Best Jon Rosebank Podcasts (2025)

1
#64 They had the wrong guns - Ep 4 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16 40:33

6h ago40:33

40:33

On the eve of the Somme the British had far too few artillery guns, and most of the ones they had were the wrong sort. They needed five times as many heavy guns before they could launch an attack. The few big guns they did have were grossly inaccurate, sometimes missing a target by one mile. They were firing shells that were not fitted with delayed…

1
#63 The generals never studied how to attack trenches - Ep 3 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16 40:16

1h ago40:16

40:16

The British Army wanted to throw men against machines. Its generals had not thought about how to cross 100-200 yards of open space with wire entanglements. They had been offered plenty of designs for armoured tractors with caterpillar tracks but had ignored them. It was Churchill, head of the Royal Navy, who eventually funded the development of the…

1
#62 They refused to take orders - Ep 2 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914:16 37:41

5d ago37:41

37:41

Unlike the Royal Navy, the British Army proved itself over the course of decades incapable of taking new ideas on board: trench warfare, the machine gun and the tank to name a few. And at the heart of the problem was that too many men in the army refused to take orders. Not the rank and file, you understand, who were executed for any refusal to mar…

1
#61 They just pretended to shoot - Ep 1 Nightmare in the Trenches 1914-16 40:08

13d ago40:08

40:08

1 July 1916. Had British Corps commanders understood machine gun warfare they would not have sent British infantrymen across No Man’s Land unprotected from the German machine gun crews. In fact we explain why the British army need never have been in the position it was in on the Somme, scrabbling about at the bottom of hills, peering up at German f…

1
#109 A quietly brilliant palace coup - Ep 3 - 2 May 1937: the king, his wife, their Führer, the lobster 32:59

20d ago32:59

32:59

We complete our exploration of the dark shadows in the background of Cecil Beaton’s sunny photograph. The laws of the time made it perfectly possible to prevent Edward VIII from marrying Wallis Simpson. Then there wouldn’t have been any point in abdicating. But nobody even tried. Did the yet-to-be-crowned king himself manufacture the crisis? Or had…

1
#108 'I wish, myself, to talk to Hitler' - Ep 2 - 2 May 1937: the King, his wife, their Führer, the lobster 26:01

27d ago26:01

26:01

As the newly appointed king, but not yet crowned, Edward VIII secretly told the Nazis he admired, that he was going ‘to concentrate the business of government in himself…. Who is king here? Baldwin or I?’ Did Prime Minister Baldwin get rid of the King because he was too pro-Nazi, as Hitler’s ambassador to Britain, von Ribbentrop, maintained? Or was…

1
#07 That Dress - Ep 1 - 2 May 1937: the King, his wife, their Führer, the lobster' 24:22

1M ago24:22

24:22

2 May 1937. Cecil Beaton photographs for American Vogue the twice-divorced American heiress soon to marry the ex-King Edward VIII. Wallis Simpson wears a Schiaparelli ‘waltz dress’ with a Salvador Dali red lobster down her skirt. The setting is a French chateau belonging to the American businessman who a few months later will mastermind the Windsor…

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#111 A live donkey or a dead lion? - Ep 4 Amundsen vs Scott - a very British failure 38:31

1M ago38:31

38:31

Amundsen reached the South Pole a month before Scott, but his story never captured the imagination of the English. They wanted heroic tales of desperate survival in appalling conditions - even if those conditions were of their own making. Scott went on to be glorified in the First World War by men like Haig who used young men as German cannon fodde…

1
#110 ‘the worst has happened’ - Ep 3 Scott vs Amundsen - a very British failure 37:55

2M ago37:55

37:55

When Scott took a fifth man with him to the South Pole he signed each man’s death warrants. Not for the first time, Scott’s endless calculations for four men – pages and pages of scribbled notes on weights and distances and food and cooking fuel to carry – proved to be a waste of time. His surgeon had already warned him he’d calculated too little f…

1
#109 The Worst Journey in the World - Ep 2 Scott vs Amundsen - a very British failure 35:33

2M ago35:33

35:33

Over a year before he and two of his men starved to death, just two days’ march from a depot with food and fuel, Scott confided to young biologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard. ‘This is the end of the pole.’ He wasn’t questioning his planning or his leadership. He was blaming what he saw as the failure of their ‘transport,’ their dogs and ponies. Now they…

1
#108 Lop Ears and Jackass Ep 1 Scott vs Amundsen - a very British failure 39:37

2M ago39:37

39:37

The race is on between Captain Robert Scott of the Royal Navy and Norwegian Roald Amundsen. As Scott’s wife, Kathleen Bruce, requires, and as Edwardian culture expects, Scott will test the manliness and endurance of himself and his team. Amundsen will test the efficacy of Norwegian Telemark skiing combined with Inuit survival techniques. We know wh…

1
#59 The crimes of the rector George Wilson Bridges - Ep 5 Money not Morality ended British enslavement 40:36

2M ago40:36

40:36

By 1832 it was clear to both the House of Lords and the Commons that the British planters in the Caribbean were dragging the British economy into a credit crash. It looks to us very like the crash of 2008. The Jamaican Rebellion of 1831 and the vicious retaliation by rector George Wilson Bridges and his white supremacist Colonial Church Union in 18…

1
#58 The ship that sank and took the slave trade down with it - Ep 4 Money not Morality ended British enslavement 37:12

3M ago37:12

37:12

When the HMS Lutine went down, 9 October 1799 off the Dutch coast, carrying a million pounds of gold and silver, it led to the collapse of the Hamburg sugar market and within a few years the banning of the slave trade. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1
#56 The Empire strikes back - Ep 3 Money not Morality ended British enslavement 36:32

3M ago36:32

36:32

We look at a map of the British Caribbean to understand why losing the British north American colonies after 1783 mattered to British enslavement. We explore how the trade winds had helped create the four-cornered ‘triangle’ of the British slave trade involving North America, Africa, England and the British Caribbean – and how this doesn't work onc…

1
#55 The woman behind the abolition of slavery - Ep 2 Money not Morality ended British enslavement 35:12

3M ago35:12

35:12

efore we get down to the hard facts of whether or not British enslavement ended because the slave economy no longer worked, we should take a closer look at the moral campaign for its abolition. It turns out to be intriguing, though it was a very different campaign from what we’ve all been told (and many students are apparently still being taught). …

1
#54 'Slavery was even worse than we thought' - Ep 1 Money not Morality ended British enslavement 36:00

3M ago36:00

36:00

We start this 5-part series by trying to give a factual outline of the experience of being transported in horrendous conditions from Africa to the British Caribbean against your will. And we open up the debate started in 1938 by the brilliant young Trinidadian historian Eric Williams as to whether it was money or morality that ended British enslave…

1
#72 It was mainly the poor who burned - Ep 5 Bloody Mary Tudor? 42:57

4M ago42:57

42:57

Most of those executed for their beliefs under Philip and Mary 1555-58 came from places with a long history of religious dissidence. It matches European evidence that many – perhaps most – of those burned at the stake were not Protestants, but ‘anabaptists’ or people with similar beliefs – usually poor - whom both Protestants and Catholics were per…

1
#71 Most who were burned were not Protestants - Ep 4 Bloody Mary Tudor? 41:49

4M ago41:49

41:49

Until six weeks before the child was due, everybody at court and indeed in Europe, believed Mary was pregnant. She suffered a rare disorder - pseudocyesis - maybe triggered by a tumour on her pituitary gland that would eventually kill her. The imminent birth of a Catholic heir to the Anglo-Spanish dynasty meant that the select council governing the…

1
#70 More interested in pirates than heretics - Ep 3 Bloody Mary Tudor? 39:16

4M ago39:16

39:16

Who ran the persecution of heretics in England 1555-58? England was a joint monarchy but historians traditionally accused bigoted Mary of running the clamp down herself - with her cousin, Reginald Pole the Archbishop of Canterbury. There’s no evidence it’s true and Pole was useless at running anything. But didn’t Mary intervene to make sure Thomas …

1
#69 Who exactly was a heretic? - Ep 2 Bloody Mary Tudor? 38:07

4M ago38:07

38:07

England in the mid-1550s was being governed by a joint monarchy: Philip and Mary and a select council of extremely able English politicians. Almost all of them had experience in government stretching back through the violently protestant regime of Edward VI. To all appearances they had for years been living as active protestants. And yet here they …

1
#68 Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! - Ep 1 Bloody Mary Tudor? 40:06

5M ago40:06

40:06

Bloody Queen Mary? 313 people died for their beliefs 1555-58. We owe it to the victims to get the story right. In 2020 historian Alexander Samson said about the reign of Mary Tudor ‘it feels as if we are at the start.’ So dismiss everything you thought you knew and be prepared to be amazed. Ever since Mary died childless, at the age of just 42 in 1…

1
#32 The curious case of inventing Scottishness 35:30

5M ago35:30

35:30

In 1983 Professor Hugh Trevor Roper claimed that Scottishness had been invented. We enjoyably demolish Trevor Roper’s theory and reveal that the commercialisation of romantic Scottishness in the nineteenth century had far deeper and darker roots than the manufacture of tartan and romantic fiction. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more…

1
#79 Santa Claus and the Knickerbockers 29:25

5M ago29:25

29:25

A whole lot of nonsense has been written about the invention of the modern Christmas. It was thought up by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens or Prince Albert. We just can’t resist attaching a famous name to things, especially if the name belongs to a writer or a royal. We deserve better than this. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for m…

1
#107 This is Armageddon - Ep 7 Lunatics take over the Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 30:47

5M ago30:47

30:47

We present the final, damming evidence that the neoliberal case for freedom from all government regulation was always a dangerous deceit. It was always intended to make us prisoners of the unaccountable rich, as we are today. This is not liberty. It is not even the twilight of sovereignty. This is Armageddon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy …

1
#106 Dark make-believe - Ep 6 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 29:01

6M ago29:01

29:01

Unbelievable, sinister. Milton Friedman advises apartheid South Africa that neoliberal free-market economics can solve the problems of the Soweto riots, in the same way it delivered a ‘miracle’ of liberty under the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#105 Smears, imprisonment, assassination - Ep 5 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 27:39

6M ago27:39

27:39

Neoliberalism was welcomed, finally, as a way to tackle what seemed to be a breakdown in American society in the late 1960s. Big business and FBI under J Edgar Hoover felt threatened by Keynsian consensus on welfare and the eradication of poverty. They had plenty to gain by provoking the extremism, and clearing the way for Milton Friedman. Hosted o…

1
#104 Catch 22 - Ep 4 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 30:45

6M ago30:45

30:45

The breakdown of American post-war consensus in the 60s calls for desperate measures on all sides: a government war in Vietnam, inner-city rioting, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Alarmed, US businesses seek salvation from the previously dismissed economic theory of neoliberal free-market capitalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in…

1
#103 Disinformation didn't start with Donald Trump - Ep 3 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 34:28

6M ago34:28

34:28

We look at the roots of free market Neoliberalism and discover that big business in the US has been championing freedom from regulation since 1895, even claiming in 1923 that the anti-child labour movement in America was secretly being run from Moscow… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#102 'The Cuckoo in the Nobel nest' - Ep 2 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 31:11

7M ago31:11

31:11

How did less welfare, less government regulation of business (aka neoliberalism free market) become a global ‘fashion’ without any evidence of its benefits? Something to do with an imposter ‘Nobel’ prize and a PBS TV series funded by American big business? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#101 'everything absolutely maxed out' - Ep 1 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut 32:52

7M ago32:52

32:52

Civil liberty is different from individual liberty. Philosophers have known this since at least the 17th Century. We explore the two fundamental fallacies of neoliberalism to show why neoliberal economics can only bring prosperity to the few, and is incapable of predicting financial crashes. Today in the USA those damaged by neoliberalism have been…

1
#78 Remembrance Day - aren't we forgetting something? 20:45

7M ago20:45

20:45

At least 50% of deaths from war in the last three centuries were civilians. In 2001 the International Red Cross calculated that in modern warfare ten civilians die for every member of the military killed in battle. In the two World Wars the vast majority of soldiers were “civilians in uniform” – conscripts or volunteers. But do we officially rememb…

1
#23 The Last Million Men - Ep 7 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 36:42

7M ago36:42

36:42

One day after Britain goes to war - ‘at sea’ - on 4 August 1914 the first War Council unceremoniously throws out the army’s secret plan to send a few divisions to meet the Germans head on and win quick, painless glory fighting alongside the French. Only then do the four men who had single-handedly thrown away the chance of avoiding a general Europe…

1
#22 The Bullying of Edward Grey - Ep 6 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 30:22

7M ago30:22

30:22

A right-wing anti-German contingent call their campaign for war, the weekend of 31 July-2 August 1914 a ‘pogrom’. All talks of peace are, in their words, a German-Jewish plot to keep Britain out of the war for financial reasons. They have the support of the Conservative party, the British and French military, the politician in charge of the Royal N…

1
#21 8pm 1 August 1914 the War is Off - Ep 5 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 33:53

8M ago33:53

33:53

8pm German time the Kaiser orders champagne, halts the German advance towards Belgium, and sends a telegram of congratulations to his cousin George V at Buckingham Palace. The Liberal British Cabinet had voted to remain neutral on 31 July. Earlier on 1 August Foreign Secretary Grey met the German ambassador Prince Lichnowsky (one of a string of mee…

1
#20 Hanging on Russia's apron strings - Ep 4 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 22:59

8M ago22:59

22:59

In 1912 a deal between War Secretary Haldane and the German chancellor Bethmann-Holweg to allow Britain to retain naval supremacy if they both remained neutral (if neither side had started the war), was rudely sabotaged. It involved lying to Cabinet that the Germans were demanding a full-scale Anglo-German alliance, which they weren’t. It meant thr…

1
#19 Bicycling holidays along the French-Belgian border - Ep 3 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 29:15

8M ago29:15

29:15

How did what friendly chats between British and French generals since 1905 turn into a commitment to send a small British Expeditionary Force to France at the start of a war with Germany? A commitment that had not been agreed by Cabinet, Parliament or the Navy? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#18 Spies of the Kaiser - Ep 2 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 26:15

8M ago26:15

26:15

We look at anti-German hysteria in Britain 1906-1909. The British publishing phenomena of 1906 was The Invasion of 1910 (by Germans), serialised in the Daily Mail and marketed by men walking around London in Prussian uniforms. This chimed perfectly with the anti-German clique at the foreign office. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mor…

1
#17 The Elephant in the Room - Ep 1 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault? 34:57

9M ago34:57

34:57

Britain’s main problem by 1910 was Russian expansion towards its Persian oil and India, the jewel in Britain’s crown. So why did Britain go to war to SUPPORT Russia and AGAINST Germany which was its closest European friend and trading partner? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#40 Henry VIII: the pope, Katherine, Anne and Florence 36:48

9M ago36:48

36:48

After years of negotiation and confrontation, Pope Clement VII was heard swearing unpapally over Henry VIII’s divorce. And no wonder. The history of Henry’s pope is a murky tale of code-breaking and ruthless sieges that involves Michelangelo and Machiavelli and a great deal of double-dealing. Pope Clement was trapped between a rock and a hard place…

1
#52 Anne Boleyn - Henry's MacGuffin 44:42

9M ago44:42

44:42

Most of what we think we know about Anne Boleyn turns out to be later invention, with no historical basis. We argue that she was a MacGuffin: she was necessary to the way things turned out for Henry, but unimportant in herself. We’re not even sure he was in love with her. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#51 Marrying Anne Boleyn, the best of a bad job - Ep 6 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French 30:08

9M ago30:08

30:08

The Ambassadors painting by Hans Holbein reveals the French horror at Henry’s decision in January 1533 to defy the pope and get remarried to a pregnant Anne Boleyn. But since Henry couldn't get an annulment he had no choice. No big-time European princess would marry him. With the Spanish seriously weakened by war, Turkish invasion and protestant re…

1
#50 No more ménage á trois - Ep 5 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French 28:51

10M ago28:51

28:51

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 Rom…

1
#49 Like an episode of the Borgias - Ep 4 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French 33:42

10M ago33:42

33:42

31 May 1529: Faced with France and Spain doing a deal and leaving England in the lurch, Henry races against time to begin his divorce trial in London, and then pulls the plug just before a verdict is reached. Meanwhile the pope and his cardinals are double-crossing each other. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

1
#46 Missions Impossible - Ep 3 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French 32:27

10M ago32:27

32:27

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? (R) Hosted on Acast. S…

1
#45 The Jilting of Princess Mary - Ep 2 Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French 32:23

10M ago32:23

32:23

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 in…

1
#44 Anne Boleyn did not hold out on Henry - Ep 1 Henry VIII, his wife, his lover, the French 31:21

11M ago31:21

31:21

In 2010 a document from 1527 was found in which Henry 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f…

1
#77 Stanley never got the joke - Ep 5 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' 40:05

11M ago40:05

40:05

The events that followed Livingstone’s funeral are perhaps important for the light they shed on everything that Livingstone was not. Stanley, having declared that he would complete what Livingstone had begun, undertook three ‘momentous’ journeys. Whatever the cover stories he created, Stanley’s expeditions were intended to grab and occupy African l…

1
#76 Twelve Reckless Americans - Ep 4 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' 31:18

11M ago31:18

31:18

Henry Morton Stanley, the New York-born journalist who was actually born in Wales, ‘finds’ Livingstone, although everyone knows he’s not lost. Stanley’s employer Gordon Bennett Jr of the daily New York Herald has spotted a fantastic money-making enterprise, pedalling fictitious stories of the romantic failures of the British explorer, Dr Livingston…

1
#75 The Lion and the Tartan Jacket - Ep 3 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' 38:24

11M ago38:24

38:24

The British audience for Livingstone’s book 'Missionary Travels' can’t get enough of his ‘manly’ and ‘forcible’ style. He brings a very personal mix of far-away adventure and science to his stories. His account of being mauled by a lion – shaken like ‘a terrier dog does a rat’ and how the tartan jacket saves his life – are still vivid reading. But …

1
#74 Smoke that Thunders - Ep 2 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' 37:24

11M ago37:24

37:24

Livingstone was the first European to record his visit to Smoke that Thunders on the Zambezi river. 100 metres of plummeting water, across the entire kilometre of the Zambezi’s width. He promptly named it after his queen, Victoria Falls. His ambition was to find a navigable river from the east coast of Africa inland. Although it was clear that Smok…

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