Tales of History and Imagination: Recent Episodes
Simone Whitlow
This week, on Tales we return to Nuremberg, Bavaria: Last month I warned you the Tale of Kaspar Hauser is no fairytale.. This time we ask, what if it is more like a fairytale than we take for granted - just we often misunderstand those old kids’ stories? Part Two of a Two parter.
Content Warnings: Discussion of war, death, child neglect and imprisonment, violence, conspiratorial thinking and social deception.
Apologies all, this has been held up by me catching a nasty nasal infection that has taken weeks to clear… For a while, at least I think we should be back on a fortnightly schedule - or close to it.
Sources Include:
Kaspar Hauser: The Foundling of Nuremberg by Paul Anselm von Feuerbach
The Great Pretenders by Jan Bonderson
Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts
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This week, on Tales - I’m still shaking off a cold, and was planning a Patreon pledge week episode in a month’s time... So, apologies all, I’ve moved things around a little. I’ll record part two of Kaspar Hauser, and the completed script for the episode following that as soon as my voice has returned.
So, this week we’re headed to Bulgaria, Medieval France, and New York’s Chinatown to meet a man and his wife, a smart horse and a mock duck.
Content Warnings:
How I met your mother: slavery, inappropriate relationships, and brief talk of genocide.
Marocco: Possible animal exploitation? Threats of execution, bodily functions.
Mock Duck Meets His Match: Gang warfare, decapitation, domestic violence.
Sources Include:
Fascinating Footnotes from History by Giles Milton
Circus Life and Circus Celebrities by Thomas Frost
The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
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This week, on Tales we’re in Nuremberg, Bavaria: The year is 1828. A young man has appeared as if from out of nowhere with a horrific tale of captivity. Some wonder if he is some deposed price - but be warned, the following is no fairytale. Part one of a Two parter.
Content Warnings: Discussion of war, death, child neglect and imprisonment, violence, conspiratorial thinking and social deception.
Sources Include:
Kaspar Hauser: The Foundling of Nuremberg by Paul Anselm von Feuerbach
The Great Pretenders by Jan Bonderson
Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts
And Historical Blindness’ excellent Two-Part podcast on Hauser, created by Nathaniel Lloyd.
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This week, on Tales we’re in England, the date November 26th 1703 - as a giant storm settles over the country that would haunt the nation for many years - and give birth to at least one new profession.
Content Warnings: Descriptions of animal cruelty, traumatic deaths, and period-appropriate superstitions which may now seem utterly ridiculous.
Sources Include:
Daniel Defoe’s The Storm.
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This week, on Tales we return to Thebes one last time to discuss what happens when others even the field, the life and death or our two heroes, a young man named Philip - and a giant lion..
This is part three of a three parter.
Content Warnings: Battlefield injury and death, some depictions towards the end are quite graphic. Political violence, slavery and hostage taking. Assassination. Suicide-adjacent fatalism. Mass burial. Discussion of LGBTQI+ history not that THAT one should ever need to be a trigger warning - but there you go…Yes I got hate mail a few weeks back, so let’s throw it in there…
and back to the actual nasty stuff, discussion of Authoritarianism, tyranny and mass killing.
Sources Include:
James Romm’s ‘The Sacred Band’
Plutarch’s ‘Lives…’
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This week, on Tales we return to Thebes, to see how their Sacred Band is working out for them. We learn a little bit about Spartan King Agesilaus’ lost love, and we meet a warlord named Jason.
This is part two of a three parter.
Content warnings: historical ableism, homophobic attitudes, warfare, assassination, battlefield death, executions and forced displacement.
Sources Include:
James Romm’s ‘The Sacred Band’
Plutarch’s ‘Lives…’
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This week, on Tales we journey to ancient Thebes, a Greek City state suddenly - unexpectedly - under the control of their foes, Sparta. When you have lost your freedom to a despot, and are fighting for your very survival, what can you turn to? First you have your foundational myths, and second - if you are Thebes - you have some of the toughest gay men ever to exist.
This week, in part one of a three parter, we discuss the formation of The Sacred Band of Thebes.
Content warnings: brief discussion of sexual violence, incest, anti-LGBTQI+ attitudes, political violence, assassinations and executions.
Sources Include:
James Romm’s ‘The Sacred Band’
Plutarch’s ‘Lives…’
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This week, on a much waylaid episode of Tales we return to the Tichbornes,’ as Tom Castro makes his play for the land, money and titles. Does it turn out he was, in fact Roger Charles Tichborne - long thought lost at sea - or was he some larrikin on the lookout for an easy life?
This is part two of a two parter. Apologies all, I lost a good month and a half to a bout of pneumonia just after Christmas.
Content warnings: I said nothing on the tape: but on reflection: childhood bullying, and more talk of a character’s weight than I am comfortable with.
Sources Include:
Robyn Annear’s The Man Who Lost Himself
Rohan McWilliam’s The Tichborne Claimant
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This week on Tales I am still, technically, on holiday - and was hoping to re-release one of five old episodes still left from the first season. This plan has been derailed somewhat. My voice is still recovering from my bout of pneumonia; and I’ve written at least a million words since I did those episodes. I opened those old scripts and realised to be content with them I’d need to completely re-do those episodes…
Not so much out of inaccuracies as out of having refined this thing I do a lot since 2020.
I’ll get back to those episodes sometime.
In the meantime, please let me present this episode, compiled from three Patreon bonus episodes. Thank you to the patrons, whose generosity helps me keep the lights on.
The episodes are:
Stranded on ‘Ata
400 Word Tales: Countess Zangari Bandi
Walter Powell’s Final Flight
Sources this week include:
The Stolen Island by Scott Hamilton
Humankind by Rutger Bregman
Borderlands by Mike Dash
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Hi all, apologies for the delay. I posted up on the blog site I was unwell with pneumonia, then it occurred to me a lot of folk never visit the blog site and I better put something up here as well.
Anyway, please hit play it explains it all. I am on the mend but need some downtime… sorry all.
This week on Tales we enter the vaults to revisit - and re-record - one of the five early episodes still on here that was recorded on my cheap, starter microphone. (We’ll knock the other four off next year in mid-season breaks.)
With Christmas just around the corner this seems as good a time as any to follow a young Charles Dickens around Canongate Graveyard in Edinburgh Scotland looking for ghosts… And we meet the man who - most likely - influenced one of his most famous characters - John Elwes, The Miser of Marcham Park.
Apologies for the break between parts one and two of The Tichborne Claimant. I’m hoping to get that out in the last week of December.
Sources this week include:
Sorry all I never took down any of my sources for this at the time of the original. In revamping the piece though I referred to
This BBC Article.
This Mercat Tours blog post
This Edinburgh Enquirer article by David Forsyth
This BBC piece on Robert Fergusson
And this piece on Fergusson from Roderick Watson at Scottish Poetry Library
This piece from the Royal College of Physicians on Dr Andrew Duncan
Very rare for me, I referred to Wikipedia for more on Dr Andrew Duncan
This piece on Giusto Fernando Tenducci
And this piece on Tenducci by Aoife Barry in The Journal
And John Elwes: The Miser Who Inspired Dickens by Kaushik Patowary
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Quick note all: This episode is approx 29 minutes long… I’ve accidentally left some background music or something muted at the end + will delete that and re-upload once home again…
Sorry all, there is no secret Easter egg at the end of this episode, it’s ok to hit stop when the end credits roll…
This week On Tales we return to the Australian outback - this is the last time we visit my neighbours to the west of Aotearoa/New Zealand for a while, I promise. The year is 1866, the location Wagga Wagga.
Tom Castro, the town’s Chilean-born butcher has a good life, living in ‘Castro villa’ with his young wife and step-daughter. He enjoys his work, horse riding and his larrikin mates down at the local pub… But then one of those larrikins turns his life upside down with a newspaper article.
Was Tom secretly Baronet Roger Tichbourne, a British peer who disappeared in mysterious circumstances off the coast of Brazil a dozen years earlier?
This is part one of a two parter. Apologies ahead of time, I’ll more likely than not have to pause part two till late December/early January to allow for a Christmas episode.
Content warnings: Not too much on this one. Some animal cruelty, and appearance being central to this tale, I have to comment on the protagonist’s appearance in ways not intended to offend… but I may slip up on this one
Sources Include:
Robyn Annear’s The Man Who Lost Himself|
Rohan McWilliam’s The Tichborne Claimant
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This week On Tales we return to the Arctic, the year 1871. Charles Francis Hall has passed on, mysteriously, after drinking a suspiciously sweet, yet metallic coffee. What will happen to the expedition as power passes to the hard-drinking Sidney Buddington? Today we’ll find out.
This is part two of a two parter. Apologies for the delay in getting this one out there - it took some of my neighbours a week to run out of fireworks bought for Guy Fawkes Day.
Content warnings: Death. Gun violence. Brief mention of sexual abuse.
Sources Include:
Fatal North by Bruce Henderson.
Arctic Experiences… by Euphemia Blake
The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton
This New York Times article on John Torrington (that, shockingly, was not behind a paywall)
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This week On Tales we take a slight detour from the Polaris Expedition: I think where that Tale goes IS shocking, but not terribly in a Halloween horror kind of way… So this week we’re taking a ride to the town of Halifax, England to meet The Halifax Gibbet - someone’s wild solution to petty thievery.
We’ll return to The Polaris in a fortnight.
Content warnings: Beheadings.
Sources Include: Daniel Defoe’s A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain.
Samuel Midgley & William Bentley’s Halifax and It’s Gibbet Law Placed in A True Light
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This week On Tales we travel back to 1871, to take a journey to the top of the world. Our intrepid hero, Charles Francis Hall has dreams of becoming the first man to stand on the North Pole - but dreams can sometimes go horribly awry. Just what happened to the Polaris Expedition?
This is part one of a two parter (part two will follow after we take a brief intermission for a Halloween special episode.)
Content warnings: Death. Gun violence.
Sources Include:
Fatal North by Bruce Henderson.
Arctic Experiences… by Euphemia Blake
The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton
This New York Times article on John Torrington (that, shockingly, was not behind a paywall) by Leanne Shapton
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Last week when I covered the Tale of Spring Heeled Jack, I mentioned a couple of people in passing without explanation… Apologies all, I’ll be coming back to a few of those people sometime in the near future… But with regards the Hammersmith Ghost, there is a Patreon minisode from back in 2022. I re-recorded the episode over the weekend.
The following minisode comes to you by way of the generosity of my backers on Patreon.
Content warnings: Gun violence.
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to an episode from the first season to give it a new coat of (red) paint… speaking of, we’re going back to London in 1837 to discuss newspapers, the death of ‘Silly Billy,’ ‘painting the town red’ and a mysterious sex pest whose legend took on a life of it’s own throughout the remainder of the century…
Content warnings: This week we discuss a sexual abuser.
Sources Include:
I failed to keep a list on this one back in 2020, (apologies all) and mostly built it up from online articles and a Reader’s Digest book on Mysteries … but
Mike Dash’s ‘Spring Heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost
Was a given.
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we discuss a murdered nanny, the murderer… his awful ancestors, and said murderer’s mysterious disappearance.
Trigger warnings: murder.
Sources Include:
A Different Class of Murder by Laura Thompson
And several dozen news articles, including this piece from Lynn Barber interviewing John Aspinall
This one from Steven Morris on the many theories on Lord Lucan’s disappearance
This one (Morris and Angelique Chrisafis) on Jungle Barry (sometimes called Jungley Barry)
This article (author not listed) from the Whanganui Chronicle on an unpleasant man named Roger Woodgate
This article by Gary Nunn on John Stonehouse
This Daily Mail article by Laura Thompson on the Taxi Driver hypothesis
And a handful of documentaries I never recorded at the time of writing the first attempt at this script a few years ago…
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return one last time to the wreck of the Batavia. This is where things, finally, go all ‘Lord of the Flies’ on Batavia’s Graveyard.
This is part four of a four parter - thanks for hanging in there with me all… I promise a load of one parters in the back half of the year.
Trigger warnings: murder, rape, descriptions of death by dehydration, a pitched battle and a handful of executions.
Sources Include:
Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash
And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons.
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to the wreck of the Batavia. In part two we follow the adventures of the 48 in the longboat as they make their way along Australia’s Western coast; learn a little more about Francisco Pelsaert, and speak of the first of the murders on Batavia’s Graveyard.
This is part three of a four parter.
Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, accidental poisoning.
Sources Include:
Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash
And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons.
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to the wreck of the Batavia. In part two we discuss heresy, and the harrowing life of under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz.
This is part two of a four parter.
Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, child mortality, religious extremism.
Sources Include:
Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash
And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons.
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to Australia for a real life soap opera that was considerably more bloody than Neighbours or Home and Away. First we need to take a cruise on a Dutch VOC flagship called The Batavia, the year 1629.
In part one of a four parter, we discuss the voyage; how and why folk took such risks to travel to the end of the earth like this - and the voyage itself, right up until the ship wrecked on Houtman’s Abrolhos.
Note: Apologies all, as you can hear my voice is still a little scratchy on this one… I’ve had a bit of a nasty cold, and figured better to get this out now, than keep you waiting a month and a half to start this. Part two should be less so…
Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, attempted genocide and sexual assault.
Sources Include:
Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash
Ocean by John Haywood
And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons.
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Hey all the next episode is likely to be delayed by a week or so… as you can hear I’m getting over a bit of a nasty cold/ case of flu - and my voice is still pretty ragged..
But in the meantime, here’s a little something I’ve had lying around collecting dust for, I guess years now?? I have actually forgotten what I was writing it for, but can think of a few places I can take this to….
What do you reckon, should I write an episode around this for some time in the second half of the 2025 season?
Will be back soon all…
This week we travel to Australia for a game of Marn Grook, to discuss origin stories; perhaps the archetypal troubled sportsman - and horrific massacres.
Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, colonialism, and to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people listening to this episode - I discuss some of your origin legends as best I can, and play a brief excerpt of a speech from an Aboriginal elder.
Sources Include:
Australia’s Most Unbelievable True Stories by Jim Haynes
This University of Newcastle Article on Aboriginal massacres, quoting studies by Professor Lyndall Ryan
This NSW State Library piece on The ‘First Fleet’
This article on Edward Wills
First Contact by Anita Heiss
This piece on the Dreamtime.
The deplorable (alleged) Neo-Nazi interruption of tribal elder Mark Brown, care of the Guardian
Speeches from Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese on election night 2025, care of SBS News.
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The American actress Ilda Orme knew a thing or two about being cancelled, a long, long time before social media put the cancel button in the hands of the public at large. Her cancellers, she suspected were two hateful former in-laws and a theatre manager in their pocket.
Her cancellation was nearly literal - culminating in an assassination attempt.
What does one do when cancelled? If you’re Ilda Orme, you seek revenge in the most public way possible.
Trigger warnings: Gun violence and false accusations leading to incarceration.
Note: This fortnight’s episode is a little shorter than usual in the hope that doing a quick firebreak episode will get me back on a two-weekly schedule. Next fortnight should be back to around half an hour again.
Sources Include:
The Battered Body Beneath The Flagstones and Other Victorian Scandals by Michelle Morgan
The Madness of Ilda Orme by Dr Nell Darby
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On, or around 11th June 323 BC Alexander the Great died in Babylon. While there are mysteries surrounding his passing - did an Indian holy man prophesy his passing a year prior while self immolating in Alexander’s presence? Was he poisoned? Did somebody entomb him while still alive? - He is just a cameo in this Tale.
This week we travel to Athens - then chafing under the Macedonian yoke - as they make a bid for freedom.
Trigger warning: some swearing, talk of three suicides. We discuss the fall of two mighty empires and one despot.
Sources Include:
Ghost On The Throne by James Romm
A History of Greece To 322 BC by N.G.L Hammond
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On May 18th 1926 the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson took a trip to Santa Monica Beach, California to work, seek inspiration and have a little fun in the sun. However, the day would end in tragedy when Aimee disappeared without a trace.
Was her disappearance all it appeared?
Sources Include:
The Vanishing Evangelist by Lately Thomas
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Hi all, welcome back (again) - sorry it’s a week later than planned… a few ongoing voice issues from the cold. This week we conclude the tale of Sidney Reilly and the ‘Red Terror.’
Sources Include:
R.H. Bruce-Lockhart ‘Memoirs of a British Agent’
Sidney Reilly + Pepita Bobadilla ‘ Adventures of a British Master Spy’
James Palmer ‘The Bloody White Baron’
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Hi all, welcome back - sorry it’s a week later than planned… I had a nasty cold. This week we’re in Russia just after the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks have taken over, plunging the nation even further into disarray. They’re determined to exit the First World War.
Britain, knowing this would be disastrous for their war with Germany need a hero to go in there and upset the apple cart - the kind of talented, yet completely amoral man Ian Fleming would draw on years later when crafting his best known invention - James Bond.
This week, part one of two: Who was Sidney Reilly, and how did Russia find herself in this mess?
Sources Include:
R.H. Bruce-Lockhart ‘Memoirs of a British Agent’
Pepita Bobadilla & Sidney Reilly ‘ Adventures of a British Master Spy’
This ‘Spycraft 101’ episode Featuring Giles Milton
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Hi all, Happy Holidays! This year I’ve got a ghost story for you all. Today we travel to Greenbrier County, West Virginia in 1897.
Sources Include:
Again this week I’ve gone from a handful of online articles, a few online genealogy pages - and a couple of podcast episodes.
Including…
‘How The ‘Greenbrier Ghost’ Helped Convict a West Virginia Murderer in 1897’ by Joey Rather.
This website on ghosts in West Virginia.
‘Can We ‘See’ Dead People?’ By Mark Shelvock.
‘The Greenbrier Ghost’ by Brian Dunning.
Zona Heaster Shoe’s ‘Family Search’ genealogy page.
Erasmus Stribbling Shoe’s listing on Find a Grave.
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This week we travel to Tana Island, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) in the midst of World War Two. God has returned - and not a moment too soon. Having abandoned them decades earlier, just as bad men with awful intentions arrived to steal their land - and send their people off to far away locales to be worked to death - he was back, as an American soldier named John Frum.
Sources Include:
This week a lot of articles (which I had saved in tabs - when my iPad crashed and needed a restore…This is as best I remember it.)
In John They Trust by Paul Raffaele
This explainer in the Guardian
This Guardian article by Christopher Lord
Archiving a Prophecy: An ethnographic history of the ‘John Frum files’ (Tanna, Vanuatu, 1941–1980) by Marc Tabani
This short piece on the NZ History site (that confirms my memory NZ too had blackbirded labour)
How Blackbirding Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders into Slavery After the Civil War by Shoshi Parks
Blackbirding and Indentured Labour in 19th Century Queensland by Sue Thompson
From the Islands by Scott Hamilton (everyone should go and follow Scott on Twitter, if you’re still on there… I miss not seeing him in my feed, now I’ve X-ited)
Hunting the Blackbirder: Ross-Lewin and the Royal Navy by Doug Hunt
There were a handful more, including pages of old newspaper clippings on the Daphne Slave-ship bust, and a couple of articles specific to Blackbirding in Peru - I apologise for not backing these sources up somewhere as I went…
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This week, how do I sum this up? I was freewheeling a little today, but have I got a tale of resistance, and a weird little man for you all. Anthony Comstock was a weird, joyless guy - and his ‘Comstockery’ ruined many ordinary lives - but hell hath no fury like Margaret Sanger and Katharine Dexter McCormick - our heroines this week.
Sources Include:
I was free associating things I knew this week, rather than going off a script - but Andrew Marr’s A History of the World was where I first came across this tale.
Tyler Mahan Coe’s episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones on Loretta Lynn’s The Pill is definitely in the mix on this one too…
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Come over and follow me there - it’s better than hanging out on X with Elon… I’ll be deleting my profile over there in the coming days.
Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.
Hi there all, just dropping a quick note, before I return to the writing desk… USA I’m aghast… and worried, and saddened by recent turns of events.
And tonight I just wanted to send you all my love (well, obviously not all of you… some of you voted for a fascist) and just explain why I’m pulling an upcoming episode… hit play, spoken me explains it all better…
No ‘Sources Include’ tonight - unless you’re in fight back mode - in which case no specific recommendation, but I’ll be looking round for a good book on the French Popular Front movement who formed in 1936, and destroyed the ascendant French fascist party, the Croix De Feu.
Paul Mason’s How to Stop Fascism is as good a place to start as any…
Hang in there USA…
This week, it’s Halloween! So, naturally I’ve got a tale of… well, historic hotel rooms in Kansas City, Missouri… And a notorious murder carried out in Room 1046 of the Hotel President..
Sources Include:
This fantastic article by John Horner, which appears the font of a dozen or so other articles I read through.
This post by the ‘Murder She Told’ podcast
This article on Tom Pendegast by K.C. Yesterday
And a handful of things found in online newspaper archives and genealogy sites.
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This week we return to Cuba to conclude our miniseries on the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week we discuss arctic explorers, nuclear test sites, saboteurs, spy planes gone awry, submarines and why I think having such power out there in an age where a ‘mad king’ could come to power is still very disconcerting.
Sources Include:
One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs
Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen
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On 16th October 1962, American President John F Kennedy was presented with three indistinct photos taken of several tubes laid out in a field in Cuba. Kennedy at first took the scene for a football field. His brother Robert, on viewing the scene, wondered if it depicted a farm house in mid construction.
It was, of course, a nuclear missile site in mid construction, and the following thirteen days brought humanity closer to nuclear war than any time before of since.
This fortnight, and next we’re looking at the Cuban Missile Crisis, primarily from the perspective of three potentially inciting incidents - one involving two saboteurs, another a spy plane, and the third a Foxtrot submarine.
Sources Include:
One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs
And Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen
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- with one credit I needs must acknowledge today. I stole the melody for the marimba music that plays under the Miguel Orozco parts from the verses of Jimmy Soul’s ‘If You Wanna Be Happy.’
Soul, in turn, had stolen that melody from the Trinidadian Calypso great Roaring Lion’s ‘Ugly Woman’ - no commentary meant on either artist, Mrs Soul or Mrs Lion - just needed a melody from that general location…
Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.
Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today, after visiting the set of the Donohue Show, we ask the question… Is a Nude Horse a Rude Horse?
Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month
(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit the first stretch target.)
As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going. This includes occasionally putting down a month’s membership on some paywalled newspaper or other. This episode was penned a long time ago, and I’ve since lost the bibliography - but am pretty sure it grew out of something paywalled I found in the Washington Post.
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*Dollars quoted in USD…
Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.
Monday through Thursday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we’re going to meet a now obscure, but terrifying General named Uqba Ibn Nafi.
Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month
(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit my first stretch target.)
As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going, in my case Patreon money helps me buy books to research these tales, like the main source in this tale
Francois-Xavier Fauvelle’s ‘The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages
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*Dollars quoted in USD.
Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.
Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we’re discussing one of history’s stranger What if’s. Thomas Johnson was a renowned smuggler, a talented escape artist - and it is rumoured he had a submarine - in 1820. Was he hired to bust Napoleon Bonaparte out of St Helena?
Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month
(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit my first stretch target.)
As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going, in my case Patreon money helps me with the rental costs of the blog page - Speaking of blog pages, though I used half a dozen texts for this Tale - I first read this tale on the incomparable
Mike Dash’s A Blast from the Past.
Emilio Ocampo’s The Emperor’s Last Campaign
And F.W.N Bayly’s Scenes and Stories by a Clergyman in Debt were also very useful… book based resources.
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*Dollars quoted in USD.
Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.
Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we visit Milan, the year 1630. A comet blazing across the sky spooks the people. Augurers spoke, the comet portends death - in one form or another. Then people started dying. This reminded the folk of an ancient legend… That one day, The Devil himself would come to Milan.
Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month
(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit the first stretch target.)
As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going. This includes occasionally putting down a month’s membership on some paywalled newspaper or other. This episode was penned a long time ago, and I’ve since lost the bibliography - but am pretty sure it grew out of something paywalled I found in the Washington Post.
Unsure if you want to join up yet? Try a 7 day free trial.
*Dollars quoted in USD…
Hey all I’m on holiday, though I’ve got a few things programmed to drop while I’m away… including this; a re-upload of this episode from October 2021.
“On 9:14 pm, 22nd November 1987, Chicago’s WGN TV was ‘zipped’ by a mysterious attacker - a figure wearing a rubber Max Headroom mask. The attacker would strike again, upsetting Whovians in the Windy City.
In this short Tale we discuss the Max Headroom Incident.”
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Hey all I’m on holiday, though I’ve got a few things programmed to drop while I’m away… including this, my short ode to the astronomer Tycho Brahe.
Sources include: Apologies all, this is from an old blog post where, now very much to my shame - I never noted my sources. If I’m recalling correctly I first heard the story of the moose/elk on a cracked.com video on YouTube (which I couldn’t find to link.) I think several of the posts I used have been taken down since, or paywalled?
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This week we conclude our mob Tale. With the bosses banged up, the Morello family must do their best to navigate a rapidly changing world - and several vicious wars. How will they deal with upstarts, Kings, The Camorra, prohibition - and the arrival of a Fifth Family?
Admin Note: Apologies for the messy scheduling of late. I’ve been a little worn out from everyday job stuff, a number of recent current events have been adding to the drain… and I’m well overdue a week of ‘me time’ away from the 9 to 5. I think I’m on the upswing, finally…
Also, I normally try to give myself a mid-season break after episode 10, where I’ll drop a couple of episodes I’ve prepared earlier. Cause this one ran to three parts I’m taking that break now, at episode 12. I’ll have a re-upload of 2021’s The Max Headroom Incident to drop in a little over a week’s time; a biographical piece on the Astronomer Tycho Brahe to drop two weeks after that, and a Patreon Pledge week (thanks to the Patrons for this one) where I’ll drop four minisodes from 2023 into the feed over four days… I’ll be back, all rested and good to go - two weeks after that.
Sources Include:
The First Family; Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia by Mike Dash
Five Families by Selwyn Raab
The Black Hand by Stephan Talty
The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
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I haven’t yet made my X-it from X, but am very close to it… If Twitter was your thing come hand out with me on Threads.
Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.
This week, (sorry all, please bear with me- day job’s running me a little ragged, but I should be on track again in August) we’re returning to our mobsters - Giuseppe ‘The Clutch Hand’ Morello and the 107th Street Gang. In part two of this three parter we discuss the rise of the professional hitman, the first Capo de Tutti Capi - and the ballad of an ambitious young man named Antonio Comito.
Sources Include:
The First Family; Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia by Mike Dash
Five Families by Selwyn Raab
The Black Hand by Stephan Talty
The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
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This week, (apologies for the delay all, I’ve been an absolute wreck the last couple of weeks) we’re returning to Little Italy; the year 1903. In part one of this two parter we discuss the early life of America’s first Capo di Tutti Capi, Giuseppe ‘The Clutch Hand’ Morello.
Sources Include:
The First Family; Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia by Mike Dash
Five Families by Selwyn Raab
The Black Hand by Stephan Talty
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This week, we take a magic carpet ride into the wilds of the Central Asian Steppe - timeframe? the mid 12th Century. Today we’re taking a (rather hagiographic) look at the early life of a young man named Temujin…
Sources Include:
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
Empires of The Steppes by Kenneth Harl
The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
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This week - we travel to the British Seaside town of Hartlepool. The date?? Sometime around the Napoleonic Wars. A French ship has run aground, leaving bodies strewn across the beach. Legend tells one survivor was found - a small, hairy man - subsequently hung by the locals.
Did the people of Hartlepool really hang a monkey, mistaking the animal for a French sailor?
Sources Include: (I think these were the sources when I wrote this in 2020…)
The Hanging of the Hartlepool Monkey by Ben Johnson
Was a Monkey Really Hanged in Hartlepool? By Duncan Leatherdale
This article on Ned Corvan by Tony Henderson
And online articles containing the full text of the Monkey Barber, and an article on Simian impersonator Monsieur Goffe I could no longer find (thanks for the AI Google 🙄)
I’d intended to sing The Fisherman Hung the Monkey O myself on this episode, but - long story, short version - I all but lost my voice a few weeks back to a cold. I found this version online by a gentleman named Keith Gregson, and borrowed a few lines. Go check out his channel.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly (with the exception of Keith Gregson’s The Fisherman Hung the Monkey O.).
This week - Adrian Carton de Wiart was a lifelong soldier; acknowledged for his bravery across the 2nd Boer War, the Somaliland Campaign, Poland’s several wars for independence - and both World Wars. The man started out with a cavalry sabre, and was still writing reports back to high command in the Atomic Age - advising of the risk of a war in Vietnam. He also had the aura of invulnerability - having survived eleven life-threatening injuries, several plane crashes, and single-handedly tunnelling out of a Prisoner of War camp.
Today I just felt like telling his story.
Sources Include:
Happy Odyssey by Adrian Carton de Wiart
And The Life and Times of Lieutenant General Adrian Carton de Wiart… by Alan Ogden
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Quick Admin note: sorry for the lateness all, I’ve been a bit run off of my feet of late… and the episode following this one will more likely than not be three weeks’ from now. After that we should be back on track again…. Sorry all.
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This week we travel to the Germanic Duchy of Hannover, the year 1694. Under cover of darkness, a dashing, aristocratic young soldier named Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck makes his way to an illicit meeting with his lover; the deeply unhappily married Princess Sophia Dorothea of Celle. Before the night is done one of the lovers will disappear mysteriously.
Sources Include:
Great Mysteries of The Past - Readers Digest.
Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
This National Geographic article by Becky Little
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Trigger Warning: Death by misadventure, and an execution by guillotine. I make no concessions for calling Aotearoa… Aotearoa. I mention this as in Aotearoa (New Zealand) news sites are having to shut down comment sections on Maori language, Maori achievement and Maori culture over racist morons getting upset by this news. If the use of Te Reo names over those of colonizers upsets you, this show really isn’t for you…
This week is a bit of a departure from my regular plan. I’m still working on the episode planned for this spot, so put a triptych of shorter tales together.
First, we meet Harold Davidson - the Vicar of Stiffkey. A man well known in Britain’s newspapers in the 1930s, who, if he was remembered today would probably be known for something else entirely.
Then we briefly meet Polynesia’s great navigators.
And finally we discuss Father of modern Chemistry Antoine Lavoisier’s final experiment.
Sources Include:
Sorry all, I’m running late this week and will backfill this later. Harold Davidson’s tale came to me years ago via Mike Dash’s original blog site - and this is one of a number of pieces no longer up - but it is preserved on the Wayback Machine -so I’ll link to it.
Michael King’s The Penguin History of New Zealand, and several articles on NZ History’s site and Te Ara, the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand were used in The Navigators.
The Lavoisier piece is an old blog piece jumbled together from a bunch of sources, I don’t recall all of them, but will take a shot at finding them on the weekend.
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Trigger Warning: Talk of executions, religious extremism and cannibalism.
This week we return one last time to the city of Münster. With everything going to hell in Münster, Henry Gresbeck risks his life in a dash for freedom. The Prince Bishop has given orders to kill all men who show up at the wall - but Gresbeck has a secret that may just unravel the siege. How does this play out? Who will survive, and just what is a Wagenburg anyway?
Sources Include:
There are very few book out there on this topic so I mostly worked from.
The Tailor King by Anthony Arthur
And Freaks of Fanaticism and Other Strange Events by Sabine Baring-Gould
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This week we return to the city of Münster, in the Holy Roman Empire. Now we’ve got all the context out of the way - let’s discuss the war between the Prince Bishop, and the city’s new rogue Prophet - the Tailor, Jan of Leiden. This is Part Two of a Three Parter.
Sources Include:
There are very few book out there on this topic so I mostly worked from.
The Tailor King by Anthony Arthur
And Freaks of Fanaticism and Other Strange Events by Sabine Baring-Gould
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This week we travel to the city of Münster, in the Holy Roman Empire. The year, 1534. Tensions have ratcheted up between the City’s Prince Bishop, the City Council and a rogue preacher to the point where the people have gone rogue - having rebelled, locked the gates and set up the cannons for war. Over the following two episodes we’ll break down what happened during the siege of Münster..
This is part one of a two parter.
Sources Include:
There are very few books out there on this topic so I mostly worked from.
The Tailor King by Anthony Arthur
And Freaks of Fanaticism and Other Strange Events by Sabine Baring-Gould
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Hi all, I’m technically still on holiday (Tales will be back for Season 5 on 1st February.) - but I was on the mic on Sunday, and had a little downtime … and a spare script or two. This week we meet Charles Lightoller, a remarkable sailor, on what I believe must have been his worst day ever?
Sources Include:
I wrote this to the blog in early 2020… so …. pass, sorry. But articles probably included.
This History Channel article - Author not listed.
This Encyclopaedia Titanica article looks very familiar… Author not listed
… And this Dunkirk 1940 dot org article… Another anonymous piece.
AND I’m 100% certain I used an article from the Liverpool Museum website… But it appears they have taken that article down some time ago??
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Music, writing, narration, mixing normally yours truly. I probably unintentionally interpolated from Tom Lewis’ ‘The Last Shanty’ in the background music this week - so credit where credit is due.
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Happy Holidays all! This week we travel to Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950. It’s four in the morning when a policeman comes across a young couple huddled together in their car. Like another young couple a few millennia before, they tell him they have come to town, only to find no room left at the inn. Little does the officer know, but he’d stumbled across a theft hundreds of years in the making.
Sources Include:
As I couldn’t find any books for this one, there were quite a few online articles - including.
A copy of a news report two days after the theft.
This ‘The National’ article on the Battle of Culloden, and the genocide that followed, by Hamish McPherson
This Smithsonian overview of the Scottish Independence movement by Meilan Solly
A Britannica entry on the Stone of Scone
A BBC Article (no author listed) on Alexander III of Scotland.
The Stone of Destiny (History UK) by Ben Johnson
A My Heritage page listing Tea Tephi
This ‘Tomorrow’s World’ article on the Prophet Jeremiah and his alleged arrival in Ireland.
This University of Glasgow article on Ian Hamilton and the Removal of the Stone of Scone
Another religious article (author not mentioned) about Jacob’s Ladder, his pillow, and his stupid claim God promised him Gaza.
This BBC article by Steven Brocklehurst about the Removal of the Stone of Scone
This Royal UK piece on James II
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Hi all apologies for the delay. I’ve been unwell for a couple of weeks, and am only just bouncing back now. This week, on what was originally planned for Transgender Day of Remembrance (two weeks ago) we continue my annual Trans history episode. In 2022 I started this series replying to a foolish claim Trans people were a recent phenomenon. My take, there have always been people we’d now recognise as Trans.
My list of examples veered from groups, like the Galli, to individuals - like Eleanor Rykener.
Society once had places for Trans people - more often than not religious orders - but the church dismantled a lot of this at the Council of Nicaea.
Or at least they did so for Trans women. How did the church react to history’s Trans men? Today, with a little help from a couple of historical Trans cowboys and a few others, we take a look.
Sources Include:
The last six or seven minutes of this episode owes a huge debt to Nate Hale’s The Conspirators episode ‘The Secret Life of Pope Joan.’ Nate does this way better than I do, and in much greater detail. Go check his episode out.
Susan Stryker’s ‘Transgender History’ was invaluable.
I used this English Heritage. Org article to fact check the Galli.
This American Battlefields article on Albert Cashier
This NY Times article on Charley Parkhurst
And this National Women’s History Museum article on Deborah Sampson, written by Debra Michals.
I’ll add a handful of other articles later. Much of this episode was put together from leftover notes from the TDOR 2022 episode.
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This week we meet two prophets, separated by half a world, and three centuries. One is the self appointed son of God, the other talks with Aliens. What happens to prophets, and more importantly - their followers, when prophesies fail?
(This episode is a re-do of 2021’s Dorothy Martin’s Flying Saucer.)
Trigger Warning: I hadn’t scheduled this with the current situation in Palestine/Israel in mind, but the episode discusses a claimant for the role of Jewish Messiah. I don’t know if this needs a trigger warning, but better safe than sorry?
Sources Include:
I wrote this a long time ago, and can only say on polishing the old script, I reopened When Prophesy Fails by Leon Festinger.
and Madame Blavatsky by Marion Meade.
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This week we travel to the Kingdom of Abkhazia, a Black Sea land nestled amongst the Caucasus. At a date lost to history, but believed to be around 1860 - hunters trap what they believe is a monster in their bear pit. The creature is shackled and brought to a nobleman named Edgi Genaba. This week is all about monsters - but the monster may not be who you are thinking of.
Trigger Warning: This Tale contains discussion of rape and dehumanisation.
Sources Include:
In The Footsteps of The Russian Snowman by Dmitri Bayanov.
This DNA Explained article on Zana (author not listed.)
This travelogue on Abkhazia.
This Weird NJ article on Oliver the Humanzee by Mark Sceurman.
I referred to Britannica to confirm several details that were already in my head
And came around a dozen news articles from 2015 with much the same text one to the next…
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This week we travel to the Bagradas River, Tunisia in 256 BC. Rome are in the midst of the Punic wars against Carthage, and are in the process of launching an all out invasion on the Carthaginians. As 14,000 Legionnaires, led by Marcus Attilus Regulus make their way towards the capital, they encounter a foe they were not expecting. Just what was the Bagradas Dragon?
Apologies all, this week came out around ten minutes shorter than I planned in editing. I had no plans of dropping a minisode this week, but it needed the cuts to make it flow. Also my voice was the worse for wear when recording and does sound a little strained...
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This week we return to medieval England for part two of our two parter. We finally get to Hereward, but first let’s talk a little about William the Conqueror and the final years of Edward the Confessor’s reign.
Welcome to Hereward the Wake: Part Two - The Confessor.
Sources this week include:
I promise I’ll get this done in the coming days… A lot of info from these two episodes come from older blog posts I’ve taken down some time back, which I need to work back from… but the main newer sources were
The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris
Femina, A New History of the Middle Ages… by Janina Ramirez
The English and Their History by Robert Tombs
Cameos from English History from Rollo to Edward II by Charlotte M Yonge
And the following two are a bit odd…
A Book of Giants by Henry Lanier (mostly folk tales of mythical giants, but has a chapter on real world giants.)
And Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter Pyle (There are a lot of near giant or legit giant men in this tale, so I fact checked their sizes as best I could through these two dusty old books.)
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This week we go back to medieval, Anglo Saxon England for a two parter. I’ve got a Tale to tell of an outlaw, a resourceful Wolf’s-head who leads a guerrilla war against a cruel, unjust King - a man some might say robbed from the rich to give to…. Well, we’ll get to that - but before we do we have a Confessor, a Bastard… and a slew of other characters to deal with first.
Welcome to Hereward the Wake - Part one: where today we’ll delve into the Wessexes.
Sources this week include:
I promise I’ll fill this in tomorrow morning… The episode is already a day late, and it is a bit of a list. Sorry.
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This week Tales goes true crime - as we travel West Point Military Academy, January 1950. Cadet Richard Colvin Cox receives a mysterious visitor identified only as ‘George.’ A week later, Richard would disappear without a trace.
The investigation would uncover several intriguing scenarios, but ultimately are we any closer to knowing what happened to Richard Cox?
Sources this week include:
I started off with Harry J. Maihoffer’s ‘Oblivion, The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox’ And found two podcasts this week far more useful This episode of Robin Warder’s The Trail Went Cold is excellent. And this episode of Disappearances was decent.
Much of my information on West Point came from an old, unpublished blog post I’ve had saved to drafts for three years - I’ll be releasing it as a minisode on The Eggnog Riots for my Patrons on Patreon in coming days.
I referred to this LA Times article. And this article from Ohio Wesleyan University Jim Underwood’s articles, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. This West Point Alumni article
And God knows whatever book I first picked this tale up from more than twenty years ago…
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This week, we travel to Baltimore’s Gunner’s Hall - the date October 3rd 1849. A disheveled man is found outside the bar “…in great distress and… in need of immediate assistance.” It turns out the man is none other than the horror and detective fiction pioneer Edgar Allan Poe.
Today we discuss Mr Poe’s passing, and the case of the mysterious ‘Poe Toaster.’
Sources this week include:
I wrote this as a blog post to commemorate 50 posts on the blog, way back in 2020 - apologies, I never took down my sources at the time. Though in re-writing I ALSO referred to
Josh Hrala’s ‘The Man Who Defamed Edgar Allan Poe.’ Several articles on The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore’s website. This National Parks Service piece. Natasha Geiling’s ‘The Still Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe’
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This week on Tales we return to Infernal Machines and a shadowy merchant of death who sold them - a man who built a great fortune on the death and suffering of millions. What can we actually say on the life of the mysterious Sir Basil Zaharoff?
Sources this week include: Man of Arms; The Life and Legend of Sir Basil Zaharoff by Anthony Allfrey This Time Magazine Article This Library of Congress article on J.P. Holland This Cecil Bloom article in Liberal History
And Mike Dash’s The Mysterious Mr ZedZed; the Wickedest Man in the World.
I’ve got another dozen or so articles to share on Ottoman ‘firefighters’ and submarines that I’ll get up tomorrow.
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Though I made a quick arrangement of ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’ (Henry Clay Work) this episode.
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This week on Tales of History and Imagination, we travel from The White House to Coney Island’s Luna Park, from the jungles of Cameroon, to the Bosphorus Strait in the age of Justinian… to the battlefields of World War One - to tell five short tales of animals who also inhabit this world.
Sources this week include:
The Periplus of Hanno the Navigator Fortean Times World’s Weirdest News Stories. Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Book 7 of Procopius’ The History of the Wars This excellent blog post on Porphyrius. Stories to Wash Hands by, from Nate Di Meo’s The Memory Palace Topsy the Elephant was a Victim of her Captors by Kat Eschner And This Smithsonian write up on Cher Ami
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In June Tales of History and Imagination is on holiday… Well, technically I’m writing new scripts for the second half of the year. In the meantime I’ve recorded a couple of minisodes, the second on Charles Lennox Richardson and The Namamugi Incident.
Sources? Honestly, I never noted them when I wrote this in 2019, sorry.
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In June Tales of History and Imagination is on holiday… Well, technically I’m writing new scripts for the second half of the year. In the meantime I’ve recorded a couple of minisodes, starting with the Tale of Frau Troffea and Medieval Dancing Plagues.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I heavily borrowed from Toni Basil’s Mickey (M. Chapman, N. Chinn, (T. Basil should have a co-write for the cheerleading bit) )
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Hey everyone the following is a quick addendum to the episode on William Desmond Taylor. Just what happened to Norma Desmond to finally ruin her career? I glossed over it in the episode so… here it is.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. I’m burnt out but vaguely remember using Lullaby of the Leaves on this one? (Composers Bernice Petkere and Joe Young)
Simone’s About Me.
This week, Part Three of our Hollywood Trilogy - we discuss the Feb 1st 1922 murder of pioneering film director William Desmond Taylor, and the Pandora’s Box flung open in his wake.
Sources this week include:
(Sorry all, I’ll fill in later this week)
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. This week I again used my arrangements of Moonlight Serenade (Glenn Miller) and Lullaby of the Leaves (Bernice Petkere, Joe Young.)
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This week, part two of our Hollywood Trilogy - we discuss the Fatty Arbuckle/ Virginia Rappe case. How did a mysterious death during a boozy Labour Day party change the public’s perception of Hollywood forever? Hit play to find out…
Sources this week include:
(Sorry all, I’ll fill in later this week)
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. This week I used my arrangements of Moonlight Serenade (Glenn Miller) and Lullaby of the Leaves (Bernice Petkere, Joe Young.)
Simone’s About Me.
For the next three episodes Tales of History and Imagination is going Hollywood, with three related - but separate Tales. In 1919, many of the folks who brought America Prohibition of alcohol turned their sights on a new ‘peril’ - the Movie industry. These joyless wowsers were convinced Hollywood was an evil, decadent place that needed shutting down.
Hollywood took these people seriously, and by 1934 had bound itself to a restrictive morality code. Why did they do so? For one, Tinseltown was rocked by a number of serious scandals in the 1920s. We’re looking at three of the bigger ones in the following weeks, the Fatty Arbuckle case, the murder of William Desmond Taylor - and first, the story of Olive Thomas - Hollywood’s first scandal.
Sources this week include:
(Sorry all, I’ll fill in later this week)
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly.
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This week, we’re going to ride the rails, in Colorado, USA - the year 1878. In the midst of a Railway boom in the USA, two tycoons go to war over narrow, twenty mile mountain pass. This week we’re examining the Royal Gorge war.
Sources this week include:
From the River to the Sea, by John Sedgwick.
Postcapitalism, A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason
Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter by Tom Horn
Tom Horn, The Controversial Life and Legacy of One of the Wild West’s Most Famous Gunslingers by Charles River Publishers.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
This week, three short tales of Medieval and Ancient people who - through circumstances way beyond their control - found themselves transported beyond the furthest extent of (to them at least) the known world. This episode we discuss Du Huan, Guillaume Boucher and Crassus’ lost Legion.
Sources this week (sorry all, will need to work back through this. 2/3 of this episode comes from OLD blog posts. However I’m definitely drawing from):
The Golden Rhinoceros by Francois-Xavier Fauvelle
The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
Genghis Khan and The Making of The Modern World by Jack Weatherford
(And a bunch of articles on the Academia and Jstor databases I’ll link to later)
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
This week’s all about presidents, dictators, more mobsters, islands and how the theft of a hat was taken just a little too seriously. Last fortnight we discussed the Black Hand, this episode we follow up and discuss why the Mob finally came to America.
Sources this week include: Five Families by Selwyn Raab
And The Black Hand by Stephan Talty
(As well as several articles I’ll link to later)
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Death threats, child kidnappings, fire-bombings… A naked man in a barrel? This week I discuss the shadowy practice that came to be known as The Black Hand, and detective Joseph Petrosino.
Sources this week include: Five Families by Selwyn Raab
And The Black Hand by Stephan Talty
(As well as several articles I’ll link to later)
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I use, and re-use Enrico Caruso’s 1904 recording of Una Furtiva Lagrima (Gaetano Donizetti) and provide my own ‘drunken’ version of the track - the reason for doing so I hope comes across in the context, otherwise a lot of people will be asking WTF???
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This week, we travel to the court of the tenth Ottoman Emperor - though this tale is only tangentially about Suleiman the Magnificent. It’s a bit of an old cliche to say behind every great man is a great woman - but it is fair to say Suleiman was married to a remarkable Ukrainian lady, who left a lasting impact on their empire. What do we know about Roxelana/Hurrem Sultan/Aleksandra?
Far too little, but here’s what little I can tell you…
Sources this week include:
Empress of the East by Leslie Pierce.
Ibrahim Pasha by Hester Jenkins
And The Lion House: The Coming of a King by Christopher de Bellaigue
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months.
The next episode, out on March 1st is Charles Delschau’s Memoirs.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly (sorry, I’m a little croaky on this one.)
For more information on Simone click here.
First discovered on New Year’s Day 1739, and situated 1,600 Kilometres from the nearest trade route, Bouvet Island is the most remote island on Earth. Uninhabitable, windswept and dangerous - it has, all the same, accrued two historical mysteries. This week Simone discusses the abandoned lifeboat, and The Vela Incident.
Sources this week include: (sorry all, I’ll fill it in later)
The blog post of the episode is here.
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This month’s episode was on Yasuke. If we reach my second pledge level I’ll start matching main episodes one to one.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Jorgen Jorgensen, born in Copenhagen, Denmark to a watchmaker, lived the kind of life most seen in picaresque novels like Voltaire’s Candide or Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon - but another way to sum him up would be he lived the life of that guy in Sinatra’s That’s Life - He was a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a King. There is another P word that, sadly, summed the adventurer’s life up - one that cast a shadow over much of his later life.
Sources this week include:
The Collected Works of Marcus Clarke - by Marcus Clarke. The Convict King - by Jorgen Jorgensen. And Australia’s Most Unbelievable True Stories - by Jim Haynes.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months.
February’s episode, out on 1 February is Yasuke.
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Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I borrowed the melody for Waltzing Matilda (words the poet Banjo Patterson - click here to check out his most famous work The Man From Snowy River… music to his poem by Christina McPherson)
For more information on Simone click here.
Happy Holidays all! This week we travel back to the Thames river, scene of The Revenge of the Tallysticks, to discuss the Great Frost Fair of 1683-4.
Tales of History and Imagination will be back with some new episodes on January 25th 2023. In the meantime I’m hoping to re-upload several older episodes. Keep an eye on the social media accounts for details as I’ll be dropping them back into the feed whenever they’re done…
Sources this week include: This was part of a much longer episode which, on first pass ran to two hours - and contained a dozen shorter tales - so I consulted articles rather than books this week.
This History Today blog post, this Historic UK dot com article, this Museum of London article, this Art UK article
And a couple of jstor articles (which will be paywalled to most people) were consulted.
I should also mention, Dr Sean Munger’s Second Decade podcast episode on the Last Frost Fair got me tuned into this topic. Though at time of writing Sean hasn’t posted a new episode to Second Decade for 18 months, I strongly recommend his show.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter (for now), Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I threw together covers of
Sleigh Ride (Leroy Anderson).God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Traditional, thought to have been written in response to a spate of newer-sounding hymns in the 1500s)And Winter Wonderland (Felix Bernard & Richard Bernhard Smith)
For more information on Simone click here.
In Madame Fiocca part two we discuss Nancy Wake’s return to France, and time with the Maquis - bands of French resistance agents camping out in the forests.
This is part Two of a Two Part series. Part One is HERE.
Blog readers, I’ll get some extra artwork up tomorrow when I’m back home. I left my Android tablet home, so had no access to the pictures.
Sources this week include: I’ll update later, in the meantime, my main text was Nancy Wake by Peter Fitzsimons.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter (for now), Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I made use of Fred Godfrey and Robert Kewley’s Bless em All (though a different arrangement to last week).
For more information on Simone click here.
Nancy Wake was known by many names. The Nazis called her the White Mouse, a resourceful agent of the resistance, who evaded their clutches. Britain’s Special Operations Executive called her Hélène. She was a key member of their Freelance cell, working to bring the Nazis down. To Marseille’s high society, she was Madame Fiocca, an intrepid foreign journalist who fell in love with one of their most eligible bachelors, and subsequently become one of their own. To the French resistance she was the tough as nails Madame Andrée - she could kill a man with her bare hands.
To Australia, the land she fled in her teens she was Nancy Wake - war hero.
This is part one of a Two Part series. Part Two will be up in a week’s time.
Sources this week include: I’ll update fully later, in the meantime, my main text was Nancy Wake by Peter Fitzsimons.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I recorded covers of Beautiful Dreamer (Stephen Foster)Moonlight Serenade (Glenn Miller, Mitchell Parish)Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major (Art Noel, Don Pelosi)and Bless ‘em All (Fred Godfrey, Robert Kewley)Everything else is mine.
For more information on Simone click here.
This week’s Tale is, moving forwards, an annual topic I’d like to return to each November - as I do spooky things on Halloween and Christmassy things around Christmas. The week this script was written (13-19 November) was Transgender Awareness week. The 20th also marked Transgender Day of Remembrance - a commemorative day, originally in observance of the unsolved hate crime murder of Rita Hester, and subsequently a day to mourn the loss of trans people the world over that year.
Though I try to keep myself out of the tales, as a rule, I see no reason not to tell the tales of other trans people from history once a year - cause Trans Visibility Matters. This year we’re going far back into the timeline to discuss an angry poet, a medieval barmaid, a couple of pagan religious orders, an emperor and a warrior prince/princess…
Sources this week include: I wrote this script largely from memory, but did refer to
This brief write up in the Jewish Virtual Library This Vice Article Adrienne Mayor’s The Poison King I referred to Encyclopaedia Brittanica on a couple of details
And, easily one of my favourite reads of 2022, Janina Ramirez’ Femina.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months.
December’s episode, out on The Enfundu should be out in the coming days.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter (for now), Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Warning: The following is a long, shaggy dog tale about money, Anglo-Saxon England, things manufactured and things callously discarded. Mostly it’s about Tally Sticks, willow trees and revenge. It’s not me taking a new direction with the show so much as trying to write a ten minute ‘firebreak’ episode to get my second wind for the last couple of episodes and, oh boy did this one take off on me… Just like the ‘great fire of 1834’ did, by the way. Apologies for that I thought this one would run to about 10 minutes… it tripled on me when putting pen to paper.
We’ll be back to regular programming in two weeks’ time, if this worries you.. If there is something a little quirky you like in this episode, a reminder the Patreon tends to be a little quirkier than the main show in a similar way.
Sources this week include: Tim Harford’s ‘Fifty Inventions That Helped Shape the Modern Economy’ Jacob Goldstein’s ‘Money; The True Story of a Made up Thing’ Marc Morris’ ‘The Anglo Saxons’
This British government website article on the great fire of 1834 A British Library article on Tally Sticks Prof Richard Murphy’s blog post on Charles II’s questionable financial behaviour in 1672, at Tax Research UK And this one from some company called Glint.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months. December 1 I’ll be dropping the equally unusual tale of the Enfundu.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter (for now), Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly.
In this episode I use my own take on Ella Fitzgerald’s Lullaby of the Leaves (Bernice Petkere & Joe Young).
I also use excerpts from NZ hard rock band Ishtar’s ‘Secret Love’ and ‘South of Sanity’ (S. Whitlow, D. Cannon, M. Wright). The rest of the music is all mine.
For more information on Simone click here.
On Sunday April 18th 1943 four boys head off on a boys-own adventure into Hagley Woods. A day of poaching birds eggs soon turned macabre, however - with the discovery of a skull in an elm tree. In this Halloween Tale we discuss a few of the possibilities around the poor Jane Doe, known to history simply as ‘Bella’.
Sources this week - Oh boy… I wrote this as a blog post years ago, after a YouTube video on the tale caught my eye.
I thought that video was a Rob Gavagan episode, but if so he’s since taken it down. Next most likely YouTuber? The remarkable Cayleigh Elise - not that you could confuse the two YouTubers, but they were my go to’s at the time for True Crime. A few years back Cayleigh found the weight of her own content became too much for her - and scrapped her entire channel. This Unexplained Mysteries episode is also a likely source.
This led me to several newspaper articles, like this one in The Independent, which is paywalled. This fantastic piece in the Birmingham Mail is a source, and well worth a read …. And several others, lost to my inattentiveness.
This Crimereads article is, I’m 99% sure a source. As was 100% this article in The History Press.
Josef Jacobs dot info is well worth checking out, not just for info on Jacobs, Jack Mossop and Clara Bauerle, but so much else besides with WW2 espionage leanings.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months. November 1 I’m dropping a short tale on The Hammersmith Ghost.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing NORMALLY all yours truly.
In this episode, however, I use my own quick takes on Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade (Miller + Mitchell Parish) Bless ‘Em All (First performed by George Formby, probably written by Fred Godfrey and Robert Kewley) And the WW2 drinking song Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major (Art Noel and Don Pelosi)… I had planned to throw together a version of Lili Marlene, and White Cliffs of Dover… but I ran out of time… The rest of the music is all mine.
For more information on Simone click here.
This week’s tale is part two of a two parter. Part one can be found here
Smedley Butler was, in his own time, the most decorated soldier in American History. A participant in 120 battles and armed conflicts spanning eleven wars, he served his nation with distinction, but increasingly felt his role was that of “A high class muscle-man for Big Business… a racketeer, a gangster for Capitalism”
What would happen when, July 1st 1933, Big Business would come knocking at his door with an offer to serve them one final time?
Sources this week - Full list coming (will fill in on Labour day later this month). My main texts however were
The Plot to Seize the White House. The Shocking TRUE Story of The Conspiracy to Overthrow F.D.R by Jules Archer.
War is a Racket by Smedley Butler
In a rare case of Amazon letting me down, I couldn’t get a Kindle or Audible copy of Jonathan Katz’s Gangsters of Capitalism in my region (NZ/Australia) but his influence is all over a load of secondary sources, and well worth checking out.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months. This week we’ll discuss the Enfundu.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support original, independent content is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
This week’s tale is part one of a two parter. Smedley Butler was, in his own time, the most decorated soldier in American History. A participant in 120 battles and armed conflicts spanning eleven wars, he served his nation with distinction, but increasingly felt his role was that of “A high class muscle-man for Big Business… a racketeer, a gangster for Capitalism”
What would happen when, July 1st 1933, Big Business would come knocking at his door with an offer to serve them one final time?
Sources this week - Full list coming (will fill in on Labour day later this month). My main texts however were
The Plot to Seize the White House. The Shocking TRUE Story of The Conspiracy to Overthrow F.D.R by Jules Archer.
War is a Racket by Smedley Butler
In a rare case of Amazon letting me down, I couldn’t get a Kindle or Audible copy of Jonathan Katz’s Gangsters of Capitalism in my region (NZ/Australia) but his influence is all over a load of secondary sources, and well worth checking out.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months. This week we’ll discuss the mystery of Otzi the Iceman.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Note: As per last episode - A few weeks back I had a script half done for an episode on Smedley Butler and the Wall Street Putsch. It looked set to run well in excess of my usual 20- 25 minutes. The following episode will likely be a similar length. I set those scripts aside as I had just started a new role at my day job, and was worried homework for the new job might throw everything into disarray. We’ll pick up on those regular episodes in two weeks’ time.
Trigger Warning: This one is a little gory at times.
This week’s tale starts in a pub in London, England, circa 1818. A cadre of upper middle-class professionals meet to discuss the day’s topics of interest. Among them, a ‘man in a box’ who a century and a half ago outlawed such frivolity. This is the tale of that man, Oliver - and how got here.
Sources this week - I’ll fill this in, and backfill several previous episodes this week (I promise). The episode grew out of a blog post on History in Numbers a friend sent me, which veered off into several news articles, an old high school history book and an episode of Parcast Network’s Gone.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months. This week we’ll discuss the mystery of Otzi the Iceman.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Note: I had a different subject in mind for this week’s Tale, and was around 3,000 words into what was shaping up to be a longer than average script - when things came up at my day job. Those things are great things - but they required me shelving that episode for a couple of weeks, and improvising. As my world is all about the 9 to 5 this week, let’s talk Sin Eaters, The Wizard of Mauritius and a man known to Berkeley California as ‘Mr Good Day’.
Sources this week - I’ll fill this in, and backfill several previous episodes on Saturday. The Sin Eater came primarily from an Atlas Obscura article. The Wizard of Mauritius from Mike Dash’s excellent ‘A Blast From The Past’. Mr Good Day from a Fortean Times book named World’s Weirdest News Stories - however 90% of the content came from news articles written in Berkeley on Joseph Charles over the course of thirty years.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Glenn Miller was a trombonist, composer, superstar bandleader, and a war hero. On 15th December he hitched a ride on a plane across the English Channel - and was never seen again.
This week we discuss some of the many, alleged deaths of them remarkable Mr Miller.
Note: Normally I’m fairly claiming all music yours truly - the ‘music box’ arrangement of Miller’s Moonlight Serenade (1935) at the beginning is my interpretation of his composition cribbed by ear off of the original.
Later in the piece Miller’s own (far superior) composition features.
We close the episode, not on the regular theme, but on Miller’s arrangement of Leon Rene’s When The Swallows Come Back to Capistrano.
Sources this week - I’ll fill this in, in full later. I worked mostly from an old Readers Digest Mystery book, articles from the LA Times and Irish Times, and several random facts I carry in my head about the utterly deplorable Mr Heidrich.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly - except where stated otherwise (see above).
For more information on Simone click here.
This week we’re in Tsavo, Kenya, 1898. John Henry Patterson has recently arrived in the region, to oversee the construction of a railway line through the country. Much could be said of him, but we’re far more interested in two other recent transplants to the region - a pair of resourceful man-eaters nicknamed The Ghost and The Darkness.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Trigger Warning: The following episode discusses a mass shooting. I’ve left all the foley sounds out and do my best to treat the subject matter with reverence - but if in doubt it’s fine to miss this one - I’ll be back in a fortnight with a tale of some big cats…
This week we travel from 1835 France, to Paris’ Boulevard du Temple (made famous in 1839 by Louis Daguerre for a different type of shooting), to The US Civil War, to the British seaside town of Southampton in the late 1870s. The one thread between these tales? An Infernal Machine….
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and now an Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, for Audiogram advertisements. I’m not big into Social Media but if you drop by and say hi I’ll shout back.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Trigger Warning: The following episode discusses political assassination. Also a quick mention, this wasn’t the episode I had in mind for the second of my ‘From the Vaults’ episodes for the break. I recorded both Carrington Event and The Bagradas Dragon with strained vocal cords (it shows in Carrington, and showed a little more on Bagradas). I have had this week’s episode recorded since I bought the Rodecaster recording console, and wasn’t sure when I’d look to release it - it was just recording practice. I’ll redo Bagradas and look to throw it in the mix on the next mini break.
Spencer Percival was Prime Minister of Britain in interesting times. During his run, the formerly ‘Mad’ King George (III) went ‘mad’ again. A costly war with Napoleon was chewing through cash, and more importantly, lives. Percival’s reputation had also been marred by the disastrous Walcheran Expedition.
All the same, on May 11th 1812, he was full of all the joys of the season as he walked to work on a hot summer’s day. Sadly, he had not counted on John Bellingham.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Strange, magical things were afoot in Boston, Massachusetts on September 2nd 1859, as telegraph machines took on a life of their own. That night the skies the world over put on a magnificent light show on e reporter described as ‘painfully lurid’. What caused this phenomenon? In Surrey, England an amateur astronomer named Richard Carrington had more than an inkling.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Heads up, I was suffering from strained vocal cords doing this one, add to that it’s from an older blog post of mine - so has some looong sentences to negotiate. I’m not ‘going for a new thing’ so much as just getting through the recording here.. Voice has more or less rebounded now, thx for asking…
Please leave Tales a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
In Part Three of our Assassins series we discuss the Syrian Assassins, Crusaders, Saladin, yet more assassinations and Baybars the Mamluk as we continue in our examination of the Ismaili.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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For more information on Simone click here.
In Part Two of our Assassins series we discuss Mongols, Kwarazmians, Heretics, more assassinations and those camels as we continue in our examination of the Ismaili.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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For more information on Simone click here.
Admin Note: The following is part one of a two (edit, probably three) part Tale. I’ll be releasing this fortnightly, with re-upload episodes on in-between weeks.
There’s a tale from the Medieval Near East that persists in the modern day - some of the details are somewhat accurate - some less so. Up in the mountains of Persia and Syria, in inaccessible mountain fortresses, lives a cult of fearless killers. Led by a prototypical James Bond Supervillain, known as the ‘Man of the Mountain’ the cult is greatly feared for its murders of many kings, generals, administrators and holy men. Just who were the infamous Assassins really? In Part One we look at their founder, Hassan-i Sabbah
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content. At the current pledge level I post a bonus episode a month, and will add more extras as the channel grows.
Please leave a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest…. Yeah I know two of those are increasingly problematic - I may add more socials to the list in future.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Hey all just a quick update, apologies I’m a little croaky on the recording. As I say I have been doing a lot of recording while on a long weekend.
I’ll be back with an actual new episode once I have it all mixed, edited + added some music into the mix - Hopefully tomorrow night. - Simone.
Quick admin note: I was planning on dropping a couple of 10 minute episodes in May, giving me a little time to plan out the next run. A couple of day to day things (I’m feeling it prudent I update my CV, and begin looking for a new day job) are likely to put me behind a little in coming weeks so I’m moving at least one of those episodes up a little.
Today we travel to London’s Haymarket Theatre - in 1749 a hotbed of middle class discontent towards the ruling class. The air is abuzz with anticipation for the incredible Bottle Conjuror - a musician, mentalist and contortionist like no other. With a full house what could go wrong?
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content. At the current pledge level I post a bonus episode a month, and will add more extras as the channel grows.
Please leave a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. For more information on Simone click here.
This week my (New Zealand) Government announced New Zealand schools would be teaching New Zealand History to all children. This IS actually quite an accomplishment - a lot of younger kids get little to no history at all, and those who take the subject as an elective option often don’t even touch on our own country. It only seems fitting to do a New Zealand Tale this week. What can one say about New Zealand and the act of Pseudocide - faking one’s own death to start anew elsewhere? Quite a bit it turns out…
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently dropping a bonus tale a month, and will increase to one an episode when we meet our first target.
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For more information on Simone click here.
Happy International Woman’s Day! This week I’m looking at one lesser known badass warrior Queen - Njinga, Queen (then later King) of Ndongo.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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For more information on Simone click here.
From November 1896 through 1897, the skies over America - if Tales are to be believed - were full of magnificent flying machines. Some possibly from another planet, most were believed by the populace to be the work of pioneering geniuses - such as a mysterious 47 year old dentist from California.
What was really behind this spate of sightings?
The blog post of the episode is here.
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For more information on Simone click here.
Content Warning: This week’s Tale deals with several ugly topics including lynching, false arrests death by consumption, suicide and racism in general. Discretion advised. Set in Detroit Michigan in and around 1925 today we try to explain the awful reasons a dedicated family doctor fell foul of a ‘waterworks improvement association’ for wanting to move into a ‘nice neighbourhood’.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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For more information on Simone click here.
This is part two of a two part series on England’s Pendle Witch trials of 1612. Last episode we looked at the lead in to the witch hunts in England and Scotland- Today we look at the Demdikes and the Chattoxes.
I’ve split this episode into two parts as it was running closer to an hour than the usual 20 minutes in pre production.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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In 1612 Lancaster, England was abuzz with several reports of witchcraft - the new moral panic to have just hit England after a certain King of Scotland got a promotion and brought some strange ideas south with him. The following is the story of how the witch hunts affected two families - the Devices and the Chattoxes.
I’ve split this episode into two parts as it was running closer to an hour than the usual 20 minutes in pre production. Part two will be out next week.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.
Please leave us a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Hi all, Happy Holidays, however you choose to celebrate - or commiserate this year. The following episode is the last Tale of the year (I’ll be back round 19th January 2022)
I wanted to close out the year by dissecting a figure who entered Xmas lore back in 1843 - Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge - one of his many ‘Mean men’. Was there a real life equivalent who inspired Dickens’ fertile imagination? Hit the button and find out.
The blog post of the episode is here. Check out the blog at historyandimagination.com
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. I normally compose on the fly, though have borrowed God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (anon - first appeared among recusant Catholic families in England in the 1650s)
And Sleigh Ride (Leroy Anderson & Mitchell Parish - FYI The Andrews Sisters version may be canon, but The Ronettes cover is where it’s at).
For more information on Simone hit the link.
This week we’re in the town of Campden, Gloucestershire. The date August 16th, 1660. William Harrison, the ageing rent collector - disappears while on a two mile walk to Charringworth. A local man is arrested, and a disturbing tale of betrayal emerges - but was any of it true?
The blog post of the episode is here. Check out the blog at historyandimagination.com
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Today’s tale is set on a freezing cold morning, 57 metres above the ground, in Paris, France. The date February 4th 1912. Our subject, one unfortunate soul we’ll come to in a few minutes. Before I even begin this tale, I needs must take you all on a flight of fancy.
This week we discuss Franz Reichelt, the flying tailor - and the early days of powered flight.
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The blog post of the episode is here. Check out the blog at historyandimagination.com
Please leave a like or review. If you enjoyed this episode, share us with someone you know will like it too. This all helps the show to grow. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Spring Heeled Jack would enter the public consciousness of Londoners at the tail end of 1837, as reports emerged of numerous attacks on lone women in the city. Tall, demonic, with glowing red eyes and an almost supernatural ability to scale tall objects - some wondered if the devil had come to London.
Over time his legend spread and took on a surprising life of his own.
This week’s Patreon only episode is on The Carrington Event. For just $2 US a month you can support the show, and get access to exclusive content.
The blog post of the episode is here. Check out the blog at historyandimagination.com
Please leave a like or review on your pod-catcher of choice. If you enjoyed this episode, share us with someone you know will like it too. Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
Main texts: Sorry it’s been so long since I wrote this that I’ve lost track, Mike Dash’s work on Spring Heeled Jack would have to be the main source - all subsequent articles owing much to his scholarship.
For more information on Simone click here.
On 9:14 pm, 22nd November 1987, Chicago’s WGN TV was ‘zipped’ by a mysterious attacker - a figure wearing a rubber Max Headroom mask. The attacker would strike again, upsetting Whovians in the Windy City.
In this short Tale we discuss the Max Headroom Incident.
This week’s Patreon only episode is on The Hammersmith Ghost. Support the show for just $2 US a month, and get access to exclusive content.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Check out the blog at historyandimagination.com
Please leave me a like or review on your pod-catcher of choice. If you enjoyed this episode, share us with someone who’ll like it too. Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
South Side Chicago Still think of him often… so today we’re talking bout Willie ‘Wimp’ Stokes and his Cadillac Coffin.
This week’s Patreon only episode is on Idi Amin and the Enfundu. For just $2 US a month you can support the show, and get access to exclusive content.
The blog post of the episode is here. Check out the blog at historyandimagination.com
Please leave a like or review on your pod-catcher of choice. If you enjoyed this episode, share us with someone you know will like it too. Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
Main texts: Mostly newspaper articles, and an online back catalogue of Jet Magazine articles - though I did use Flukey Stokes biography Flukey Stokes: Drugs, Gangs and Police Corruption in Chicago
For more information on Simone click here.
This week is all about presidents, dictators, mobsters, islands and how the theft of a hat was taken a little too seriously. Apologies again, voice a little scratchy in this one (was recorded 2 weeks ago) so have turned the background music down a little in this one.
My Patreon is finally up! Click here to support the show, and get bonus episodes. This week’s episode is on Owney Madden.
The blog post of the episode is here.
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Writing, music, narration, editing all yours truly.
Main texts: This tale was cobbled together from a dozen texts, but grew out of a chapter of Selwyn Raab’s ‘Five Families’
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, collector of odd tales, songwriter and musician.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
In July I asked readers and listeners to choose a subject from two real world influences on the Indiana Jones movie character. The majority of you chose Giovanni Batista Belzoni.
From apprentice monk, to fugitive, to circus strongman, and finally, tomb raider one could never say Giovanni Belzoni’s life wasn’t eventful. Today we discuss the time he stole an unmovable statue from the desert.
My Patreon is finally up! Click here to support the show, and get bonus episodes. This week’s episode is a murder mystery on Otzi the Iceman.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Please leave a like or review on your pod catcher of choice if you enjoyed the episode. Please subscribe, and share the show round (maybe not THIS episode, my voice was still flu damaged)
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If you feel the show is worth supporting join me on Patreon for exclusive, extra content. I have one tier, $2 a month (US) gets you full access.
Writing, music, narration, editing all yours truly.
Main texts: Giovanni Batista Belzoni’s ‘Travels in Egypt and Nubia mostly, though Sean Munger’s ‘Tomb Raider’ from the Second Decade podcast helped clarify several things no end. His show always well worth a listen.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, collector of odd tales, songwriter and musician.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
Content warning: This week’s episode features monsters doing monstrous things - as they are apt to do.
The after-effects of World War One on the Western World are well documented. It also upturned significant parts of the East. Trapped between Russia and China, both imploding - Mongolia had it’s share of outlaws with large private armies to deal with. This is one such tale.
My Patreon is finally up! Click here to support the show, and get bonus episodes. This week’s episode is on Puyi, China’s Last Emperor.
The blog post of the episode is here.
Please leave us a like or review. Follow the show. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone else you think will also like it. I post new episodes fortnightly, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
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Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. The machine gun was just from a free sounds effects app.
Main texts: Mostly The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer, and a handful of Jstor articles.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. She turned down the chance to be head teacher at a Mongolian language school in her 20s and regrets it… but, my god those winters would have been brutal…
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy - both his prototypical hippie lifestyle, long before the summer of love - and the ethereal song he left us in 1947 have fascinated me endlessly since first reading his Tale. Today, we discuss eden ahbez, and how the song Nature Boy came to be.
Patreon episodes will start next episode, to help me make the show please show some love here!
Read the blog post of this episode here.
Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
Support the show on Patreon for exclusive, extra content.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. I normally write the music - this week I’m just vamping over a couple of phrases taken from ahbez’ song Nature Boy. Hear Nat King Cole’s version here!
Main texts: I don’t know… I think I got this story from a Vanity Fair article. Of course I consulted the LA Times, as I often do first with anything based in Los Angeles. Andrew Hickey’s podcast ‘A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs’ tuned me in to the Petrillo strikes. I cannot recommend Andrew’s show too highly, go check it out.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
In an age where female reporters were few and far between, and wrote on little more than fashion and gardening - Nellie Bly got locked up in a ‘madhouse’ to expose the horrors of such an institution. In this 10 minute episode Simone discusses her 10 days in a madhouse.
Check back in in a week’s time for a Patreon bonus episode - am playing catch up with those this week.
You can read the blog post of the episode here.
Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
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Support the show on Patreon for exclusive, extra content.
Music, writing, narration, mixing usually all yours truly. This episode uses an arrangement of Steven Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer under the Asylum scene, played by me.
Main texts: Of course Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse. and articles on The Womans’ History Museum And Encyclopedia Britannica
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. She is currently on a multi-year mission infiltrating a giant corporation, probably no less insane than Blackwood Island Asylum.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
Content warning, this Tale deals with a murder. Richard John Bingham, John to his friends, ‘Lucky' to others – officially titled the 7th Earl of Lucan, entered the history books on November 7th 1974 for the worst kind of reasons. He then captured the imagination of much of the English speaking world when he vanished without a trace.
This week, a You Choose topic chosen by the show's listeners and readers, Simone discusses the case.
I’ll get the first Patreon only release, a companion piece on John Stonehouse, up in the coming days.
You can read the blog post of this episode here.
Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
My Patreon, soon to be active can be found here
You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Bloghttp://www.historyandimagination.com.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
Except the music under Lucan's time in America, I borrowed and rearranged Art Noel and Don Pelosi's ‘Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major', a popular drinking song amongst the British soldiers during World War Two.
Main texts: I referenced a load of online articles , but my main book was A Different Class of Murder by Laura Thompson – whose facts were solid, but whose opinions (she is something of a Lucan apologist) are often utterly repugnant to me. Still a recommended read.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. Simone, like his Lordship, fled the United Kingdom – though admittedly I never murdered a nanny first.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
I may as well leave the content warning up from last fortnight... I don’t know, if you’re prudish I mention sex magick several times in this Tale – though hardly go into detail.. When John Whiteside Parsons – Jack to his friends – died suddenly in an explosion, one may have expected platitudes to the man. As a pioneering rocket scientist, the world - and the future would owe much to his innovations. Instead, all anyone could talk about was the gossip about his lifestyle – and membership to a cult which worshipped a man known as ‘The Great Beast'.
This is part two of the two parter.
You can read the prelude here. Part one here. This episode here.
I also loaded Franklin D Roosevelt’s date which will live in infamy speech, and Aleister Crowley’s Hymn to Pan onto a blog post here.
Please leave a like. Follow the show. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
My Patreon, soon to be active can be found here
You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
Main texts Strange Angel by George Pendle, Sex and Rockets, the Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter and Robert Anton Wilson. I watched several YouTube videos on Crowley's Gnostic Mass (Liber XV) – which was so far from what I expected it to be... referred to a couple of LA Times articles (Paywalled) about Clifford Clinton, his Clifton's Cafes, Frank Lloyd, and the LA Mafia in the 1920s and 30s, over a year ago. The info on Pearl Harbour was sealed into my brain from high school.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. Meh, I’ve got no personal anecdote for this one...
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
Content warning! I discuss a violent death in this Tale, and allude to another.
When John Whiteside Parsons – Jack to his friends – died suddenly in an explosion, one may have expected platitudes to the man. As a pioneering rocket scientist, the world - and the future would owe much to his innovations. Instead, all anyone could talk about was the gossip about his lifestyle – and membership to a cult which worshipped a man known as ‘The Great Beast'
Over the next two episodes, we're talking about the mad life of Jack Parsons – Rocketeer, Occultist...... Spy?
You can read the episode here. I also mention the Prelude written in the blog, here. And, of course Tipu's Tiger.
Please leave me like, give us a follow. Share the channel – it helps Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
My Patreon, soon to be active can be found here
You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. Sound FX a single explosion, marked ‘Sound 1000’.
I read Strange Angel by George Pendle, Sex and Rockets, the Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter and Robert Anton Wilson, watched several YouTube videos on Crowley's Gnostic Mass (Liber XV) – which was so far from what I expected it to be... referred to a couple of LA Times articles (Paywalled) about Clifford Clinton, his Clifton's Cafes, Frank L. Shaw, and the LA Mafia in the 1920s and 30s, over a year ago....that which I ramble through in the middle of the episode (and write about in the prologue) is from my notes on those articles, in my big red book of ideas.
I also stole a single musical phrase from Prokofiev's Violin concerto no.2 in music on part 2. Thanks Spotify for having a version to learn the piece from.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. She has never joined a sex cult.... well, not before this episode was published anyway...
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
This episode we attend a meeting at Greenwich palace, the date, some time in September 1593. The ‘Fairy Queen’ of England, Elizabeth I, awaits the arrival of one Grace O’Malley – the pirate Queen of Connaught. The two rulers had been at loggerheads for decades and in some ways they seemed wildly different characters – one a genteel Law-lord in charge of a nation.... the other a swashbuckling Warlord from beyond the Pail. Were they all that different? The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us...
“Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics and letters; the war-lord to the law-lord; the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed”
Today, we discuss Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen of Connaught.
Read the episode here.
Please leave a like, give us a follow. Share the channel – it will help Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
My Patreon, soon to be active can be found here (Launching late May)
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. No Foley sounds this week.
I'm planning to share bibliographies far more from now on, why not right? In this case I wrote this episode for the first run at a podcast in 2019 using several news articles (many now paywalled) and Anne Chambers 'Grace O'Malley, the biography of Ireland's Pirate Queen'
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter, history blogger and musician. Though brought up in New Zealand, Simone has some Irish ancestry on her mother's side.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
This week's Tale takes place in 63 BC. The setting, the kingdom of Pontus – a once powerful Black Sea empire – now a region of Eastern Turkey. Mithridates VI Eupator paces, knowing his time is up. Like Hannibal, he spent decades at war with Rome – and like Hannibal he would meet his end like a caged lion. A renowned freedom fighter, he was also a genocidal despot. A paranoid megalomaniac, raised to believe a series of comets and other omens marked him out as a messiah. Saviour of the East. King of Kings. In short, Mithridates was a complex guy
Today, we discuss the Poison King of Pontus.
You can read the episode here. Please leave a like, give us a follow. Share the channel – it will help Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. Sound FX were from several free sites downloaded to laptop in 2019. The Mithridates poem is a section from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad.
I normally save bibliographies for the Patreon, but there is only one source for 95% of this Tale – The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician. Her favourite part of A Shropshire Lad is the bit which starts “Into my heart an air that kills, From yon far country blows.” Hell, we all have ‘happy highways where we went, and cannot come again' right?
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
This week's Tale is a quick, bonus tale. I’ll be back with proper episodes 21st April. Content warning this episode is all about premature burial – and was first posted Halloween 2020.
You can read the episode here.
Yes, voice is scratchy... someone in my bubble keeps passing round a cold, I've been checked and it is a cold... Also, yes I did ditch on the proposed episode – apologies for that. ‘Ungern's Army’ is recorded, and mixed – but an episode on a monster who killed thousands of Chinese, released days after the shootings in Atlanta ... in the midst of the Sinophobic attacks on Asians in the USA, and elsewhere at present.... well, that monster can wait a while.
Please leave me a like, give us a follow. Share the channel – it will help Tales grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician, Like the druid William Price, she hopes - when it’s her time – to be cremated... while we’re on the topic of macabre things like burials.
Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
What do pirates, Lombards and 80s cultural phenomena have in common? Besides the time I bundled three short Tales from history together for a quick blog post (hey! I was exhausted that week) .... possibly nothing?
This week, three short Tales, which do examine elements of human behavior, set in very different settings.
This week’s episode was originally published October 20th 2020. You can read the episode here.
If anyone is curious, my voice is back... but I recorded this episode in November 2020, when I was still compressing narration a little heavily.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a like and give us a follow. Share the channel, as that’s how these projects grow and sustain themselves. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician, She never owned a Cabbage Patch Kid, but has been known to drink with Lombards and Pirates. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
Today’s tale is set Hanover, a small Germanic Duchy whose royal family would go on to become kind of a big deal. The date, July 1st 1694. A handsome young man, aided only by moonlight, sails along the Leine river till he reaches the Leineschloss – the palatial riverside home of the duke and his family. He moors his boat, then cautiously enters the property. Little does he know at the time, but within hours he’d disappear without a trace. Never to be seen again.
This week’s tale is all about loveless marriages, dangerous liaisons, wicked behaviour ... and what it really took to leave ‘the firm’ many many years before the Megxit of Meghan and Harry.
Postscript: On the day I was mixing the music to this episode it was announced the Sussexes are expecting baby number two – For what it’s worth I offer them my congratulations and hope all goes well for them...
This week’s episode was originally published March 24th 2020. You can read the episode here.
As per last episode, my voice remains scratchy – without even the usual side effect of huskiness. Sorry folks I ran out of time to redo the narration.
If you like the show please leave us a like and give us a follow. Share the channel with just one other person you think will like it.. This will help the channel grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
You can follow Tales of History and Imagination on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. I also write a weekly Wordpress Blog. A Patreon, full of bonus content, is in the works, watch this space.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is an academic, competitive quizzer, songwriter and musician, formerly with Auckland rock band Ishtar. She earns a living as a small, squeaky wheel in a big corporate machine...
Though she has never fought for, or against the Holy Roman Empire, her first job was mowing lawns on a military base. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns, a fact she mentions every fortnight as – even when her voice is in perfect working order – it stands in stark contrast with her visage.
This episode is based on two blog posts, with a unified theme. Apologies for the croaky voice this week. Let's discuss some Messiahs and aliens.
One. The year is 1666, the setting Adrianople in the Ottoman Empire – modern day Turkey. A middle aged preacher named Sabbatai Zevi, held captive since his arrival there, mulls over a difficult choice. Tomorrow he will be brought before the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV and be told to make a choice, a Monty Hall problem if ever there was one – though in his case there is no ‘behind one door there is a car, behind the other two doors, goats’ option. If only there were goats. Every door leads to death or disgrace. For close to a decade Zevi, a rogue Kabbalist rabbi, has been claiming to be the true son of God, and messiah. It is his proselytizing which has got him into this mess. Tomorrow he must choose instant execution, a trial by arrows or ‘the turban’
Originally posted 10th March 2020. You can read the blog post here.
Two. Today we join our tale towards it’s climax, at a suburban home in Oak Park, Illinois. The time and date, 6pm, 21st December 1954. A dozen or so suburbanites – just regular Americans really – gather round the lady of the house, convinced she has supernatural powers. They’ve been camped out at the house for several days now. Many have sacrificed everything to be there. Earlier in the day they may have sung Christmas carols on the lawn to onlookers. They stood outside for some time, gazing skyward, hoping their visitor from Clarion, Sanada, would just arrive already. Perhaps feeling the glare of the camera, they retreated inside. If Sanada can traverse galaxies, surely he’ll have no trouble finding 847 West School Street.
Originally posted 17th March 2020. You can read the blog post here.
It you enjoy the show please leave me a like and give the show a follow. Share the channel with just one person you know will like it. For one you’ll have someone to discuss episodes with, and it helps the channel grow. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and run a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Toni Whitlow is a songwriter and musician, formerly with Auckland rock band Ishtar. She is an academic with degrees in history, teaching and project management. A former Mastermind contestant, she has some idea what it’s like to face up to a Monty Hall. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns.
Today’s tale is set in the former province of Gevaudan in South-Central France. The years between 1764 and 1767, following the bloody, and costly Seven Years War – a Proto World War if ever there was one – which had left deep scars in the psyche of many a European nation – France included- and left many a monarch broke in its’ wake.
An isolated, rugged, rural spot – The terrain rough and mountainous – it is far too rocky to grow much by way of crops. The locals eke out a living in the hills, tending to livestock. From youth, the locals worked alone, out in the elements – constantly on the lookout for wild predators on the lookout for a free meal. Gevaudan is also surrounded by a vast forest; a dangerous and lawless place full of wolves, lurking outlaws, footpads and highwayman. It really is the kind of place you could imagine in the most vicious Grimm Brothers tales.
It’s against this backdrop that La Bete du Gevaudan - the beast of Gevaudan - came roaring into the consciousness of the French.
This week’s episode was originally published October 30th 2019, but has been revamped and rereleased on the blog site today.
You can read the episode here.
If you enjoy this episode please leave me a like and follow my page. Share the channel with just one person you know would like it. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and run a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is a songwriter and musician, formerly with Auckland rock band Ishtar. She is an academic with degrees in history, education and project management. A small, squeaky wheel in a big corporate machine, Simone is a former Mastermind contestant. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns. Simone speaks no French and apologizes for any mangled pronunciations.
The Flannan Isles, sometimes referred to as the 7 Hunters, are a tiny group of islands on the outside of the Outer Hebrides – a string of islands in the North of Scotland. Uninhabited, hilly and rocky, covered only by grass … people generally had little to do with these islands. For centuries Shepherds would use the islands to store sheep away from poachers. They themselves never stayed overnight – folklore warned of malevolent spirits on the islands. The lighthouse keepers were another case entirely.
What happened to the lighthouse keepers of Eilean Mor?
This week we go way back to the early days of the blog. Written in January 2019, directly to the Facebook page, this is the second ever Tale of History and Imagination.
You can read the episode here.
If you enjoyed this episode please leave us a like, follow the page. Please help the channel grow by sharing with just one person. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and run a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is a musician, songwriter, academic and former Mastermind contestant from New Zealand. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns. Simone is an avid collector of strange tales from history and other ephemera.
One day, a young prince named Tipu went out hunting in the jungle with a friend – sometimes portrayed as a French mercenary in the service of the prince’s father – the fearsome Hyder Ali. While tracking a local deer or antelope the two men were surprised by a giant tiger leaping out at them from the undergrowth.
This fortnight’s tale focuses on the Mysore Kingdom’s ruler Tipu Sultan, and his macabre taste in musical instruments.
The script of this episode is based on a blog post on Tales of History and Imagination published September 8th 2020. You can read it Here.
If you enjoyed this episode please leave us a like, follow the page. Please help the channel grow by sharing with just one person. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and run a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is a musician, songwriter, academic, skip tracer and former Mastermind contestant from New Zealand. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns. Simone is an avid collector of strange tales from history and other ephemera.
One day a prince named Tipu went out hunting in the forest with a friend. The experience would affect him for the rest of his life - reflecting in his art, signature, uniforms…. And musical instruments?
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content. Membership gets you access to a growing catalog of bonus episodes.
Please leave us a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Today’s tale is set in the Asiatic town of Libyssa, in Bithynia – on the periphery of what is now Turkey. The date, some time around 182 BCE. Hannibal Barca, perhaps one of the all time great generals in world history is pacing the room like a caged Barbary Lion. His life, from the age of nine had lead to this point – ever since his father made him take an oath he would “Never be a friend of Rome.” How did it all come to this for the Carthaginian strongman? Simone discusses. The script of this episode is based on a blog post on Tales of History and Imagination published July 28th 2020. You can read it Here.
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a like, follow the page. Please help this channel grow by sharing with just one person. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and run a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is a musician, songwriter, academic and former Mastermind contestant from New Zealand. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns. Simone is an avid collector of strange tales from history.
This week’s episode is a re-upload of Episode 2, Hannibal in Bithynia. I’ve just upgraded my microphone and picked up a mixing desk, and the first, 10? 15?? Maybe 20??? Episodes needed a do-over. On off weeks, time permitting, I’m planning on dropping new versions of those early episodes.
Today’s we visit the Asiatic town of Libyssa, in Bithynia – modern day Turkey. The date, some time around 182 BCE. Hannibal Barca, one of the greatest Generals to ever live, is pacing his enclosure like a caged Barbary Lion. His life, from the age of nine had lead to this point – ever since his father made him take an oath he would “Never be a friend of Rome.”
How did it all come to this for the Carthaginian strongman?
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content. At the current pledge level I post a bonus episode a month, and will add more extras as the channel grows.
Please leave a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Martial Bourdin
At 4:45pm precisely, GMT, on 15th February 1894 the grounds of Greenwich Park, London – home of the Royal Observatory, and a clock we’ll discuss later – are shaken by a resounding boom. Staff at the observatory recalled a “sharp and clear detonation, followed by a noise like a shell going through the air”. They peered out the windows in trepidation attempting to work out what just happened. A park warden and a group of students ran towards the epicenter of the blast – where a solitary young man lay dying. The young man, who died not long after in a local hospital, was identified as 26 year old Frenchman Martial Bourdin.
Why was the young anarchist carrying a bomb through the park on a winter day? Simone discusses.
The script of this episode is based on a blog post on Tales of History and Imagination (Blog) published April 7th 2020. You can read it Here.
If you enjoyed this episode please leave a like, follow the page. Please help my channel grow by sharing with just one person. I post a new episode every fortnight, Wednesday night New Zealand time.
Tales of History and Imagination are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and run a weekly Wordpress Blog.
About the Author: Simone Whitlow is a musician, songwriter, academic and former Mastermind contestant from New Zealand. Transgender, she uses she/her pronouns. Simone is an avid collector of strange tales from history and old guitars.
This week’s episode is a re-upload of Episode 1, Martial Bourdin. I’ve just upgraded my microphone and picked up a mixing desk, and the first, 10? 15?? Maybe 20??? Episodes needed a do-over. On off weeks, time permitting, I’m planning on dropping new versions of those early episodes.
At 4:45pm precisely, GMT, 15th February 1894, the grounds of Greenwich Park, London – home of the Royal Observatory, and a clock we’ll discuss later – are shaken by a resounding boom. Staff at the observatory recalled a “sharp and clear detonation, followed by a noise like a shell going through the air”. Peering through windows in trepidation, they attempted to work out what just happened. A park warden and a group of students ran towards the epicenter of the blast – where a solitary young man lay dying. The young man, who died not long after in a local hospital, was identified as 26 year old Frenchman Martial Bourdin.
Just who was this young man, and why was he carrying a bomb through the park on a cold winter day?
The blog post of the episode is here.
Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content. At the current pledge level I post a bonus episode a month, and will add more extras as the channel grows.
Please leave a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.
We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly.
For more information on Simone click here.
Hey all, this is just an introductory episode for new folk.
Ever heard the Tale of the anarchist who attempted to kill time?The unkillable man eater who stalked a remote French region in the 1760s? What about the time a pioneering female reporter’ faked madness to bring down an insane asylum?
On Tales of History and Imagination I talk about killer peers, pirate queens, the cult leader who fathered modern rocketry. The proto-hippy nudist who wrote a mega hit for Nat King Cole. Supposedly haunted islands, eccentric gangsters, supervillains, adventurers and a whole lot more besides…
I am adding this episode zero at a time when the show has been running a year, and I’ve learned a bunch of new tricks. I recommend jumping in at the newest episodes and working back.
Thank you for hitting play, I hope you’ll enjoy my show.