151 episodes listed below
From samurai to Proust, history argued out on air.
Patrick Geoghegan presents this Newstalk history programme, talking with authors, editors and academics about subjects as far apart as Tokugawa Japan, late imperial Russia and Tudor England. Literature counts as history here too, so Proust, Wuthering Heights and the novel Belinda sit alongside samurai and a captive queen.
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Talking History is a history programme from Newstalk, presented by Patrick Geoghegan. It keeps the shape of evening radio. A set welcome opens each edition, then comes a preview of the evening's subjects, and the close brings thanks to the guests, a credit for the producer and a goodnight. The space in between goes to conversation. Geoghegan asks the questions, and the guests get room to build their answers. The guests are writers and researchers, among them the historian Helen Rappaport on Rasputin, a scholar of the Brontës and a Swansea University academic on Proust. Some editions are set up as an argument rather than a story. One asks whether Rasputin was a healer, a charlatan, a political force or a myth made flesh. Another asks whether Wuthering Heights is a love story or a study in violence and obsession. The subject range is wide, with episode titles including 'Samurai: the legendary Japanese warriors', 'Rasputin', 'Mary, Queen of Scots' and 'Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights'. On the samurai, the talk reaches Tokugawa Ieyasu, third of the three unifiers, and a four-class order in which the samurai held power without always holding money. On Rasputin, a guest argues that historians have underestimated rumour, because official history rests on documents that never account for it. On Mary, the story runs from suspicion over the murder of her husband Darnley and her marriage to Bothwell to her flight into England. She expected help from Elizabeth I there, and at first she was treated almost as a guest. Literature gets the same treatment as political history. 'Proust & His Irish Connections' contrasts the salons and aristocrats of Proust's Belle Époque with the respectable middle-class world Joyce wrote about. It also looks at Proust as a model for cultural revival built on literary transformation rather than linguistic nationalism. The Brontë conversation spends time on the hostile reviews that greeted Wuthering Heights, which used words like coarse and disagreeable. Other editions are built from several segments. 'What Did Anne Boleyn Look Like?', an International Women's Day edition, combined a history of France told through 21 women, the novel Belinda and images of Anne Boleyn across the centuries. The edition titled 'Mary, Queen of Scots' also made room for everyday death in Tudor England, drawn from coroners' reports, and for a Huguenot refugee in Ireland and what became of his large library. So Ireland turns up in unexpected corners. A listener who wants specialists pressed on specifics, across many countries and centuries, will find that here.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes history as a conversation with authors and academics, and who is happy to move between Tokugawa Japan, Tudor England, imperial Russia and classic novels from one edition to the next.
What sets it apart: It treats novels and novelists as historical subjects alongside queens, monks and warriors. It also frames some editions as open questions, so a guest's research becomes material for an argument rather than a recital.
This unique and lively history show delves into some of the world's most important political, social and cultural events and the intriguing personalities behind them.Presented by Dr Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College Dublin, Talking History unravels the gritty, sometimes uncomfortable, side of our past, and what we can learn from it. CONVERSATION THAT COUNTS | Ireland’s national independent talk station for news, sport, analysis and entertainment Listen to Newstalk at http://newstalk.com/listenlive | Download the GoLoud app now, the new home for Newstalk
De Valera signs a hotel guestbook as President of Ireland; you get the argument behind the audacity.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful account of how Proust's fiction entered Irish literary life.
Proust comes into focus through his Irish afterlife: how In Search of Lost Time reshaped the modern novel through memory, time, and consciousness, then found a lasting echo in Irish literature.
A familiar warrior legend opens into a sharper history of rank, money, and modern invention.
Samurai revisits the armored warrior legend with its curved swords, honor, loyalty, and ancient code, then complicates how much of that picture may be a modern construction.
Rasputin's legend becomes a sharp case study in how rumour can outlast evidence and weaken a throne.
Rasputin arrives as a study in how rumour hardens into political power. The programme follows the self-proclaimed Siberian monk from obscurity to the court of Tsar Nicholas II, then tracks the scandalous stories that made his name a byword for decay in a monarchy already…
Mary's captivity becomes a tense study of power, suspicion, and enforced dependence.
Mary, Queen of Scots comes through as a ruler defined here by the long pressure of captivity: suspicion around Lord Darnley's murder, marriage to Lord Bothwell, forced abdication, failed resistance, and the flight to England.
A clear historical look at why Wuthering Heights unsettled early readers and still resists a single reading.
Wuthering Heights arrives as a novel first met with unease over its brutality and coarseness, even while Emily Bronte's force as a writer was hard to ignore.
A season-long narrative reconstruction of the 2012 Benghazi attack and its political fallout.
New Zealand politics, argued over and worked out.
A panel of experts discusses the contentious Irish presidential elections of 1990 and 1997, exploring their historical significance and impact.
A panel debate on Winston Churchill's complex legacy on the 60th anniversary of his death, examining his heroism and controversies.
This episode explores how individuals experience history and how personal lives intersect with great historical transformations, inspired by the 35th Irish Conference of Historians.
A panel of experts discusses the life and legacy of David Bowie, ten years after his death.
This episode of Talking History debates the life and legacy of landscape artist J.M.W.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan uses Marcel Proust and In Search of Lost Time to frame The Irish Proust: Cultural Crossings from Beckett to McGarren.
Patrick Geoghegan frames the samurai around a central question: how much of Bushido and the sword-wielding warrior image was built in the late 19th century.
Talking History on News Talk 106-108 moves from Tudor accident records to Mary, Queen of Scots and Elie Boireau in one history programme.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Rasputin and the last years of Imperial Russia.
["Talking History with Patrick Gagan opens on Wuthering Heights as \"one of the greatest novels ever written\" and asks whether Emily Bronte wrote a love story or a study in violence, obsession, and psychological extremity.", "Dr Clare O'Callaghan, Professor Melissa Feigan, and Dr Sophie Franklin use Heathcliff's labels - \"gypsy,\" \"Lascar,\" and \"if you were a regular black\" - to trace race, Irishness, and Liverpool in the novel.", "The panel also treats Wuthering Heights as a deliberately unstable book, with Lockwood and Nellie narrating a story that begins in 1801 but reaches back to 1777.", "They connect the novel to hostile 1847 reviews, Charlotte Bronte's later framing, Kate Bush's \"Wuthering Heights,\" and a new film associated with Margot Robbie."]
Catherine Pangonis explains how A History of France in 21 Women replaces a king-centred national story with figures including Bathilde, Émilie de Châtelet, Olympe de Gouges, Coco Chanel, and Brigitte Bardot.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan reassesses John Steinbeck’s life, major works, political commitments, and controversial reputation through a panel including Susan Shillinglaw, Tara Stubbs, and Nicholas P.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Eamon de Valera’s 18-month American mission from 1919 to 1920, including his Waldorf Astoria headquarters and more than $5 million raised for the Dáil Éireann government.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan examines Michael Davitt’s reform career with Trinity College Dublin curator Ciara Daly, including his prison writings, investigative journalism, and work with the Irish National Land League.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Brendan Bracken's rise from Tipperary-born political outsider to Winston Churchill's close ally and Britain's Minister for Information.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines why Benedict Arnold's battlefield success at Saratoga made his attempted surrender of West Point especially damaging to the American cause.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines the 1926 Abbey Theatre riots surrounding Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, including WB Yeats's statement, "You have disgraced yourselves again." Bess Roan describes Hannah Sheehy Skeffington's coordinated protest, women entering the stage, fighting, and competing accounts of the fourth night.
Patrick Gagan examines the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition with Helen Strudwick, Joyce Tilsley, and Salima Ikram.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan reassesses David Bowie’s life and cultural legacy 10 years after his death, covering a career that began with Space Oddity in 1969 and extended across music, film, fashion, and visual art.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan examines how William of Normandy defeated Harold at Hastings in 1066 through cavalry, archers, alliances, and a divided English succession.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Ireland’s 50-year-old Director of Public Prosecutions, the 1641–1653 sieges, and the history of Irish food.
Talking History with Patrick Gaghan marks Jane Austen's 250th anniversary with Janet Todd, Lizzie Dunford, and John Mullen discussing why Austen's novels still engage readers, filmmakers, and scholars.
Talking History examines the Anglo-Irish Agreement, signed in November 1985 by Taoiseach Gareth Fitzgerald and Margaret Thatcher, and its role in establishing Irish consultation on Northern Ireland.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Reginald Mitchell's creation of the Spitfire, including the Schneider Trophy's 400-mile-per-hour technology race and the 151-person Supermarine design office.
Talking History host Patrick Gagan examines Plato's life, ideas, and legacy with David Horne, Angie Hobbs, Mary Margaret McCabe, and Catherine Rowett.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan presents interviews about Athelstan’s formation of England in 927, Anthony Delaney’s archival research on 18th-century queer communities, and Joseph Brady’s 250-map history of Ireland.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Orson Welles’s career on the 40th anniversary of his death in October 1985.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, when Horatio Nelson defeated a Franco-Spanish fleet directed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan examines Ireland’s involvement in the American Revolution through migration, trade, politics, military service, landscape design, and memory.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan examines Irish STEM Lives, a Royal Irish Academy volume selecting 46 people from the nearly 11,000-entry Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan features interviews about Dublin's industrial heritage, the Voices of the Showmen oral archive, Kerry Brown's 400-year history of Britain-China relations, and an Irish documentary about Native American displacement.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s path from a 1959 law-school graduate facing firms that rejected mothers to a 1993 U.S.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan previews the 35th Irish Conference of Historians, held at Maynooth University on September 12 and 13 around “Inner Lives, Outer Realities.” Mohamed Waldi describes Hussein, a Caucasus-born man enslaved in Istanbul who became Tunisia’s first minister of education before inheritance disputes linked Tunis, Istanbul, Italy, and France.
Talking History host Patrick Gagan examines Ireland’s 1990 and 1997 presidential elections with John Walsh and Kevin Rafter.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Thomas More’s rise from London lawyer to Lord Chancellor, his authorship of Utopia, and his refusal to accept Henry VIII’s supremacy over the church.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines early medieval Irish kingship, modern political assassination, and Irish feminism through three August books.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Ellen Hutchins, born in Ballylickey in 1785 and recognised as Ireland's first female botanist.
Talking History examines Nessa Mackerlain’s biography of Robert Dudley Edwards, a UCD historian who replaced myth-based history with evidence-based analysis alongside Theo Moody.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines how Thomas Cromwell rose from a blacksmith’s family to become Henry VIII’s principal minister and the second most powerful man in England.
Talking History with Patrick Gagan examines Thomas, James, and Philip Horgan, three Yall brothers whose photography, animation, newsreels, and 1917 cinema preserved early Irish visual history.
Talking History marks the 250th anniversary of Daniel O'Connell's birth with Christine Keneally, Maurice Brick, and Davide Mazzi assessing his campaigns for Catholic emancipation, repeal, and abolition.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Gerald Boland’s political career and Gareth Prendergast’s explanation of how the Free State defeated the anti-Treaty IRA.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan presents three book discussions: Steve Tibble’s Crusader Criminals, Raphael Cormack’s Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age, and Sea and Settlement in Ireland.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines why Jane Austen’s six major novels remain relevant 250 years after her birth in December 1775.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines three exhibitions: 17 early medieval manuscripts returning from the Abbey Library of St Gallen, Casimir Markiewicz’s 1903–1913 Dublin career, and royal fashion at Hillsborough Castle.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan previews From That Small Island, a four-part documentary narrated by Colin Farrell and filmed across 17 countries.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan examines Operation Dynamo, the May 1940 evacuation of almost 340,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk.
Talking History with Patrick Geoghegan marks the 10th anniversary of Ireland’s 22 May 2015 marriage-equality referendum, when 62% approved the 34th Amendment.
Patrick Geoghegan interviews Molly Conisbee about No Ordinary Deaths, including urban child mortality above 50%, burial clubs, deathbed rituals, and changing attitudes toward grief.