David Crowther
500 episodes listed below
England’s past, briskly and humanely told.
The History of England turns national history into a long, conversational narrative, moving from court intrigue to ships, markets, streets, and households. Recent episodes linger in Restoration England, where Charles, Parliament, London, empire, and reputation all keep colliding.
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The History of England is a chronological national history told with the warmth and looseness of a practiced storyteller. It cares about kings and treaties. It also cares about cheese, windows, chocolate, cottages, insults, marriage patterns, and the strange little details that make a century feel inhabited. Recent episodes sit deep in Restoration England, a period of court glamour, debt, religious suspicion, naval danger, and political improvisation. Charles’s dealings with Louis are treated as both policy and personal risk. The Treaty of Dover becomes a story about money, leverage, secrecy, and the explosive power of Parliament finding out. The Battle of Solbay brings James, Sandwich, and Dutch naval strategy into sharp action. It is vivid without turning war into pageantry. London’s recovery after the Great Fire opens into Wren, Gresham College, glass, sash windows, and the practical intelligence behind rebuilding. Court episodes are frank about vanity, sex, ambition, and reputation, especially around Buckingham, Castlemaine, Portsmouth, and Nell. The show is sharp on how personality and structure meet. One moment may follow a duelist’s code of honor; another may track grain flows, urbanization, imported textiles, or the Atlantic trade in enslaved people. Special episodes widen the frame, with George Owers discussing party politics, Anne, Jacobitism, the House of Lords, and the long shadow of union and empire. Another conversation turns Englishness into objects, from Cadbury’s chocolate to Red Cross cottages and Octavia Hill’s social reform. The tone is casual, often dry, and never embalmed. It lets jokes sit beside grave material without pretending the grave material has disappeared. The strongest episodes feel like guided historical walks: structured, opinionated, digressive, and unexpectedly precise. It is best for listeners who like history as a lived world rather than a parade of dates.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy long-form national history with court intrigue, political mechanics, social texture, and room for the odd sideways detail. It especially suits people who like Restoration England, parliamentary change, naval war, and everyday life in the same frame.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the mix of chronological discipline and conversational freedom: major events stay anchored, while side roads into food, buildings, language, trade, and personality make the story feel lived-in.
This my re-telling of the story of England. I aim to be honest, and rigorous - but always loving of my country's history. It is a regular, chronological podcast, starting from the end of Roman Britain. There are as many of the great events I can squeeze in, of course, but I also try to keep an eye on how people lived, their language, what was important to them, the forces that shaped their lives and destinies, that sort of thing. To listen free of adverts, support the podcast, access a library of 150+ hours of shedcasts of me warbling on, and get new shedcasts every month, why not become a member at https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/become-a-member ? You know it makes sense... Hosted on Acas…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It turns England's seventeenth-century upheavals into clear, lively arguments about power, law, belief and political survival.
The History of England makes constitutional change feel like a sequence of contested choices rather than an inevitable march. The host combines narrative history with interviews and collaborative Q&As, tracing army politics, Charles I's trial, Cromwell's Protectorate and the…
The Putney Debates meet constitutional fine print, and suddenly you need a legal memo for regicide.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A broad Restoration-era episode linking Margaret Cavendish's intellectual world with England's expanding commercial reach.
Margaret Cavendish gives the episode a strong opening figure: a largely self-taught polymath who had been in Queen Henrietta's entourage, fled with her to France, married William Cavendish in exile, and explored science and natural philosophy alongside William and Charles.
Solbay turns a failed invasion plan into a sharp study of naval confusion, royal pressure, and strategic defeat.
Charles's failed bid for a quick victory in Zealand gives the review a strong organizing thread. Solbay becomes the pressure point: the French and English ships split, the Dutch fleet arrives, De Rijter goes for the flagships, and James is forced to shift his flag twice under…
A warm, object-led portrait of England through Cadbury, reform-minded housing, and Octavia Hill's open spaces.
England comes through here in things people can picture and touch: Cadbury chocolate, its Quaker family story, the model village and factory, and the Red Cross cottages linked to Octavia Hill's thinking on decent housing and open space.
A royal bargain, French money, and Nell's defiance pull Restoration court politics into Parliament's shadow.
The Treaty of Dover comes through as a perilous royal bargain, with Charles taking Louis's money while handing France a lever that could make him vulnerable before Parliament.
Buckingham's danger leads into a sharp look at honor, insult, and rank.
The episode centers on Buckingham: clever, funny, changeable, and drawn to disruption in ways that made him useful to Charles during Clarendon's fall, then much harder to manage once he was outside power.
A sharp look at the politics of Anne's reign.
George Owers and The History of England spend the episode on the mechanics of power after the Glorious Revolution, where Anne still matters, Parliament matters more, and the Lords are not just scenery.
A clear, opinionated look at how Britain's constitutional change and Enlightenment ideas fit together.
This episode treats Britain's constitutional shift as the main story, tying the Glorious Revolution, the union with Scotland, and Parliament's rising power into a single line of argument.
A sharp account of Blunt's secrecy, contrariness, and the Cambridge world that fed his double life.
Gavin Whitehead keeps Anthony Blunt at the center of a story shaped by class, secrecy, and Cambridge ambition. The episode traces how Blunt thumbed his nose at the establishment, questioned authority, and may have felt little loyalty to a country that criminalised his sexuality…
Antique travel, court wit, and historical narration.
Northern Ohio history, remembered out loud.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Episode 430 of The History of England follows General George Monk's march from Scotland to London in January-February 1660, as the Rump Parliament collapsed and political opinion swung toward restoring Charles II.
Episode 433 of The History of England opens Series 9 (1660-1714), titled 'Restoration, Revolution and Enlightenment,' with host David Crowther sketching the period's three phases: Charles II's Restoration, James II's brief reign and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the Stuart line's extinction under Queen Anne.
Episode 437 of The History of England opens with the story of Eyam, a Derbyshire village of 700 that voluntarily quarantined itself during the 1665-66 plague, with 273 of its residents dying to prevent the spread to surrounding towns.
Margaret Cavendish gets the first entrance.
Episode 443 of The History of England covers Charles II's failed attempt in 1672-74 to ally with Louis XIV of France to destroy the Dutch Republic, win English trading ports in Zeeland, and thereby buy freedom from parliamentary control.
Cadbury's chocolate gets the warmest welcome.
Nell takes over the room.
Buckingham is trouble.
The History of England host interviews George Owers, author of 'The Rage of Party,' about the origins of the Whig and Tory parties from Titus Oates's 1678 Popish Plot through the Hanoverian succession of 1714.
Buckingham enters, and the court gets messier fast.
The rebuilder gets his origin story.
The History of England host David interviews Dr Jeevan Sandher, MP for Loughborough, in a chronological overview of how Britain developed from the Norman Conquest to the 19th century as the birthplace of parliamentary democracy and the Industrial Revolution.
The English boot comes down hard.
January 1665 brings war.
Antony Blunt sits at the centre.
After the Restoration, Anglican uniformity stops looking like church housekeeping and becomes a hard edged campaign against Protestant dissenters, ministers, town officers, and Quakers.
Charles II gets a brisk, conversational treatment.
Louis builds a war machine.
Reason takes the big chair.
The English Revolution stays home.
Charles could not be trusted.
Llywelyn the Great turns up with a proper claim.
Wales is still here.
Theatre comes back, but the leash is real.
Mayhem, frankly.
The ship money debate is settled.
Restoration had some awkward afterlives.
Richard refuses the coup.
Cromwell gets a sharper second look.
Robert Blake does not make it home.
Curiosity changes shape here.
The fighting was basically over.
Cromwell gets a court, but not the stiff, joyless kind.
This episode explores Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, focusing on political struggles like the Major Generals' rule, the Quaker movement's rise, and debates over constitutional changes, including the proposal to crown Cromwell as king.
This episode explores Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, focusing on his foreign policy ambitions like the Protestant League and the failed Western Design invasion of Hispaniola.
This episode covers the First Protectorate Parliament of 1654-55, focusing on Cromwell's struggle to gain legitimacy amid political factionalism.
This episode explores the completion of settlements under Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, focusing on Ireland and Scotland.
This episode retells the capture and ransom of Richard the Lionheart from the German perspective, exploring Emperor Henry VI's motivations and the political maneuvering behind the event.
This episode explores Oliver Cromwell's rise as Lord Protector in 1653, focusing on the Instruments of Government constitution crafted by John Lambert.
In this interview, Professor Margaret discusses how 17th-century poets like Marvell, Milton, and Waller portrayed Oliver Cromwell, revealing ambivalent and contradictory views that reflect his divisive legacy.
This episode explores the complex and divisive historiography of Oliver Cromwell, examining how his reputation has been shaped by academics, popular opinion, and political agendas over centuries.
Host Will Clark interviews historian Dominic Sandbrook about his children's book on Nelson, exploring how to write engaging history for young readers, Nelson's life and legacy, and broader themes like moral judgment in historical storytelling.
This episode covers the early years of the English Commonwealth from 1649 to 1653, detailing the political and military struggles following Charles I's execution.
This episode covers the period from 1646 to 1649, focusing on the aftermath of the First English Civil War, the political struggles between Presbyterians and Independents, the rise of radical groups like the Levellers, and the events leading to the trial and execution of King Charles I.
This episode covers the aftermath of Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump Parliament, focusing on the Barebones Parliament's attempts at reform, controversies over tithes and law, and external conflicts in Ireland, Scotland, and the Anglo-Dutch War.
History of England Episode 417 examines the final years of the Rump Parliament in the early 1650s, when the Commonwealth government faced mounting public criticism for failing to deliver the social reforms that motivated its revolution.
This interview with Anthony Bromley explores the English Commonwealth period, focusing on John Milton and Marchmont Needham to challenge the stereotype of it as a time of Puritan gloom.
This episode explores the Acts of Settlement and war during the Cromwellian period, focusing on the harsh English settlement in Ireland, the union with Scotland, and the Anglo-Dutch naval conflicts.
This episode covers the often-ignored period of the English Commonwealth after the Civil Wars, focusing on reforms, espionage under Thomas Scott, naval expansion, and rising tensions with the Dutch that lead to the first Anglo-Dutch War.