Chalke Talk

The podcast from the Chalke Valley History Festival
Released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings

Chalke Talks for CENTURY: C18th


  • 18. THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONS
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    In this talk for senior school pupils, Jonathan Fenby outlines the causes of the French Revolution which began in 1789. He explains that this was the beginning of a cycle of revolutions followed by counter-revolutions and discusses how the French liked to believe that their country was a beacon of humanity with progressive values of […]

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  • 89. JANE AUSTEN
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    Here the celebrated and best-selling biographer Claire Tomalin marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen. Her Life of Jane Austen is unlikely to ever be surpassed. She presents this inimitable writer of some of the best-loved novels of all time as intensely intelligent, sensitive, tough and observant. Unmissable. 

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  • 100. THE BROTHER GARDENERS: BOTANY, EMPIRE AND THE BIRTH OF AN OBSESSION
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    Andrea Wulf tells the story of Philip Miller, Carl Linnaeus, Joseph Banks, David Solander and others who were friends, rivals and enemies united by a passion for plants. In this fascinating talk, history and gardening meet in the telling of the birth of Britain’s green-fingered obsession.

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  • 101. THE SECRET WORLD: THE LOST HISTORY OF INTELLIGENCE FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD TO THE 21st CENTURY
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    What difference have security and intelligence operations made to the course of history? Professor Christopher Andrew, Britain’s foremost intelligence scholar, provides the answers. Beginning with the shift in the ancient world from divination to recognisable attempts to gather intelligence, he charts the development of intelligence and security operations through Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England and Napoleonic […]

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  • 107. MAPS OF WAR: MAPPING CONFLICT THROUGH THE CENTURIES
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    In this talk, Professor Jeremy Black explains how the development of mapping from the Renaissance onwards provides us with an invaluable guide to the history of warfare. From the impact of printing through to the two World Wars and beyond, this is a fascinating and revealing talk from one of our very finest historians.

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  • 129. THE BRITISH IN INDIA: THREE CENTURIES OF AMBITION AND EXPERIENCE
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    Distinguished historian David Gilmour traces the lives of hitherto unknown British men and women in India. They include soldiers, officials, businessmen, doctors and missionaries, planters and engineers, together with children, wives and sisters. He describes their work and their extraordinarily varied interactions with the native populations, painting a highly original portrait of three centuries of […]

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  • 130. MAN OF IRON: THOMAS TELFORD AND THE BUILDING OF BRITAIN
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    Thomas Telford was a shepherd boy who changed the world with his revolutionary engineering and whose genius we still benefit from today. Julian Glover’s original portrait of the great engineer covers decades of gloriously obsessive, prodigiously productive energy, building churches, canals, bridges and the backbone of our national road network.

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  • 142. GENTLEMEN BEHAVING BADLY: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY RAKES AND RASCALS
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    When a pious Swiss traveller visited London in the 1720s, he complained that ‘debauch runs riot with an unblushing countenance’. But just how badly behaved was the average English gentleman? Drawing on diaries, letters and gallows confessions, award-winning author Antonia Hodgson explores the lives of several fascinating rogues – from the amiable to the downright […]

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  • 173. INTO THE CANNON’S MOUTH: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF INFANTRY CHARGES AT CULLODEN AND ISANDLWANA
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    In this talk, the brilliant conflict archaeologist Professor Tony Pollard adopts a forensic approach to dissect the Jacobite charge at Culloden (1746) and that by the Zulus at Isandlwana (1879). Using the results of archaeological investigations the two are compared and contrasted and the factors that influenced Jacobite defeat and Zulu victory examined.

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  • 200. NAPOLEON: THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH
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    ‘What a novel my life has been!’ exclaimed Napoleon – but he wrote much of it himself. A masterful and shameless manipulator of myths, he created a narrative that still inspires passionate and conflicting responses. Was he a god-like genius, Romantic avatar, megalomaniac monster or just a nasty little dictator? Adam Zamoyski argues that he […]

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