79. The Historic Episode

This week we’re talking about the Chalke Valley History Festival, the biggest festival in the world devoted entirely to history, which runs from 20th to the 26th of June at its beautiful Wiltshire home near Salisbury.   On the podcast with us is the festival director, Jane Pleydell-Bouverie and two historians who’ll be talking there, Christopher de Bellaigue and Tracy Borman. Christopher tells us about his book The Lion House, The Coming of a King, which has received rave reviews and depicts the great Ottoman ruler, Suleyman the Magnificent, and his rise to becoming the most feared and powerful man of the 16th Century.  Tracy talks about her book, Crown and Sceptre:  A New History of the British Monarchy from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II, which explores the institution as far back as 1066 and gives us her views on the future of the monarchy. Jane gives us the rundown on all the exciting events happening at the festival this year from The Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room, where Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir are rediscovering women in history to Bill Browder on his book Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money-Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath.