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Popular history series where the past connects with the present.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tom Holland and Izzy Lawrence make changing customs and public ideas visible through sharp questions, specialist voices, and well-chosen historical particulars.
Making History turns broad themes into lively conversations across periods. Tom Holland and Izzy Lawrence move easily between specialist explanation and playful questioning: food connects Tudor sugar displays with the arrival of American fast food in Britain, while flight…
A Tudor plate turns out to be sugar; your history lesson just acquired a dental warning.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A dry, sharp look at how London became a grievance, a symbol, and a political argument.
Tom Holland and Izzy Lawrence take a familiar gripe about London and widen it into something stranger: a look at national character, satire, and political identity.
A playful film-history tour that treats preservation, mythmaking, and cinematic inaccuracy as part of the same argument.
Making History uses a film-history awards show to argue, briskly and with some dry wit, that cinema both preserves the past and reshapes it. The subject stays grounded by moving from the rescue of silent-era work to the way images of Henry VIII and Robin Hood settle into memory,…
A lively history of flight that stays grounded just enough to make its tradeoffs clear.
This BBC episode treats flight as both necessity and strain, a history that is practical, contested, and still touched by romance. It moves from modern anxiety around aviation into the early balloon age, where hopes, military observation, and eccentric inventions are set side by…
A brisk food-history episode that uses sugar, fast food, and ritual to show how eating carries social meaning.
Making History turns food into a tidy way of reading status and habit. It moves from Tudor sugar at wedding tables to medieval ritual, then lands on a banana milkshake and the long afterlife of fast food in Britain.
Careful history with narrative momentum.
Shakespeare’s world, made tangible.
Small objects, large histories.
Royal history with scores, jokes, and grudges.
History as a guided visit.
London dominates the opening.
The red carpet is a handy cover.
Flight arrives here as a paradox.
Incest seems fixed.
Making History turns its attention to diets and the history of food.
This episode explores historical connections between past and present, covering topics from 1960s council estates to Dunkirk and medieval hermits.
This episode explores medieval burial practices, the history of whiskey, and the historic nightlife of South London's Southwark district, connecting past events to present-day issues.
Tom Holland introduces a history podcast covering archaeological discoveries, the Doomsday Book, and the Dutch raid on the Medway.
This episode covers historical events including the 1956 Hungarian uprising, WWII SOE operations in France, and the refugee camp after the Great Fire of London.
This episode explores Iron Age and Roman British history, including a queen and a massive hill fort, alongside reflections on summer traditions like cricket and beauty pageants.
This episode explores the birth of two nations in the 10th century, Sir Christopher Wren's role in rebuilding after the Great Fire, and historical perspectives on anger.
This episode explores British social history through segments on 18th century gardens, wartime food, and seaside attractions.
This episode explores political tumult and popular protest from Dublin to Moscow to Streatham, including senior citizens' radical past and the Easter Rising's influence on Bolsheviks.