History Book Club

Today’s episode is a subject that has been prominent in the last few years, the Atlantic slave trade, and today’s book, Survivors is a quite brilliant one that focusses on one voyage in particular, the Clotilda.

Joining is Hannah Durkin who tells the harrowing tail of one boat’s enslaved people, from when they are capture in West Africa, through to their journey across the Atlantic, to Mobile Alabama, and then the story of the descendants.

Hannah Durkin Links

Survivors: A History of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Ukraine Links

Convoy for Ukraine, run by my friend Ian Wilson-Young

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This is the first movie to appear on the History Book Club pod. It's perhaps the most influential film to depict combat in the last thirty years. Steven Spielberg's epic captures the pathos of warfare.

In this episode we discuss

Saving Private Ryan Links

Bixby Letter
⁠James Holland on Saving Private Ryan⁠
Our Awards

Best Performance

Most Egregious Overracting

Biggest Plot Flaw

Historical Inaccuracy

What if Tarantino Made It?

Who won the film?
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This week we are going back to late 17th and early 18th century Britain, a time when politics as we recognise today was formed: the development of the party system – Whigs and Tories, The Act of Union with Scotland, and foreign wars often unpopular at home.

Joining me, is George Owers, and as you heard he describes a fantastic romp through the period, which is the subject of his book The Rage of Party.

George Owers Links

Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain

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The History Book Club is staying with the 20th century as we discuss
the V-Force, the aircraft best exemplified by the Vulcan which was the plane that played a huge role in the James Bond film, Thunderball. It was a remarkably beautiful engineering feat, that remains an iconic vision of where British design and science was at in the 1950s. It was capable of flying vast distances where it was intended to deliver its payload, a nuclear bomb. Perhaps its most well-known mission was a bombing run during the Falklands War in 1982.

Jonathan Glancey joins the club – he’s an aircraft enthusiast, writer on architecture as well as being a thoroughly interesting chap with a lovely voice so we talk about British produced bombers and fighters
produced post-war.

Jonathan Glancey Links

V-Force: Britain's Nuclear Bombers and the Cold War⁠
Vulcan barrel roll, Farnborough 1955

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After last week’s episode on the Iranian Revolution, I wanted to stay with the 1970s, and so Jason Burke joins me to discuss terrorism during the period, and specifically the Red Army Faction and Palestinian paramilitaries who would cooperate throughout the decade. This is an era when air travel was luxurious, booze sodden and fun – not like now sadly. Another element of flying back then was the very real risk that a couple of hairy Baader Meinhof gang members would hijack your plane, having waltzed through lax security.

Jason is the author of The Revolutionists and he joins to discuss the ideologies as well as characters such as Carlos the Jackal, Leila Khaled
and Ulrike Meinhof.

Jason Burke

The Revolutionists

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