Episodes

  • # 50 No more menage à trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

    # 50 No more menage à trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
    Jun 24 2026
    In a dynamite French document from August 1530, still overlooked by historians, the King of France offers to send troops to England to defend Henry VIII against the Spanish. No French government before or since has ever promised to send troops to defend England. Does this explain Henry’s sudden move in August 1530 to go on the offensive against Rome and the clergy in England?

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    29 mins
  • # 46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

    # 46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
    Jun 10 2026
    1527: The pope is a prisoner of the marauding Spanish in Rome and yet Henry sends his man Knight on a madcap mission to ask Pope Clement VII for permission to marry a young woman he is already sleeping with. It’s the first of a whole series of crazy errands, asking the pope for the impossible. Does Henry have a hidden agenda?

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    32 mins
  • # 45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

    # 45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
    Jun 3 2026
    Did Henry break with Rome in order to seize power over the wealthy, ubiquitous church in England? We find that the dates don’t add up. Instead we look at why in June 1525 Henry promoted his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy over the head of his heir Mary. And why Charles V broke off his engagement with 9 year old Mary to marry a Portuguese princess instead.

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    32 mins
  • #44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

    #44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French
    May 27 2026
    In 2010 a document from 1527 was found in which Henry VIII admits to the pope that he is sleeping with the woman he wishes to marry instead of, or as well as, his Spanish wife Katherine. Very little of the traditional story can be believed. It’s Katherine who matters in the story of Henry’s Reformation, not Anne.

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    31 mins
  • #39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

    #39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the magicians?
    May 20 2026

    Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin.

    Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the idea off as magic.

    More striking, like other English philosophers, Newton believed that all this had been known to ancient thinkers going back to Noah, and spent much of his life trying to decode the myths and symbols they left behind. He was, he believed, the only man in his generation privileged to understand them. The last of magicians? Maybe.


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    45 mins
  • #38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the magicians?

    #38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the magicians?
    May 13 2026
    The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conceived and measured and drew on the work of his contemporaries and of many men before him. And Newton was certainly not the last person in Europe to practise alchemy of this kind. Within fifty years of his death it would simply evolve into modern chemistry.

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    36 mins
  • #123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings

    #123 Pissing on bagpipes - Ep 5 Shakespeare and the Groundlings
    May 6 2026
    Was Shakespeare a Catholic? We examine the evidence and then ask whether his audience would have compartmentalised the world into Protestant, Catholic or alchemical. Wasn’t their world full of magic? In his last solo play, The Tempest, a white magus, Prospero, tells the audience that it’s up to them to make good things happen, to create a ‘brave new world’ in which everyone can be reconciled. Is this Shakespeare’s leave-taking?

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    46 mins