Dan Snow's HISTORY HIT

This Friday sees the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria's birth. BAFTA winning historian and Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley takes Dan on a tour of Kensington Palace, one of the principle royal residences since 1689, and the childhood home of Queen Victoria. The rooms of the royal residence are being renovated for a new exhibition opening to the public on the 200th anniversary of Victoria's birth. For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, signup to  Producer: Natt Tapley and James Carson Audio: Peter Curry

Henry VI came to the throne in exceptionally difficult circumstances. The untimely death of his warlike father, Henry V, placed the crown upon his head aged just 9 months. While England was in the ascendant in the Hundred Years' War in 1422, by the time he came of age his father's French conquests were disintegrating and the English nobility were locked in a dangerous struggle for power. In 1453, Henry suffered a complete mental collapse from which he never fully recovered, and then was used as a chess piece in the bloody Wars of the Roses which swept the country for the next 30 years. Lauren Johnson talks to Dan about the fascinating reign of Henry VI.  For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, signup to 

Game of Thrones is, as you've definitely worked out by now, based heavily on the history of the Wars of the Roses. Famous for high levels of internecine violence and bloody warfare, Game of Thrones is deeply rooted in historical parallels. However, as Dan Jones (not Snow) explains to Dan (not Jon) Snow, George R. R. Martin didn't just inspiration from the Wars of the Roses, but from all manner of historical circumstances and people. From mass murders in castles in Edinburgh, to mercenary companies, to Cixi, the Chinese Dowager Empress, Martin drew inspiration from all periods of history, and both Dans walk us through the many comparisons and similarities. For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, signup to 

Victor Hugo was exiled to Guernsey by the regime of Napoleon III, and so wrote many of his most famous works on the island, like “Les Miserables”, in the only house he ever owned. Dan gets a tour of Hauteville House, where he wrote from Cédric Bail the assistant curator of the museum. You can find out more about Victor Hugo's life on Guernsey at this link: 

Getting to the moon was no easy feat, no matter how confident Kennedy may have sounded in his famous 1961 speech. NASA built a team from the ground up, and there were plenty of moments where it seemed as if they weren't going to make it. Fong tells stories of just how close they came, and how risky it was. After all, it was hard to feel safe when a pen could go straight through the module. Kevin Fong is incredible. As Dan fawns in the podcast, he's part of the NHS emergency response team for major fatality incidents like terror attacks, he's an anaesthetist, he's a lecturer in physiology at UCL and an expert in space medicine. He's currently running a podcast about the Apollo program, which is 50 years old this year, and Dan gets a sneak peek. For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, signup to