doggett argues that from the birth of recording in the 19th century to the digital age, popular music has transformed the world in which we live. It has influenced our morals and social mores; it has transformed our attitudes towards race and gender, religion and politics.

Peter Doggett has been writing about popular music and cultural history for more than 30 years. He is the author of Electric shock: From the gramophone to the iPhone - 125 years of pop music, his history of popular music and its impact on everyday life from 1890 to the present day.

This podcast was recorded live as part of the Writer of the month series, which broadens awareness of historical records and their uses for writers.

Big Ideas: On pilgrimage in England Sep 11, 2015

Show notes

The 1930s saw a resurgence of interest in local knowledge and traditions, and intense debate about how it might be possible to 'go modern' while honouring the past. Alexandra Harris looks back on her research for Romantic Moderns, remembering how she followed modern British artists and writers as they went 'on pilgrimage in England'. She also shows how that pilgrimage led her far back into Roman and Anglo-Saxon history in a quest to find out how the English weather has been differently imagined across the centuries.

Alexandra Harris is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, a BBC New Generation Thinker, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She won the Guardian First Book Award and a Somerset Maugham Award for her first book, Romantic Moderns: English writers, artists and the imagination, from Virginia Woolf to John Piper. Her literary history of English weather will be published this autumn.

Big Ideas: Innovation in the Air Force Sep 04, 2015

Show notes

Ross Mahoney's talk is based on sources ranging from operational records held by The National Archives to some of the personal recollections found at other archival institutions and in the memoirs of retired officers. By bringing these together he highlights the difficulties faced by the RAF as it sought to innovate and adapt to the strategic, operational and tactical challenges that it confronted during the inter-war years.

Ross Mahoney is the resident Aviation Historian at Royal Air Force Museum. His research interests include air power history, theory and doctrine, military leadership, military culture, military innovation, and the history of professional military education. In 2011, he was made a West Point Fellow in Military History at the United States Military Academy.

Security Service file release August 2015 Aug 21, 2015

Show notes

Professor Christopher Andrew, formerly official historian of MI5 and author of 'The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5', introduces key files from the release of Security Service files to The National Archives in August 2015.

Waterloo men: the records of Wellington's Waterloo army Aug 14, 2015

Show notes

By taking two men who fought at Waterloo and exploring how different records bring their careers to life, Carole Divall demonstrates the hidden stories that can be found within army records.

Carole Divall is a former teacher and now researches, writes and lectures on the Revolutionary Wars.

Dunkirk: from disaster to deliverance Aug 07, 2015

Show notes

Drawing on fresh new interviews with Dunkirk veterans - soldiers and sailors - plus unseen private correspondence and diaries, author Sinclair McKay delves into a pivotal historical moment and beneath the myth. The story of how a raggle-taggle flotilla of small boats and paddle steamers set out to rescue the British army from the most formidable war machine the world had ever seen is now a national legend. But what really happened during those nine days and nights in 1940?

Sinclair McKay is the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bletchley Park and The Secret Listeners, as well as histories of Hammer films, the James Bond films, and Rambling.

Writer of the month: Jenny Uglow Jul 17, 2015

Show notes

Jenny Uglow talks about her book, In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815.

This podcast was recorded live as part of the Writer of the month series, which broadens awareness of historical records and their uses for writers.

Big Ideas: The women's war in the Middle East - women's First World War service in Egypt, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and Palestine Jul 10, 2015

Show notes

Nadia Atia is Lecturer in World Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research examines the literature and cultural history of the First World War outside Europe. Her work explores how ideologies of race and empire shaped the ways in which British travellers, archaeologists, servicemen and women from different classes and professional backgrounds interacted with and represented the region now known as Iraq, in the early twentieth-century. In particular, she examines their interactions with the Indian, African, Afro-Caribbean, Egyptian or Chinese workers and military personnel who played such a crucial role in the war, but whose presence is not a familiar one in many accounts of the First World War.

'The Germans are here!' London's first Zeppelin raid Jul 06, 2015

Show notes

Ten months into the First World War and the feared onslaught on London by Germany's fleet of airships - Zeppelins - had failed to materialise. There was sympathy for those killed or injured in air raids elsewhere, but these were far away and had little impact on Londoners. Then, shortly after 11pm on a Monday night in May 1915, all that changed…Using documents held at The National Archives, interspersed with personal stories of those who experienced that night, Ian Castle explores those terrifying 20 minutes when, for the very first time, London civilians found themselves on the front line.

Ian Castle is author of two books detailing Germany's air campaign against the capital in the First World War - London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace and London 1917-18: The Bomber Blitz. He also runs a website covering all of the First World War air raids.

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