Victory to Defeat: The British Army, 191...

In 1832, a New Bedford whaleship called the Mentor struck a reef in the remote Pacific archipelago of Palau. The tiny, 100-foot-long ship began sinking immediately, and the 22 men who made up its crew were thrown into one of the most extraordinary survival ordeals in American mar ... Show More

The Nobel family (which are the namesake of the Nobel prize), had a rags-to-riches story bigger than the Rockefellers or Morgans. The Nobel patriarch Emanuel fled debtor’s prison in 1837. He then travelled east and built a foundation for the largest oil empire in Russian history. ... Show More

The thirteen colonies that became the United States were just half of the British colonies that existed in the 18th century. The empire stretched from New England, south to Georgia and Florida and the islands of the West Indies, east to India, Scotland, and Ireland, and south aga ... Show More

In the aftermath of Battle of Britain Day, both sides struggled to understand what had really changed in the aerial war over Britain. While the Luftwaffe leadership blamed their fighter pilots for the costly losses on September 15th, faulty intelligence drastically underestimated ... Show More

On September 15, 1940—Battle of Britain Day—the Luftwaffe launched what would become the climactic daylight assault of their campaign against Britain. In a desperate final effort to enable Operation Sea Lion, the German invasion of Britain, over 500 bombers escorted by hundreds o ... Show More

For many years, commemorations of the two World Wars excluded the memorialisation of soldiers from the British Empire. But campaigners have gradually turned the spotlight on their experiences. In the First and Second World War, approximately 3.8 million soldiers from the Indian ... Show More

In June 1944 Allied armies landed in force in northern France, and the liberation of western Europe began. But, the battle that really sealed Hitler's fate was taking place in the east, as the Red Army prepared an almighty assault against the war-weary Wehrmacht. Speaking to Rob ... Show More

How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte--manipulating European powers while building a global maritime empire At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, a fragile peace emerged in Europe. The continent's borders were redrawn, and ... Show More

Winston Churchill's ascension to Prime Minister in 1940 was a key turning point in world history, ultimately being one of the first steps to help the Allies secure victory in the Second World War. The legacies of Churchill’s decisions still shape our world today, but a lesser kno ... Show More

The First World War was an unprecedented crisis, with communities and societies enduring the unimaginable hardships of a prolonged conflict on an industrial scale. In Belgium and France, the terrible capacity of modern weaponry destroyed the natural world and exposed previously he ... Show More

This episode delves into the intense aerial battles of July 1940 during the Battle of Britain, focusing on the RAF and Luftwaffe's clash over the skies as Germany sought to dominate the English Channel and cripple British shipping and naval power. From fiery dogfights on July 10t ... Show More

Robert Lyman MBE is a British military historian. A former Major in the British Army, he has published over 16 books on the Second World War in Europe, North Africa and Asia. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, regularly appearing on TV and radio, lectures at organisa ... Show More