Subject to Change

Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University is on excellent form to talk me through the German Peasant's War of 1524-25. Things I learned:
- take Martin Luther seriously (but not literally)
- monasteries feed the poor and needy (particularly when they are armed and extremely determined)
- the scale of the revolt was off the charts, nothing like it until the French Revolution
- the East German State celebrated its revolutionary past with a mural of the war which needs to be on everyone's 'must see' list (only to collapse a few months later!
All in all this is a terrific and thought provoking episode. The role of Luther in all this surprised me greatly. 
Lyndal's book Summer of Fire and Blood is here.

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Today the thing we find mysterious is why WWI lasted as long as it did. Why continue a pointless slaughter. Comparisions with the war in Ukraine suggest an answer!
My guess is is Professor David Stevenson and for him the mystery is not why it lasted so long but why it ended when it did.
For the German public is was particularly mysterious. Just a few months before the Armistice Germany was all conquering. Russia had been driven out of the war on terms hugely favourable to Germany. And in the West her storm troopers seemed poised to deliver victory on this front too.
And while the tide had clearly turned the German army was falling back in good order. So what compelled Germany to submit to allied terms? Was it a stab in the back as many Germany came to believe, or something else?
David is brilliant at unpicking all of this. As for the answer to the riddle - well, one place to look is in Bulgaria . . 
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Ed West is a journalist and massively popular substacker - do check out his substack The Wrong Side of History. But he has a sideline in history so I got him on the show to talk about 1066 and the battle of Hastings. Ed is on top form so please join us as he talks about:
- why Harold should have listened to his Mum
- Harald Hadrada's absolute last poem
- what made the Norman's so very hard to beat
- and why the Normans were the woke progressives of their day!
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A six-foot-two prince who loved tournaments, outfoxed a revolution, and nearly died on crusade returns to build castles that still dominate the Welsh coast and to bend Scotland to his will until Robert the Bruce strikes back. We follow Edward I’s path from a devoted crusader to the architect of a more centralised, harder-edged medieval state, where finance, logistics, and image mattered as much as swords. Along the way, we discuss the political craft behind his parliaments, the Italian bankers who kept his campaigns moving, and the trade-offs needed to fund his empire.

We don’t shy away from the darkness. The 1290 expulsion of England’s Jews reveals the brutal alignment of prejudice and power. So does the battlefield assassination of Simon de Montfort at Evesham and the legal sleight that turned Scottish arbitration into overlordship. For all that Edward comes across as very human. His marriage with Eleanor of Castile was unusually close for the age, marked by shared journeys, many children, and the Eleanor Crosses erected on her death.
 If Wales became Edward’s lasting triumph in stone and statute, Scotland proved a different matter. It was larger, more resilient, and capable of rebirth under Bruce. And on the continent, a friendly France turns hostile, tricking the king into surrendering Gascony leading to a war England can barely support.

Edward does indeed emerge a ruler both great and terrible: a master of war and administration who built a stronger English polity while leaving scars at home and abroad. If you care about medieval power - crusader ideology versus realpolitik, taxes versus consent this episode will sharpen your view of how states harden and why reputations endure. 
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“With the heart of a serpent and the nature of a wolf, she gathered sycophants to her cause and brought destruction to the just. She slew her sister, butchered her brothers, killed her prince, and poisoned her mother. She is hated by men and gods alike.”
Jonathan Clements came back on to talk about his book on Wu Zetian (623–705), the only woman ever to rule China in her own name. Rising from lowly concubine/chambermaid to God-Emperor, she outmanoeuvred courtiers, generals, monks and poets alike - sometimes with charm, sometimes with a knife - and ruled over the empire at the height of the Silk Road.
Jonathan describes Wu’s ascent through the Tang court: a place of whispered plots, divine omens, and women struggling to survive. Along the way we encounter girls on top, a boob-shaped tomb, a harem of 120 pretty boys, dogs on sticks, a honey-trap gone wrong, and an inadvisable attempt to train a cat not to eat a parrot.
A story of power, paranoia, and the perilous art of surviving your own success.

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