In this episode a wave of devolution sweeps across the United Kingdom creating assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales and a new parliament in Scotland. In 1999 as the balance of power across the whole of the British Isles starts to shift, the foundations are laid to cement a new age in Scotland. At the end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile work begins on an ambitious building, which will herald Scotland’s move to devolution. Built with oak, sycamore, stainless steel and Caithness stone the finished de...
Mar 28, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 97
In this episode the countdown begins; will it be the dawn of a second coming or herald chaos and catastrophe? This week, as the dials turn and the 9s mutate to 0s the new millennium arrives and we’re standing in a landmark building designed by one of the world’s great architects. What does this building tell us about Britain? Hope you’ve got your streamers! To help support the making of this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreon.com https://www.patreon.com/neiloliver New Videos Every Week Ne...
Mar 22, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 96
In this episode Neil comes face to face with the exploits of the Solomon Brown lifeboat crew. With a hurricane battering the Cornish coast, 8 men set sail from Penlee Lifeboat Station in an attempt to save the passengers and crew of the Union Star. As the Union Star was being violently tossed ever closer towards deadly rocks a helicopter rescue pilot witnessed the bravery of the Solomon Brown crew as they attempted to rescue everyone aboard the Union Star – the helicopter pilot described what he...
Mar 15, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 95
In this episode Neil takes us along one of London’s most celebrated and infamous streets, the place that became a byword for the British Press - Fleet Street. We’re in the midst of the pounding heart of the city with gossip, scandal, exposes and politics ringing in our ears – we’re at St Brides Church on Fleet Street. Named after the river Fleet upon which it was built. In the C16th Wynkyn de Worde and his printing press set up shop on Fleet Street, and the foundations of a tradition were laid. ...
Mar 08, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 94
In this episode Neil takes us to a set of three tiny spellbinding islands, shimmering with crystal clear water and pristine white sand – his ultimate desert island. This is the place he escapes to in his imagination when he needs to get away from the pressures of the world. In the C17th smugglers made one of the islands their secret hideaway. Another island was home to a self-styled king who swapped gifts with Queen Victoria – a basket woven from seaweed and filled with fresh fish and royal coat...
Mar 01, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 93
In this episode, as the Cold War and the threat of nuclear Armageddon sends a terrifying chill around the world Neil heads to Orford Ness in Suffolk. In the early C20th this isolated shingle spit, tucked away from prying eyes, came to the attention of the military who saw it as the perfect location for secret experiments. It was first used as a training base for the fledgling Royal Airforce during the First World War. Later, work on the radar system that would prove to be so vital for the defenc...
Feb 22, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 92
In this episode we come face to face with a chilling reminder of just how close Hitler came to conquering Britain. During World War 2 he got a toe-hold on British territory when his army captured the Channel Islands – the first time they’d be wrestled from British control in over 1000 years. This week Neil travels to Alderney, one of the islands in the archipelago, to witness the terrifying atrocities carried out by the Nazi occupation force. Here they brought in an army of slave labourers to bu...
Feb 15, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 91
In this episode Operation Overlord is go as Allied troops begin practicing for D-Day. The plans to invade and liberate Europe are drawn up with amphibious landings on 5 beaches in Normandy - Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Hitler's defences are well prepared, ready and determined, so allied training rehearsals are vital, and it's crucial they are as realistic as possible. Neil heads to Slapton Sands in Devon to watch Exercise Tiger unfold - a heady, dangerous mix of live ammunition, miscommun...
Feb 08, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 90
In this episode we meet Winston Churchill, a man who has helped define the British Isles: a luminary figure, complex, charismatic and inspirational. Prime minister of Britain during World War II he was a man who inspired a nation in its time of need. Neil travels to Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, where was Churchill was born, and to the village of Bladon next door, where he is buried. To help support the making of this podcast series sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreon.com https://www....
Feb 01, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 89
In this episode we hear the deafening roar of industry and see the spark fly as some of the world’s great ships are built. We’re on the banks of the river Clyde, a river that powered a city; as the say goes, ‘Glasgow made the Clyde and the Clyde made Glasgow’. At one time the Clyde shipbuilders build a fifth of all the ships in the world - everything from luxury transatlantic flagships that crossed the world’s oceans to the legendary battlecruisers that would soon face a determined enemy in the ...
Jan 25, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 88
In this episode we set sail with Neil to visit one of the world’s great natural harbours, Scapa Flow in Orkney. This vast harbour is a beautifully bleak, windswept spot drench in drama, tragedy and power. For thousands of years, it played a vital role in maritime travel, trade and conflict. The Vikings anchored in its safe waters in the C11th. The British admiralty enlisted it in the Napoleonic wars. And in the First World War it was home to Britain’s Grand Fleet, before being pressed into servi...
Jan 18, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 87
In this episode we are walking down Whitehall, one of London’s most famous streets, to remember the dead of the First World War. Fabian Ware joined the British army at the outbreak of the war, but because he was 45 years old, the authorities would let him fight on the front line and put him in charge of a mobile ambulance unit instead. Appalled by the number of casualties and troubled that the dead were not being recorded properly he began keeping note. On account of his efforts, the organizatio...
Jan 11, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 86
In this episode Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, declares, Your Country Needs You! The First World War meant that Britain had to raise a new army from volunteers, so the call was raised. Five strong, stout brothers from the Souls family, who lived in the Gloucestershire village of Great Rissington, signed up to join the army and become soldiers. After training they shipped out for France. Albert, the youngest brother, was the first to be killed. Fred was the second brot...
Jan 04, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 85
In this episode we’re travelling over the sea to Skye, an island of ancient jagged crags and rare breath-taking beauty, which feels as though it’s washed in heaven’s tears. When the first world war was declared, there was a seismic shift and everything changed forever. All of Britain felt it’s pain and devastation, but it hit the Highlands the hardest. A conflict of such magnitude, billions of spent bullets and millions dead, the sorrow and suffering it cause is impossible to comprehend. I’m in ...
Dec 28, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 84
In this episode we join Neil as he steps aboard the Titanic, one of the most iconic ships in the world. For Neil this a pivotal moment in history, which marks a point when the world changed forever. When the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage it was the largest human-made object that had ever moved across the face of the planet. 900 feet long (240m), 92 feet wide (28m) and weighing in at 50,000 tons. Built in Belfast it was one of a set of near identical triplets. With 2,200 passengers and cr...
Dec 21, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 83
In this episode, powered by their fabulous fecundity and political astuteness, the Stuart family line inherited the Scottish and English crowns and spread their power and influence right across the British Isles. The C19th saw a canny member of the Stuart clan spotted a gilt-edged opportunity in Cardiff. As the industrial revolution swept across the world, iron, steel and coal were in great demand and high-grade coal from the Rhondda Valley in Wales became a very valuable commodity. If you could...
Dec 14, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 82
In this episode we’re putting on our best and strolling along a stylish promenade in Scarborough, the ‘ Nice of the North ’ to pay homage to the Great British seaside tradition. The tentacles of Scarborough’s history stretch back thousands of years. On it’s cliffs is an Iron Age Fort. The Viking also took a fancy to the place and much later in the C13th Henry III fortified what was then an important port. But it was the Victorians who made it the place we recognise today. Attracted by its restor...
Dec 07, 2021•27 min•Season 1Ep. 81
In this episode we stride around the Elizabethan battlements of a town held ready for war! Berwick-upon-Tweed is a place packed to bursting with thousands of years of rich history. Celtic Britons made it their home, followed by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons. It was a wealthy, flourishing port before any of the modern nation states – England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland – even existed. Sitting on the border of what became Scotland and England it was coveted and fought over in a deadly tug of wa...
Nov 30, 2021•27 min•Season 1Ep. 80
In this episode we travel with Neil to meet the man who split the atom! Ernest Rutherford’s father said to his children, ‘without money we have to think’ – and think Ernest did. Ernest’s brain took him from his childhood home in rural New Zealand to a scientific career that spanned right around the world. In Manchester he assembled a brilliant and diverse team of fantastic minds. He built one of the largest and best equipped laboratories ever seen in the world and with his team set about explori...
Nov 23, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 79
In this episode we’re in the midst of the great Victorian engineering revolution as the dream to reconnect with Europe begins. 8,000 years ago the Storegga Slide hit and severed the British Isles from the European mainland. To thrive and prosper the new islanders had to develop a mastery of the sea, and those coming to the islands had to be determined and committed. For thousands of years the psyche of the people living on this archipelago was shaped and moulded by it’s ‘separateness’, but in th...
Nov 16, 2021•25 min•Season 1Ep. 78
In this episode we set sail with Neil and find ourselves at the centre of a devastating hurricane that’s intent on destroying a proud and hardworking fishing port. In the 1800’s Eyemouth’s fishing fleet found itself battling the elements, bureaucracy and the church. As the harbour remained dangerously inadequate a hated ecclesiastical tax was draining resources. One fateful day bad weather was looming, but under pressure to feed their families and pay the bills, Eyemouth’s brave fisher folk set ...
Nov 09, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 77
In this episode we set sail with Neil, past Fasnet Rock, fleeing the horror of famine. The Vikings called it Hvasstann-ey, ‘the island shaped like a sharp tooth’, the Irish knew it first as Carraig Aonair, ‘the Lonely Rock’, then as Fastnet, ‘Ireland’s Teardrop’. A treacherous island, little more than a jagged rock, it has been responsible for countless shipwrecks and deaths at sea. It was the last part of Ireland many emigrants saw as they sailed to North America to escape the Great Hunger and ...
Nov 02, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 76
In this episode a dark shadow falls across all of Ireland. A time of unimaginable pain and suffer, which has caused a deep wound between the British Isles ever after. It is known as An Gorta Mor or The Great Hunger. For years starvation stalked the land and over a million people died of hunger as ships fully laden and brimming with food left the Irish ports. Standing on the edge of a mass grave in Skibbereen Cemetery Neil comes face to face with the human tragedy. To help support this podcast si...
Oct 25, 2021•25 min•Season 1Ep. 75
In this episode as machines begin to flex their muscles the spectre of human poverty rises darkly and menacingly across the whole of the British Isles. In C19th Dorset a small group of workers came together to dream of a better future. But for daring to stand up straight, demand dignity and call for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work they were crushed by the authorities: arrested, tried and transported to work as slave labour in the penal colony of Australia. In their defence a public outcry...
Oct 18, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 74
In this episode Neil travels to the breathtakingly picturesque seaside side town of Lyme Regis. Sitting on the rugged Jurassic Coast the town was home to a determined, fearless woman called Mary Anning who battled the convention of the day to stake her claim in scientific history. The Jurassic coast is famous for fossil dinosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Ammonites, Belemnites, and plesiosaurus. Often working in foul weather and precarious locations Mary was a fossil hunter extraordinaire whose great skill...
Oct 11, 2021•22 min•Season 1Ep. 73
In this episode Neil strides across the beguilingly beautiful, wild Yorkshire moors to meet three sisters whose brilliance would shape and change the world of literature. Tough, strong-willed survivors, the Bronte sisters laid bare the crippling social conventions of the day with perfect prose. Their own lives were edged with hardship and tragedy, but their imaginations, stubborn genius and dazzling creativity lit up the world. The episode is from the Bronte parsonage in Haworth, west Yorkshire....
Oct 04, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 72
This week Neil spends time on one of the most notorious lighthouses in the world – a place with a profound sense of isolation and a dark history. The British Isles are home to an island race, and to survive and thrive its people have depended on a mastery of the seaways and protection from its dangerous coasts. Ever since King Henry VIII Britain have made lighthouses their own. Dotted around the coastline these engineering marvels have become part of the landscape, sentinels and beacons of hope....
Sep 27, 2021•27 min•Season 1Ep. 71
In this episode we’re stepping aboard a legend. A ship built from 6,000 trees, 27 miles of rigging and 4 acres of sail. She fought in the American and French Revolutionary Wars and came to symbolise the Britain’s dominance of the world-ocean as she battled to keep them free. But it was in 1805, with Admiral Nelson at the helm, that she sailed into the history books. With her 104 guns fully loaded and at the ready she led the Royal Navy into action at the world defining Battle of Trafalgar. To he...
Sep 20, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 70
In this episode we’re walking with a hero of mine, Admiral Nelson – a man with a life full of high drama and adventure, violence and great passion. He was born near the North Norfolk coast in 1758, in the sleepy village of Burnham Thorpe. His father was the local parson and at the ripe old age of 12 he set off to join the Royal Navy and sail the world’s oceans. Horatio Nelson was an ambitious and fearless naval commander always in the tick of the action; he lost his right eye during the siege of...
Sep 13, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 69
In this episode Neil takes us on an emotional journey that affected hundreds of thousands of people and systematically destroyed an ancient way of life – the Highland Clearances. Driven by greed the aristocratic landowners brutally cleared people from what they claimed as their land and replaced them with sheep in one of the biggest mass movements of people in all of British history. To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/neiloliver Neil’s Patreon ...
Sep 06, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 68
