Hidden Histories

Hidden Histories is an interview show built on one instinct: some people were written out of the record, and the task is to bring them back. Episode titles pair a guest with a subject, as in 'Emily Cock on Disability in the Early Modern Period', and each conversation is a one-to-one exchange with the host. More than once, the host describes the work directly as recovery. Disability history, the host notes, is still being recovered, and the conversation with Emily Cock shows what that means for a single life. One case is Thomas Calverley, who lost both feet in battle and joined other soldiers in petitioning for money to rent a horse to get home. He later earned a living as a scribe, and only when his eyesight failed did he ask for a place in an almshouse. Arise Evans also appears, a prophetic writer whose name may come from English speakers mispronouncing a Welsh one. Rachel Hewitt's episode challenges the idea that women only became interested in outdoor sport in the late 20th century. The host wonders aloud whether such sport belonged mainly to elite women, through shooting, archery and mountaineering. Hewitt points instead to smock races at village fairs, where girls competed for a smock or a jug through the 18th century. Class is rarely far from the questions. Sarah Goldsmith treats the Grand Tour as a formative stage of elite masculinity, in which danger was part of the attraction and discomfort was there to be overcome. The host asks about a link to military service, and Goldsmith calls that connection crucial. Not every episode stays in England. Louisa Egbunike's conversation about the Nigeria-Biafra War of the late 1960s sets the fighting aside to look at the artistic movements that came out of it. Along the way she argues that the war's humanitarian crisis shaped how charities spoke about Africa, and that Médecins Sans Frontières grew out of French Red Cross doctors' unhappiness with how aid was delivered. Joanne Paul, discussing Anne Dowriche, runs into a practical problem: readers who drew on the work rarely acknowledged it, so its influence is hard to trace. The host connects that discussion to France's wars of religion and the Huguenot influx into England. Another title, 'Jon Healey on the Tumultuous 17th Century', shows the early modern period coming round again. The host's questions are long and exploratory, sometimes rephrased mid-sentence, and aimed at testing a hunch rather than drawing out a date. The tone is warm and grateful, and one guest is thanked for keeping a train of thought going through what the host calls an already long day. Listeners come away with a set of particular lives and telling details, tied to bigger questions about class, gender, war and who gets remembered.