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What’s On in London in October 2026 — New Exhibitions, Half Term & What to Pack
01 oct. 2026
00:20:53
Tomorrow is October 1st, which means it's time for the monthly What's On in London — and October might be Jonathan's single favorite month to be in the city. The summer crowds have gone, prices have softened, the museums have hung their big autumn blockbusters, and the parks turn gold. It's the month the locals quietly love and the guidebooks tend to ignore. In this solo episode Jonathan runs through everything opening this month: Renoir and Love at the National Gallery, the British Museum's sweeping Korea, Painting the French Riviera at the Royal Academy, Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji out at Dulwich, Tim Walker's Fairyland at the National Portrait Gallery, The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain, a completely free Freddie Mercury display at the V&A, and Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery at the British Library. He covers the one big exhibition closing mid-month — Anish Kapoor at the Hayward, gone after the 18th — and the single most important date in the episode: October 21st, when the British Museum releases Bayeux Tapestry tickets for January to March 2027, the only realistic shot left for anyone visiting in that window. Then the practical half: what half term actually means for visitors and how to use it to your advantage, spooky-season programming from Historic Royal Palaces to the Mail Rail tunnels to Hidden London's Clapham South deep-level shelter, why you should pack for wet rather than cold, when the clocks go back and the transatlantic time muddle that follows, and the best thing happening in London this month, which costs nothing at all. Editor’s Note: I have the BST/US Daylight Saving Time change backward, and it’s BST to GMT.
The Bayeux Tapestry — The British Museum — 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027. Tickets through 31 December are sold out. Tickets for 1 January–31 March 2027 go on sale 21 October 2026. April–July 2027 opens in early 2027.
The free Anglotopia mobile app — on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Read Anglotopia, Londontopia and Royaltopia, browse the events guide by day, and access the Club if you're a member.
October is shoulder season, and that is the whole argument for going. The summer crowds are gone, prices have softened, the museums have hung their autumn blockbusters, and the parks are turning. If Jonathan had to pick two months for the best combination of things to do and tolerable weather, he'd pick October and March.
This is the month London's museums roll out their heavy hitters — shows that then run right through winter. If you're visiting any time between now and the new year, these are the exhibitions to build a day around, and several opened specifically because September's shows closed to make room.
Renoir and Love at the National Gallery is likely the autumn's biggest draw, and Renoir is a reliable crowd-pleaser. Book a timed slot in advance — October may already be sold out, so check before you build a day around it.
The single most important date in this episode is October 21st, when the British Museum releases Bayeux Tapestry tickets for January to March 2027. Everything through the end of December sold out on day one. Expect an hours-long online waiting room, and set an alarm.
If the Bayeux scramble doesn't appeal, there are alternatives. The tapestry returns to Bayeux in France late next year, and Reading Museum has Britain's own full-size Victorian replica — 70 meters, embroidered in the 1880s — which you can see any time, for free, with no waiting room.
Only one major show closes this month, but it's a significant one: Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery ends on October 18th. The Hayward is running extended hours to 9pm on select days in the final stretch. Jonathan notes Chicago has its own Kapoor — Cloud Gate, better known as the Bean.
Late October is half term, roughly the 26th to the 30th, and it collides with Halloween. If you're traveling with children, it's a wonderful time to be in London. If you aren't, expect children everywhere, especially at the free attractions.
Half term also means deals most American visitors never think to look for — on train tickets, admissions, and family packages. Knowing the British school calendar is a genuine travel hack.
Pack for wet, not for cold. October is typically London's second wettest month. It's rarely freezing, but it's damp, gray and prone to rain, so a properly waterproof outer layer, waterproof shoes and an umbrella will serve you better than a heavy winter coat. Layers underneath.
The best thing happening in London this month is free and isn't in a gallery: autumn color in the parks. Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent's Park, Hampstead Heath, Richmond and Kew. One caveat Jonathan adds from his September visit — the parks were badly parched from the drought and some trees were already dropping leaves, so how good the color gets remains to be seen.
Soundbites
"It's the month the locals quietly love and the guidebooks kind of ignore, because it's shoulder season." — Jonathan on why October is underrated.
"October is when London's museums roll out their heavy hitters — the blockbuster exhibitions that will run right through the winter."
"Unfortunately, if you didn't book your tickets when they went on sale a few months ago, you will not be seeing the Bayeux Tapestry this October, because they have been sold out since that first day."
"If you're gonna be in London from January to March, then you need to set an alarm, and this is your shot to get tickets. There will be an hours-long waiting room." — Jonathan on the October 21st ticket release.
"We even have an Anish Kapoor in Chicago. It's the Cloud Gate — the Bean."
"What do parents love to do on half term? They love to take them to the free attractions, so that they have something to do to kill the time between school holidays."
"People pack for cold, but the thing that'll actually get you in October is wet. It's not usually freezing — it's damp, gray, and prone to rain." — Jonathan's single most useful piece of packing advice.
"That's why it's great to have a smartphone, because the smartphone figures it out for you. But your body clock never figures it out." — Jonathan on the transatlantic clock-change muddle.
"The single most beautiful thing happening in the city this month is completely free, and it isn't in a gallery. And that is London in October."
"Go for a long walk in a royal park on a crisp October morning, and you'll understand why Londoners secretly love this month the most."
Chapters
00:21 Welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast
00:30 It's October 1st — Time for the Monthly What's On
00:43 Last Month at Emery Walker's House, This Month from the Star Trek Office
01:05 Why October Is a Fantastic Time to Go to London
01:38 Shoulder Season — Crowds Gone, Prices Softened, Parks Turning
02:06 The Month Locals Love and the Guidebooks Ignore
02:15 BLOCKBUSTER EXHIBITIONS OPENING
02:43 Renoir and Love — National Gallery, from October 3rd
03:04 Book Ahead — October May Already Be Full
03:14 Korea — British Museum, from October 1st
03:34 Painting the French Riviera — Royal Academy, from October 2nd
03:53 Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji — Dulwich, from October 20th
04:14 Tim Walker's Fairyland — National Portrait Gallery, from October 8th
04:34 The 90s: Art and Fashion — Tate Britain, from October 8th
04:59 Freddie Mercury: Splendid Things — V&A, Free, from October 24th
05:13 Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery — British Library, from October 30th
05:34 THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY — Sold Out Since Day One
05:57 October 21st: The Ticket Release for January to March 2027
06:15 Set an Alarm — There Will Be an Hours-Long Waiting Room
06:27 The Alternatives — Bayeux in France, and the Reading Replica
06:56 CLOSING THIS MONTH — Anish Kapoor at the Hayward, October 18th
07:19 Late Openings in the Final Week
07:25 The Anish Kapoor in Chicago — Cloud Gate, the Bean
07:35 HALF TERM — What It Is and Why It Matters
07:47 It Collides Beautifully with Halloween
08:04 The Dates, and Family Programming Everywhere
08:17 Half Term Deals Most Americans Don't Know to Look For
08:39 Historic Royal Palaces Lean Into Spooky Season
08:54 Mail Rail — Walking the Abandoned Postal Railway
09:07 Hidden London — The Clapham South Deep-Level Shelters
09:36 Wartime Tunnels, Windrush Migrants, and a Spooky Season Tour
09:45 Hamlet Hail to the Thief — Barbican, from Halloween Night
10:10 Classical Music After the Proms
10:31 THE PRACTICAL HALF — What's the Weather Actually Like?
10:40 Why People Pack Wrong for October
11:01 October Is London's Second Wettest Month
11:11 Pack for Wet, Not for Cold
11:40 Jonathan's Own Late-September Experience
12:19 What to Actually Put in the Suitcase
12:30 THE CLOCKS GO BACK — October 25th
12:54 Dark by Five, and Four Thirty by December
13:39 The Transatlantic Time Muddle
13:31 How the Weather's Actually Been Running
14:09 THE BEST THING IN LONDON THIS MONTH IS FREE
14:25 Autumn Color in the Parks — The Real Event
14:49 Why Londoners Secretly Love This Month Most
15:07 The Drought, and What It Did to the Parks
15:44 Is October a Good Month to Visit London?
15:52 October and March — Jonathan's Two Picks
16:11 The Summer Crowds Are Gone and the City Belongs to Londoners
16:46 The West End
17:04 THE LONDONTOPIA EVENTS GUIDE
17:11 Why We Built It — There Wasn't a Good Independent One
18:26 The Free Mobile App, and Browsing Events by Day
19:01 Nearly a Thousand Events in the Database
19:45 Wrap-Up
19:55 Subscribe & Join the Friends of Anglotopia Club
Video Version
Strictly Jane Austen Episode 3: Jane Austen’s England on Screen – A Location-by-Location Visitor’s Guide
28 sept. 2026
00:53:47
This is Episode 3 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen.
When we picture Jane Austen's world, most of us aren't actually picturing Hampshire in 1810 — we're picturing a television program. Colin Firth striding out of a lake. Keira Knightley on a windswept crag. A proposal in the pouring rain in front of a domed temple. The great screen adaptations gave Austen's imagined places real addresses, and this episode maps them out house by house. Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm — author, leading expert on Austen fan culture and literary tourism, and creative director at Strictly Jane Austen — who has interviewed the people who actually made the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and knows exactly which door is which. They cover why 1995 changed everything (before it, every adaptation was studio-bound), Simon Langton's instruction to "throw open the drawing room doors," and the hierarchy of houses the production had to find: Luckington Court as Longbourn, Edgcote House as Netherfield, Lyme Park and Sudbury Hall as Pemberley, and the village of Lacock as Meryton. Along the way: the message Susannah Harker sent Gabrielle about the summer of 1994; the choreographer who poured Coca-Cola on Edgcote's polished floors so the cast wouldn't slip; the truth about who actually dived into that lake, and where the underwater shots were really filmed; why Chatsworth is arguably too grand even for Mr. Darcy; the Wilton Diptych and how Wilton House saved it; Stourhead's Arcadian fantasy gardens; and Barton Cottage on the Flete Estate in South Devon, with a five-bedroom "cottage," only two servants, and a Ferrars family named after a nearby Devon village. Most usefully of all, Gabrielle explains which of these places you can actually get into, which ones you can only nose around on an estate agent's website, and how to string the best of them together into one Wiltshire trip.
🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN
This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company. Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm, today's guest, is their creative director.
If this episode has you dreaming of an Austen pilgrimage, there is no better way to begin than stepping directly into Jane Austen's Bath with an expert guide. Strictly Jane Austen's award-winning tours bring Regency England to life through expertly guided walks, immersive storytelling, and carefully curated itineraries in Bath and beyond — including the Wiltshire locations discussed in this episode, which, as Gabrielle points out, are very hard to reach without a car. Their guides are avid Janeites steeped in Regency knowledge — and, as Austen herself would have it, genuinely "clever, well-informed people."
Period Dress Hire & Afternoon Tea in Bath — Exquisite Regency costume delivered to your hotel, then promenade through Bath and take a sumptuous afternoon tea in a historic tearoom
Bridgerton in Bath — A private tour of the city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society
Winner, Bristol Bath & Somerset International Tourism Award 2025 (Bronze). Part of ECT Travel, a Bath-based tour operator running successful travel programs since 1993.
Filming locations only really became a thing with the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Every earlier BBC version — including a 1950s television adaptation with Peter Cushing as Darcy, a late-1960s version, and a 1980 production — was studio-bound, with painted backdrops beyond the windows. Simon Langton's instruction, as he told Gabrielle himself, was to "throw open the drawing room doors" and take Austen out into the countryside.
The production had to fill a hierarchy of houses, because status is the language of Pride and Prejudice. Mrs. Bennet's chatter about which local estates could be rented is a status conversation, so the houses on screen had to be graded exactly right: Longbourn, then Netherfield, then Pemberley at the top.
Longbourn is Luckington Court in Wiltshire, near Chippenham on the edge of the Cotswolds — a golden Cotswold-stone Georgian house with a 17th-century dovecote and formal gardens where the Bennet sisters walk and Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth. You can't visit, but it has been on the market three times in six years, most recently in December 2025, so you can tour the interiors via the estate agents and a House & Garden feature. It started at £9 million and was most recently listed at £4 million.
Susannah Harker, who played Jane Bennet, sent Gabrielle a message for this episode about the summer of 1994 at Luckington Court. She keeps a photograph of the Georgian hallway window by her bedside — she was pregnant during filming with her son Finley, now a theater director who has himself directed Pride and Prejudice on stage at 30.
Netherfield is Edgcote House in Northamptonshire — grander and more splendid than Luckington, exactly as Bingley's rented estate should be. If Elizabeth actually walked from Longbourn to Netherfield, it would be roughly 300 miles. Edgcote is a 25,900-square-foot Georgian mansion on a full estate with a farm, 31 houses, cottages and flats, formal gardens, pleasure grounds and a lake, currently seeking offers above £45 million.
The dance choreographer poured Coca-Cola on Edgcote's beautifully polished wooden floors to make them sticky enough that the cast's shoes wouldn't slip during the Netherfield ball — then buffed it all off afterward. The cast spent weeks learning the formal Georgian dance sets, which Susannah Harker remembers as a great bonding exercise.
The 1995 Pemberley is Lyme Park in Cheshire for exteriors and Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire for interiors. Lyme is National Trust, open to the public, near Stockport, and you can stay in cottages on the estate — people now go there specifically to get engaged and married in front of the on-screen Pemberley.
Colin Firth did not dive into that lake. A stunt man did, because they wouldn't send the actor into a stagnant lake on the Lyme estate. The underwater shots — the ones that actually wet the shirt — were filmed in the big water tank at Elstree Studios, where Firth surfaced into an incompletely removed pool cover and smashed the bridge of his nose. Simon Langton's first reaction was not sympathy but "are we going to have to recast Mr. Darcy?"
Chatsworth, the 2005 film's Pemberley, is arguably too grand for Darcy — many historians now say so. It's the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, founded in the Tudor period by Bess of Hardwick, and its window frames are gilded with gold leaf so the house glitters as you approach. Darcy, by contrast, holds no title at all: he's a commoner with an old estate and £10,000 a year. The film's Pemberley interiors were shot at Wilton House near Salisbury.
Gabrielle's practical recommendation is a Wiltshire loop — Bath, then Lacock for Meryton (eat at the Red Lion, which is the assembly rooms), Stourhead for the Arcadian gardens and the temple from the 2005 rain scene, Wilton House outside Salisbury, and a sneaky drive past Luckington Court. Her single favorite location is Chatsworth for sheer grandeur. Public transportation to any of it is poor, so you need to be driven.
Soundbites
"It was all about what he said was to throw open the drawing room doors — to bring Jane Austen out into the countryside, into the townscapes, into the settings that would reflect most accurately the lives of her characters." — Gabrielle on what director Simon Langton told her the 1995 production was really for.
"Houses are so important in the language of Pride and Prejudice. That's where Davies and Langton decided on doing this — to make it very much out of the English countryside and in these historic buildings." — Gabrielle on why the hierarchy of houses had to be exactly right.
"There's been more than one Jane Austen fan group online who say: come on, let's all chip in, and let's all go and live in the Bennets' house." — Gabrielle on Luckington Court's repeated appearances on the property market.
"I took this photograph at Luckington Court, with that extraordinary light streaming through the beautiful Georgian hallway window. It captivated me and I felt signified something about that shoot in the late summer of 1994. I keep it next to my bed." — Susannah Harker, who played Jane Bennet, in a message read out by Gabrielle.
"It really was the most beautiful English summer. The locations were the epitome of Englishness. I remember walking into each scene and thinking, yes, this is how it feels to be in Regency England. Half the work is done. Now just remember the words and don't bump into the furniture." — Susannah Harker again, on filming in those houses.
"The floors at Edgcote were really shiny — these really lovely polished wooden floors. So she actually poured Coca-Cola on the wooden floors to make them stickier so that the cast's shoes wouldn't slip." — Gabrielle on the choreographer's solution to the Netherfield ball.
"So that's not Colin Firth going into that lake. Because they couldn't send the actor into the slightly smelly, stagnant lake on the Lyme Park estate. The stunt man had to go in." — Gabrielle on cinema's most famous swim.
"Simon Langton recalled saying: are we going to have to recast Mr. Darcy if we've broken his nose? So his first thought wasn't 'my poor actor.' It was: we've got to get on with filming." — Gabrielle on Colin Firth hitting the pool cover at Elstree.
"If he'd have just left his horse to roam and graze on the field, he said we'd have got letters. There's no question the TV watching public in Britain would have written to the BBC to complain that Mr. Darcy didn't look after his horse properly after a long ride." — Gabrielle on why a stunt rider was brought in to play a groom.
"Many historians have now said Chatsworth is too grand, even for Mr. Darcy." — Gabrielle on the 2005 film's choice of Pemberley, and a man who has £10,000 a year but no title at all.
Chapters
00:22 Welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast
00:29 Our Sponsor — Strictly Jane Austen
01:01 Today's Subject — We're Not Picturing Hampshire, We're Picturing a TV Program
01:31 Where Longbourn Really Is, and Which House Makes the Best Pemberley
01:41 Meet Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm — Austen Fan Culture and Literary Tourism
02:08 Jonathan's Favorite Episode of the Series — "I Love Visiting These Places"
02:17 WHY 1995 CHANGED EVERYTHING
02:33 Before 1995 — BBC Versions, and Peter Cushing as Mr. Darcy
03:01 Polly Adams and Susannah Harker — Mother and Daughter as Jane Bennet
03:26 The 1980 Version — And What All the Early Adaptations Had in Common
03:35 Studio-Bound — Painted Backdrops and Clumsy Set Design
04:06 The BBC's 1990s Mission — Every Classic Novel and All of Shakespeare
04:26 Enormous Internal Budgets — The Heyday of Literary Adaptation
04:42 Watching Them at School on VHS — Gabrielle's Own Education
05:29 Sunday Afternoon Period Drama — And the License Fee
06:00 Hiring Simon Langton — The Director Behind the John le Carré Adaptations
06:39 Andrew Davies — The Man Who Turned Chapters into Episodes
07:19 Shoot It on Film — And Don't Rely on Studios
07:34 "Throw Open the Drawing Room Doors"
07:58 The Immense Scouting Expeditions
08:09 THE HIERARCHY OF HOUSES — Finding a Longbourn, a Netherfield, a Meryton and a Pemberley
08:30 Mrs. Bennet on the Local Estates — Why Houses Are the Language of the Novel
09:13 How Did They Pick Them, and What Did Fame Do to These Places?
09:24 LONGBOURN — The Bennet Home, Entailed Through the Male Line
09:42 Luckington Court, Wiltshire — Near Chippenham, on the Edge of the Cotswolds
09:53 A Georgian House With a 17th-Century Dovecote and Formal Gardens
10:11 Where the Bennet Sisters Walk, and Lady Catherine Confronts Elizabeth
10:26 You Can't Visit — But It's Been on the Market Three Times in Six Years
10:51 How to See Inside — House & Garden and the Estate Agent's Website
11:40 Fame, Fans and the Property Listings
11:55 From £9 Million Down to £4 Million — And What You Get for It
12:36 "Only Four Million Pounds — It's Chump Change"
12:42 "Let's All Chip In and Go Live in the Bennets' House"
12:52 SUSANNAH HARKER'S MESSAGE — Jane Bennet Remembers the Summer of 1994
13:13 The Photograph She Keeps by Her Bedside
13:55 Carrying Baby Finley — Now Directing Pride and Prejudice Himself
14:14 Alison Steadman in the Hallway, and the Epitome of Englishness
14:52 "Andrew Davies Took Austen Out of the Drawing Room and Into Nature"
15:13 "Just Remember the Words and Don't Bump Into the Furniture"
15:23 NETHERFIELD — Supposed to Be a Walk Across the Fields
15:38 Elizabeth's Petticoat, Inches Deep in Mud
15:49 Edgcote House, Northamptonshire — A 300-Mile Walk in Real Life
16:06 Bigger, Grander, More Splendid — Exactly Right for Bingley
16:21 New Money Renting His First Country Estate, Advised by Old Money
16:43 It Had to Host a Ball — And the Cast Spent Weeks Learning the Dances
17:10 COCA-COLA ON THE BALLROOM FLOOR — The Choreographer's Solution
17:36 Edgcote Today — Private, But Also on the Market
17:59 A 25,900-Square-Foot Georgian Mansion
18:45 Offers Above £45 Million — A Farm, 31 Houses, Gardens and a Lake
19:41 PEMBERLEY — How Do You Create the Top of the Tree?
19:48 Lyme Park, Cheshire for the Exteriors
20:18 Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire for the Interiors
20:39 Lyme Is Open to the Public — And People Get Engaged There
20:50 National Trust, Near Stockport — And You Can Stay on the Estate
21:42 THE LAKE — The Wet Shirt Scene
21:54 You See Him Dive In. You Never See Him Come Out.
22:09 The Stunt Man Went In — Not Colin Firth
22:33 The Underwater Shots Were Filmed in the Tank at Elstree
23:00 Colin Firth Smashes His Nose on the Pool Cover
23:13 "Are We Going to Have to Recast Mr. Darcy?"
24:25 The Horse and the Groom — "We'd Have Got Letters"
25:10 Private Estates and National Trust Properties Side by Side
25:24 MERYTON — The Town of Lacock
25:45 The Red Lion Pub — Where Lizzie First Meets Darcy
26:04 The Whole Village Is National Trust Protected
26:24 Bath, Then Lacock, Then a Sneaky Peek at Luckington
26:45 Lacock Abbey — Where Photography Was Invented
26:56 The Window, the First Photograph, and the Camera Obscura
27:32 Lacock and the Harry Potter Films
27:52 THE 2005 FILM — Why a Grander Pemberley?
28:19 Does Chatsworth Make Us Perceive Darcy Differently?
28:29 Why Chatsworth Worked for a Movie and Not a Series
28:54 "Impact Is Everything"
29:01 Lyme Park Is Beautiful — Chatsworth Is Gobsmacking
29:32 The Cavendish Family and the Dukes of Devonshire
29:46 Not National Trust — Its Own Trust, Still Run by the Family
30:31 "Chatsworth Is Too Grand, Even for Mr. Darcy"
30:48 Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire — And Why the Family Mattered
31:15 BESS OF HARDWICK — From Humble Origins to Countess of Shrewsbury
31:57 Embroidery With Mary, Queen of Scots
32:16 Hardwick Hall — More Windows Than Any House Ever Built
32:33 Her Own Throne Room, and "We're All Elizabeth Together"
33:00 Darcy Has No Title — His Aunt Does
33:36 A Commoner With an Old Estate and £10,000 a Year
34:09 Not in the Chatsworth Mould — Cascades, Follies and Gilded Windows
34:39 The Windows Have Just Been Re-Gilded
35:02 WILTON HOUSE — Pemberley's Interiors in the 2005 Film
35:11 The Wiltshire Loop — All These Locations Within Reach of Bath
35:57 Jonathan's Stately Home White Whale
36:19 Lord Castlemaine and the Embassy to Rome
36:40 THE WILTON DIPTYCH — Kept Safe at Wilton House
36:57 Richard II Presented to the Virgin Mary
37:22 Saved From the Reformation and From Cromwell
37:34 STOURHEAD — Jonathan's Favorite Stately Home in Britain
38:11 Famous for the Gardens, Not the House
38:18 The Rain Scene in the 2005 Film
38:35 Why Stourhead Is So Beloved Locally
39:24 The Bridge, the Water and the Little Temple
39:47 Darcy and Elizabeth's Encounter in the Rain
40:04 Not What Pemberley Would Actually Have Had
40:30 It's All About the Storytelling and the Escapist Quality
40:47 What Those Gardens Were Really For
41:25 Moving Great Mature Trees Because They Spoiled the View
41:36 Stourhead Today — A Joy for Anyone Who Loves Horticulture
42:14 Autumn at Stourhead — Like New England, Only in Wiltshire
42:53 BARTON COTTAGE — Sense and Sensibility
43:22 The Dashwoods Have to Move
43:45 Sir John Middleton and the Barton Estate in Devon
43:59 Austen's Joke — Five Bedrooms and Only Two Servants
44:13 What Jane Austen Actually Knew About Domestic Work
44:47 The Cottage on Screen — Chosen for Its Vistas
45:13 Space for Marianne to Range Around
45:35 Throwing Open the Doors Again — Ang Lee and Emma Thompson
45:54 An 18th-Century Stone Cottage — Brand New in Austen's Day
46:18 Quaint and Tumbledown Now, Well-Appointed Then
46:35 The Flete Estate, South Devon — Private, But People Still Make the Pilgrimage
46:59 On the Estuary, Near Plymouth, Drake and the Royal Navy
47:32 NEWTON FERRERS — And Where Edward Ferrars Got His Name
47:59 Lucy Steele, and Edward as a Student in Her Father's House
48:12 George Austen at Steventon Took In Pupils the Same Way
48:38 "Lucy Ferrars Is a Pun on Lucifer"
49:19 Why the Cottage's Position Serves the Storytelling
49:35 Margaret as Lookout — Is It Brandon, Willoughby or Edward?
50:03 WHERE TO STAY — The Flete Estate and South Devon
50:17 Cottages on the Stourhead Estate — And Christmas Lights
50:38 Gabrielle's White Whale: Stourhead at Christmas
50:46 THE FAVORITE — Which Location Wins?
50:53 Chatsworth, for the Sheer Grandeur of It
51:17 But Do the Wiltshire Tour — Stourhead, Wilton, Luckington
51:56 The Wiltshire Triangle, and Why You Need to Be Driven
52:20 Wrap-Up — A Long List of Houses to Go Stand In Front Of
52:37 Our Sponsor — Strictly Jane Austen, Tours and Gift Vouchers
53:02 Friends of Anglotopia, and Join Us Next Time
Video Version
The Real Miss Moneypenny: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence With Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall
25 sept. 2026
01:01:47
If I say "British spy," you picture a man: James Bond, George Smiley, Kim Philby. And the one woman most people can name from that world is fictional — Miss Moneypenny, sitting outside M's office, quietly in love with 007. But Miss Moneypenny was real, or at least the woman who inspired her was. Her name was Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs of MI6, and every secret in the wartime service passed across her desk. When someone asked whether she'd been the real Moneypenny, she replied: "I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power." In this episode, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall, historian of secret intelligence, honorary associate professor of intelligence history, and author of Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence (published in the UK as Her Secret Service). Claire explains how she found the pencil-crossed "Miss Pettaval" in Fleming's first draft of Casino Royale; how Pettigrew and one colleague received every decrypted Enigma message sent from Bletchley Park to MI6; why the word "secretary" was a perfect cover for agent running, code work and courier duty; and how she tracked down women trained to leave no trace — reading margin notes and paper chits, then turning family historian and writing some 200 letters to surviving relatives. Plus: Rita Windsor, the MI6 officer in wartime Lisbon who got July Plot survivor Otto John out of Europe; the post-war "travel agency" she ran with Ina Molesworth; an incendiary briefcase carried by train to Bletchley Park and blown up on the lawn; the long zigzag road to the first female heads of MI5, GCHQ and MI6; and why Slow Horses gets it right.
US edition published by Citadel (Kensington). ISBN 9780806543710. Published in the UK as Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence.
Kathleen Pettigrew served MI6 from the late 1920s to the 1950s as personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs. In Ian Fleming's first draft of Casino Royale, the character we know as Miss Moneypenny was originally called "Miss Pettaval" — crossed out in pencil and renamed. Fleming, a wartime naval intelligence officer, would have walked past Pettigrew's desk outside Stewart Menzies's office at 54 Broadway.
Pettigrew's power was real. She helped set up MI6's communications team at Bletchley Park in 1939, and back at headquarters she and a colleague, Miss Jones, personally received every decrypted Enigma message passed from Bletchley to MI6 — the gatekeeper deciding where intelligence went. She also accompanied Menzies to Churchill's famous late-night meetings to take notes.
She came from nothing like Moneypenny's polished upper-class background. Born in industrial East Bermondsey to a seal fur dresser, she grew up in a two-room flat above her parents' shop off the Strand. Technical college, secretarial training and elocution lessons got her into Special Branch in the First World War — and from there, "through the looking glass."
Career women like Pettigrew paid a steep price. Marriage bars meant choosing the job meant giving up marriage and children. MI5 dropped its marriage bar shortly after the Second World War; the Foreign Office and MI6 kept theirs until the early 1970s.
"Secretary" was the perfect cover. Behind the job title, women translated, encrypted and decrypted, ran agents, acted as agents and couriers, made secret inks, and produced photography for fake passes and disinformation. Women were there from the very beginning — MI6 employed its first female agent in 1909, the year it was founded.
Popular culture — and especially the endlessly retold, heavily sexualized Mata Hari legend — typecast women in espionage as seductresses and "Bond girls," which helped erase the women doing the real work. Claire notes that the effort to write them back in has gathered real momentum over the past decade.
Researching women trained to leave no trace meant thinking like a counterintelligence officer. Because women created and handled the files rather than making the decisions recorded in them, Claire looked past the content to margin notes, pencilled initials and paper chits — then worked like a family historian, using wills, genealogy, the electoral roll and around 200 handwritten letters to surviving relatives, most of whom had no idea.
Rita Windsor, stationed at MI6's Lisbon station in neutral Portugal, organized agent infiltrations, exfiltrations and defections. When Britain broke off contact with German resistance contact Otto John before D-Day, and the July 1944 plot against Hitler then failed, it was Windsor who got him out through Portugal and Spain to Britain. John dedicated his memoir to her.
After the war, Windsor and her colleague Ina Molesworth set up a high-end travel agency, International Services, taking small groups of well-connected travelers to Afghanistan, Moscow and — one of the first agencies allowed in — China. Claire's research makes clear it was an MI6 cover. The details are in the book.
The road from Kathleen Pettigrew to the first female heads of Britain's intelligence services was anything but straight: Jane Sissmore became MI5's first female officer in 1929; Millicent Bagot became deputy director in the 1950s; Stella Rimington became the first female director general of MI5 in 1992; Anne Keast-Butler became the first female director of GCHQ in 2023; and Blaise Metreweli became the first female chief of MI6 in 2025.
Soundbites
"I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power." — Kathleen Pettigrew, as quoted in Jonathan's introduction.
"These women in the book have absolutely fantastic names, written for spy stories." — Claire on her cast of characters.
"Let's not forget, these women were trained to evade everybody — even the historian coming later in the twenty-first century." — Claire on the challenge of researching MI6 women.
"The first draft of that first Bond novel — the woman we now know as Miss Moneypenny was actually given a different name to start off with: Miss Pettaval. And you can instantly see the similarities between Pettaval and Pettigrew." — Claire on the discovery that clinched it.
"All of the decrypted German Enigma messages coming out of Bletchley Park had to pass through MI6. MI6 was the gatekeeper, essentially. And the two women that received them were Miss Pettigrew and Miss Jones." — Claire on the true scale of Pettigrew's role.
"Secretary was this wonderful catch-all phrase that women in the Secret Services could use as cover, as camouflage. It was perfect, because nobody would suspect that they were doing anything different." — Claire on the job title that hid everything.
"I did transform into a counterintelligence officer myself, in terms of the methodologies I had to adopt to try and get at these women." — Claire on her research method.
"I probably sent out two hundred letters over the course of the project to family and relatives, and most of them wrote back — because they had no idea that Great Aunt Ethel had worked in any capacity within that clandestine world." — Claire on turning family historian.
"The guy walked to the very edge of the lake, popped the briefcase down — and what do you think happened to the briefcase then? It blew up. It was an incendiary device, and a very unstable one. Can you imagine that going off on the train?" — Claire on Lois Hamilton and MI6's Section D at Bletchley Park.
"When you take these historical moments, they are absolutely fantastic — hooray. But what we now need to see is that change continues, and that we actually see more female heads. Not with another massive gap before another woman is appointed." — Claire on the first female chiefs of Britain's intelligence services.
Chapters
00:21 Introduction — Miss Moneypenny was real, and the women written out of the spy story
01:28 Meet Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall — Secret Servants of the Crown
01:46 KATHLEEN PETTIGREW — Why the book opens with her
02:18 The Hardest Women to Research — MI6 has never released its archive
03:25 Keith Jeffery's Official History — Scouring it for breadcrumbs
04:01 Two Mentions — And years spent excavating one woman
05:08 What Secrets Passed Her Desk? — The Second World War and the Cambridge Five
05:39 Waiting for the Next Bond — And the case for a ginger 007
05:59 THE MONEYPENNY DISCOVERY — "Miss Pettaval" in the first draft of Casino Royale
06:53 Fleming, 54 Broadway, and the Desk Outside Menzies's Office
07:46 HOW MUCH POWER DID SHE HAVE?
08:11 Bletchley Park Began as an MI6 Operation
08:52 Setting Up MI6 Communications in the Mansion
10:09 Back at Broadway — Personal assistant to Stewart Menzies
10:36 Every Enigma Decrypt — Pettigrew and Miss Jones as MI6's gatekeepers
12:22 Late Nights With Churchill — Taking notes for the chief
13:23 WHAT IT COST THEM — Career women and the marriage bar
14:04 When the Marriage Bars Finally Fell — MI5 after the war, MI6 not until the 1970s
15:05 Going Against the Social Norms
16:04 Not Lois Maxwell — The real Moneypenny's humble origins
17:10 East Bermondsey, a Seal Fur Dresser, and a Shop off the Strand
18:48 Secretarial College, Elocution, and Special Branch in the First World War
19:48 "Through the Looking Glass" — Into the secret world
19:55 THE WORD "SECRETARY" — The perfect cover
20:45 What They Actually Did — Translation, encryption, agent running, couriers, secret inks
21:45 Labour Shortages and Liberation — Opportunity in two world wars
22:44 WOMEN WERE THERE FROM THE START — MI6's first female agent in 1909
23:11 Why They Were Forgotten — Popular culture, Bond, and bikinis
24:28 The Mata Hari Problem — How one sexualized legend infected everything
25:59 Writing Them Back In — A decade of recovering forgotten women
27:04 The Perfect Cover — Jonathan's theory
27:20 HOW DO YOU RESEARCH WOMEN TRAINED TO LEAVE NO TRACE?
27:43 Becoming a Counterintelligence Officer
29:03 The Women Created the Files — Reading past the content
30:10 Margin Notes, Pencil Initials and Paper Chits
31:33 Turning Family Historian — Genealogy, wills and the electoral roll
32:19 Kathleen's Parrots — A love of birds that began in a Strand pub window
33:06 Did the Parrot Have Security Clearance?
33:25 Two Hundred Letters — And families who had no idea
35:12 THE WOMEN WHO CHANGED OUTCOMES
35:40 Rita Windsor and Ina Molesworth — MI6's duo, late 1920s to early 1970s
36:35 Rita Windsor in Lisbon — Infiltrations, exfiltrations and defectors
37:28 Otto John and the German Resistance
38:34 Britain Breaks Off Contact — And the plot goes ahead without them
39:18 The July Plot Fails — And Rita Windsor gets Otto John out
40:00 "He Owed His Life to Miss Rita Windsor" — The memoir dedication
40:56 Ina Molesworth — German specialist, and Rita's lifelong friend
42:16 THE POST-WAR TRAVEL AGENCY — Afghanistan, Moscow, China, and an MI6 cover
43:52 What Did MI6 Think of the Book? — A signed copy for the former chief
45:07 The Official Secrets Act — Why these women would never have talked
46:04 BLETCHLEY PARK BEYOND THE CODEBREAKERS
47:09 Telling the Stories Not Yet Told
47:50 MI6 Women in the Mansion — Runners, German specialists and code makers
49:04 Making Codes, Not Breaking Them
49:32 Section D — The destruction section in the stables
50:41 Lois Hamilton's Briefcase — Carried by train, blown up by the lake
52:58 Given the Shove — Section D finds another country house
53:31 FROM PETTIGREW TO STELLA RIMINGTON — Not a straight line
54:21 Jane Sissmore — MI5's first female officer, 1929
54:45 The Second World War — Section heads and agent handlers, without the rank or pay
55:32 Millicent Bagot — First female deputy director of MI5
55:55 Stella Rimington, 1992 — And the rest of the firsts
56:05 Anne Keast-Butler at GCHQ and Blaise Metreweli at MI6
57:04 Firsts Are Fantastic — Now keep it going
57:26 WHERE TO GO — Places for Anglophiles to connect with these stories
59:20 What to Watch — Slow Horses and Catherine Standish
01:00:14 Incompetence in the Intelligence Services — And how it all works out
01:00:30 Wrap-Up — Secret Servants of the Crown, Her Secret Service, and Friends of Anglotopia
Video Version
Strictly Jane Austen Episode 2: What Jane Austen Actually Saw – The Real Georgian Bath with Dr. Moira Rudolf
21 sept. 2026
01:08:13
This is Episode 2 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen.
Today's episode has duels fought over a runaway marriage. It has a scandal so severe it drove one of England's richest men into exile. It has the truth about what those elegant public baths were actually like to get into — considerably less charming than the paintings suggest. It has quack doctors selling electricity as medicine, and a notorious celestial bed that promised to cure infertility for fifty pounds a night. It has vanished pleasure gardens, a vulgar villa, a ferry ride that went badly wrong, and two of the great women of English letters falling out spectacularly over their choice of husbands. Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Moira Rudolf, historian of Georgian and Regency Bath, for a tour of the city's darker corners — and Jane Austen, as Moira points out, pops up in nearly all of them. Along the way: Richard Brinsley Sheridan's two duels over the honor of Elizabeth Linley, the celebrated "Maid of Bath"; William Beckford, his scandal, his exile, his 276-foot tower with no foundations, and the Bath retreat Moira describes as the most haunted building she has ever stayed in; what Jane's brother Edward actually endured in the name of taking the waters; Tobias Smollett's stomach-turning account of the King's Bath; where Mary Shelley really wrote Frankenstein; and Fanny Burney's gloriously catty account of an evening at Bathwick Villa, complete with a mechanical eagle.
🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN
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Richard Brinsley Sheridan was eighteen, unknown and penniless when he met Elizabeth Linley, the celebrated soprano known as the "Maid of Bath." Her father Thomas Linley was Bath's most influential musical impresario — and, Moira notes, a father in the mould of Leopold Mozart or Joe Jackson, who bullied all his children into becoming prodigies.
Elizabeth's reputation was destroyed not by anything she did but by a married man, Captain Matthews, who pursued her and spread the rumor she was his mistress. Performers — singers and actresses especially — were routinely assumed to be high-class courtesans, however respectable they actually were. A play at the Haymarket based on the scandal, and a Bath Chronicle review declaring it "based on fact," finished the job.
Sheridan and Elizabeth eloped from 11 Royal Crescent to France in March 1772. Only after they had arrived did Sheridan reveal his true intention: she could not return to England as anything but his wife. They married in France, but both being minors the marriage was invalid.
Sheridan fought two duels over Elizabeth's honor. The first, in London, was short and bloodless. The second, at Kingsdown outside Bath in July 1772, was ferocious — both men broke their swords and kept fighting. Sheridan was carried from the field with part of Matthews's weapon through his ear and his face beaten to a pulp with the sword hilt. He lay seriously ill at the White Hart Inn for eight days, nursed by Elizabeth.
William Beckford inherited an immense fortune at the age of ten, built from his father's Jamaican sugar plantations. In 1784 his letters to the young William "Kitty" Courtenay were intercepted and published, creating a scandal so severe it drove him into an eleven-year self-imposed exile, destroyed his political prospects, and saw him permanently shunned by polite society.
Fonthill Abbey, Beckford's Gothic extravaganza in Wiltshire, had a 276-foot tower. Its contractor confessed on his deathbed that it had been built with no foundations at all. Beckford — by then living in Bath and able to see the tower from his own — owned up to the new owner, and not long afterward the whole thing collapsed.
Beckford's Tower on Lansdown is now let by the Landmark Trust. Moira has stayed there, and describes it as the most forbidding, sinister and haunted building she has ever been in. "I have never been so frightened in my life."
Jane Austen's brother Edward came to Bath in 1799 convinced he had gout and took the cure — bathing in and drinking the mineral water, and trying electricity on a Tuesday. Jane's letters to Cassandra make her skepticism obvious; Moira suspects she thought him a hypochondriac. He was strong as an ox, sired eleven children, and lived to 85.
Tobias Smollett — who trained as a doctor — describes the King's Bath in Humphry Clinker in terms that will permanently alter how you picture Georgian bathing: a child covered in scrofulous ulcers carried in among the bathers, no shelter from the weather, and the strong suspicion that water regurgitated from the bath back into the Pump Room cistern. Moira believes him wholeheartedly.
Mary Shelley did not write Frankenstein overnight at the Villa Diodati — Moira calls that idea "twaddle." She wrote it in Bath, in lodgings at number 5 Abbey Churchyard, in 1816. Around the corner, Dr. Wilkinson was lecturing on his theory that electrical charges could bring inanimate matter to life. Number 5 has been demolished, but its cellars survive — and now house an electrical substation.
Soundbites
"Like many impresarios — and I'm thinking particularly about Mozart's father Leopold and, in more recent history, Michael Jackson's father Joe — Elizabeth's father Thomas Linley bullied all his children into becoming child prodigies." — Moira on the making of the Maid of Bath.
"Singers and people who performed were often regarded as possibly high-class courtesans, when in many cases they weren't at all. They were perfectly respectable and well-organised people." — Moira on how Elizabeth Linley's reputation was destroyed.
"She must be aware that after the step she had taken, she could not appear in England but as his wife. So in fact Sheridan had rather cleverly manoeuvred her into a certain position." — Moira on the elopement to France.
"Both men broke their swords and carried on fighting in a desperate struggle for life and honor. He was moved from the field with part of Matthews's weapon sticking through his ear, his bloodied body covered in wounds, and his face beaten to a pulp with the hilt of his assailant's sword." — Moira on the second duel at Kingsdown.
"Beckford's Tower is one of the most forbidding, sinister, and I'm sure the most haunted building I've ever stayed in. I can tell you I have never been so frightened in my life." — Moira on the Landmark Trust flat at the top of Lansdown.
"The contractor confessed on his deathbed that the tower had been built with no foundations. Beckford did the decent thing and owned up. And not long afterwards there was a God Almighty crack, and the whole of the tower fell down." — Moira on the end of Fonthill Abbey.
"He drinks at the Hetling pump, is to bathe tomorrow and try electricity on Tuesday. I fancy we are all unanimous in expecting no advantage from it." — Jane Austen, writing to Cassandra about her brother Edward, as read by Moira.
"What a delicate beverage is every day quaffed by the drinkers, medicated by the sweat and dirt and dandruff and the abominable discharges of various kinds from twenty different bodies parboiling in the kettle below." — Tobias Smollett on the Pump Room water, quoted by Moira.
"Now if you were to ask me if I believe Smollett, I have to say yes I do, wholeheartedly." — Moira, immediately afterward.
"After parading through four or five little vulgarly showy closets — not rooms — we were conducted into a very gaudy little apartment where the master of the house sat reclining on his arm, to show that the house and its inhabitants were carefully arranged for our reception." — Fanny Burney on Bathwick Villa, as read by Moira.
Chapters
00:25 Introduction & Sponsor — Strictly Jane Austen, and what's in store today
01:07 Today's Episode — Duels, exile, quack medicine, vanished gardens and James Boswell
01:47 Meet Dr. Moira Rudolf — Historian of Georgian and Regency Bath
02:06 SHERIDAN & ELIZABETH LINLEY
02:10 Richard Brinsley Sheridan at Eighteen — Unknown and penniless
02:46 Thomas Linley — Bath's musical impresario, and a father in the Leopold Mozart mould
03:35 Linley House — Pineapples by the door, and Bath's first Theatre Royal
04:23 The Sheridans Arrive in Bath — 1770, and the now-lost Kingsmead Street
04:58 "A Daughter That Sings Like an Angel" — Sheridan's first letter about Elizabeth
05:24 Mr. Long and Captain Matthews — An engagement broken, and a villain appears
06:17 The Maid of Bath — Samuel Foote's play, and a review that ruined a reputation
08:37 The Elopement — 18 March 1772, from 11 Royal Crescent to France
09:04 A Ghostly Carriage — Still occasionally heard, and occasionally seen
10:11 Sheridan's True Intentions — Revealed only once they reached France
11:05 An Invalid Marriage — Both were minors; Linley tracks them down
11:35 THE DUELS — Sheridan challenges Matthews
11:58 The First Duel, London — Hyde Park, the Hercules Tavern, and the Castle Tavern
12:48 Matthews Refuses to Accept Defeat — And the risk of becoming a social pariah
13:05 The Second Duel, Kingsdown, July 1772 — Broken swords and a desperate struggle
14:00 The White Hart Inn — Eight days seriously ill, nursed by Elizabeth
14:38 A Folly in North Parade — Where Elizabeth and Sheridan left love messages
15:35 Married at Last — 1773, in London, with her father's consent
15:51 Elizabeth Retires from Singing — And why Sheridan effectively forbade it
16:23 The Rivals — A disastrous first night, a rapid rewrite, and a triumph
16:51 The Real Duelling Ground in The Rivals — Kingsmead Fields, not the Gravel Walk
17:19 The School for Scandal and a Political Career — Drury Lane, and the crowds who came to hear him speak
18:07 A Marriage That Wasn't a Success — Serial infidelity on both sides, and lifelong friendship
18:44 Mary — The daughter Sheridan raised as his own
19:07 Elizabeth's Death and Sheridan's Decline — Poverty, and Poets' Corner
20:28 WILLIAM BECKFORD
20:50 A Wronged and Romantic Figure — The collector who actually read his books
21:25 Not That Tower — What you can and can't see from central Bath
22:29 Beckford the Man — Gothic, sublime, and immensely rich at the age of ten
23:02 The Fortune — Jamaican sugar plantations and the Fonthill estate
23:24 The Summer House on Fonthill Ridge — Where it all began
24:12 Marriage and Scandal — Lady Margaret Gordon, and the intercepted letters
24:56 "Kitty" Courtenay — And the discovery that ruined everything
25:53 Eleven Years of Exile — Self-imposed, and spent wandering Europe
26:22 Vathek — Written in French, allegedly overnight
27:11 The Entourage — So large he was mistaken for the Emperor of Austria
27:55 Return to England, 1796 — Never forgiven, and back to Fonthill
28:09 James Wyatt and Fonthill Abbey — Secret works behind a twelve-foot wall
29:05 A 276-Foot Tower — And an opening night with Nelson and Emma Hamilton
30:01 Forced to Sell — Beckford retreats to Bath, still immensely rich
30:42 Lansdown Crescent — Buying houses, and building a bridge to hold his library
32:29 BECKFORD'S TOWER — Commissioned 1825, at the very top of Lansdown
32:46 "The Most Haunted Building I've Ever Stayed In"
33:15 The Progress to the Tower — Immaculate dress, stewards, grooms and six yapping hounds
34:21 The Landscape — An embattled gateway, a grotto and a chinoiserie building
34:41 The Tower With No Foundations — A deathbed confession and a God Almighty crack
36:14 Beckford in Later Life — A well-mannered, odd recluse who caused offense to no one
36:55 His Last Wish — To be buried at the top of his own tower
37:36 Jonathan on Fonthill Today — The landscape survives, the tower does not
38:04 BATHING IN BATH — Image versus reality
38:14 The Glamorous Version First
38:37 Edward Austen Comes to Bath, 1799 — Convinced he had gout
39:39 13 Queen Square — And the fashionable, private Cross Bath
40:09 Musicians' Galleries and Nosegays — Serenaded bathers, and men throwing tokens of regard
41:34 The Cross Bath's History — Roman origins, the Melfort Cross, Baldwin and Palmer
42:28 Jane Writes to Cassandra — "Truth or falsehood? I will try the former"
42:49 Electricity on Tuesday — And a family unanimous in expecting no advantage
43:38 The Hot Bath — John Wood the Younger, and the original floor plan
44:07 Was Edward a Hypochondriac? — Eleven children and eighty-five years say maybe
45:15 THE KING'S BATH — The far less select option
45:36 Naked Urchins, No Shelter, and Onlookers — What Jane would have known about
46:35 TOBIAS SMOLLETT — A doctor, a surgeon, and a pessimist about the human race
47:36 On the External Use of Water, 1752 — Filth left sticking to the sides
48:26 Humphry Clinker — The scrofulous child and the flight to the Duke of Kingston's bath
49:51 The Pump Room Cistern — And the suspicion of regurgitation
50:25 "What a Delicate Beverage" — The passage that ruins Georgian Bath forever
50:43 Does Moira Believe Him? — Wholeheartedly
50:51 QUACK MEDICINE
51:00 The Perkins Tractor — What Edward's electrical treatment probably was
51:54 MARY SHELLEY AND FRANKENSTEIN
52:03 The Villa Diodati Myth — Why Moira calls it twaddle
53:05 Number 5 Abbey Churchyard — Where Frankenstein was actually written
53:43 Dr. Wilkinson's Lectures — Electricity, inanimate matter, and a tantalizing possibility
54:23 The Cellars Survive — And now house an electrical substation
54:48 THE CELESTIAL BED
54:55 Dr. James Graham — Effluvia, vapors, and earth bathing
55:44 Fifty to a Hundred Pounds a Night — Mirrors, magnets, turtle doves and wind music
56:36 Emma Lyon — The scantily clad attendant who became Emma Hamilton
56:59 FANNY BURNEY AND A VANISHED PLEASURE GARDEN
57:10 Evelina Published Anonymously — And a father who couldn't keep a secret
57:38 The Thrales — Wealthy brewers, and a circle that included Samuel Johnson
58:37 To Bath for a Cure, 1780 — York House, and 14 South Parade
59:38 Spring Gardens — The lost pleasure garden across the ferry
01:00:57 Bathwick Villa — Alderman Ferry's quirky Gothic mini-mansion
01:01:55 Fanny's Account — Vulgarly showy closets and a bishop stifling his laughter
01:03:41 The Mechanical Table and the Eagle — Georgian dinner theatre at its most absurd
01:04:52 The Walk Home — And a hostess hopelessly late for her own dinner party
01:05:41 The Falling Out — Two great women of English letters and their choice of husbands
01:06:15 Wrap-Up & Sponsor — Strictly Jane Austen, gift vouchers, and Friends of Anglotopia
Video Version
The Impossible Journey: The Man Who Visited Every Country on Earth Without Ever Setting Foot on a Plane
18 sept. 2026
01:11:23
In October 2013, a young Dane named Thor Pedersen set off from his home with a single, slightly mad rule: he wanted to visit every country on earth — all of them — in one continuous journey, and to do it without ever once setting foot on an airplane. Container ships, trains, buses, and a great deal of waiting around. He thought it might take three or four years. It took almost ten. He crossed closed borders and war zones, ran out of money more than once, was stranded for two years by the global pandemic, and served the whole time as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Red Cross. In 2023 he became the first person in history to do it. In this episode, Jonathan Thomas talks to Thor about the whole extraordinary decade — and, this being the Anglotopia Podcast, spends a good while on Britain, which came remarkably early in the itinerary. Thor recounts crossing from Calais to Dover after meeting Syrian refugees at the port, being awestruck by Bristol's maritime heritage, a memorable host in Wales whose front garden contained a toilet lying on its side, a Red Cross officer in Belfast who felt like the James Bond of the Red Cross, falling for the Scottish countryside, buying dodgy Les Misérables tickets in London, a desperate dash for seasickness pills in Immingham, and Hogmanay in Inverness courtesy of a kind bartender. But the deeper story is the one Thor tells in an unusual way: he doesn't sell it as a triumph. He's honest about the loneliness, the setbacks, the cerebral malaria, the migraines, the moments at gunpoint, the two years stuck in Hong Kong — and about the thing that actually got him around the world, which turned out not to be toughness at all, but the kindness of strangers.
1 The idea arrived by email. Thor's father sent him a link about the world's most-travelled people, and Thor — then 34, twelve years into a career in shipping and logistics, and having visited around 50 countries — discovered that roughly 200 people had reached every country, but nobody had done it entirely without flying. He describes it striking him "like lightning."
2 His definition of "every country" was deliberately generous. The UN recognizes 193 sovereign states plus two observer states (the Vatican and Palestine). Thor built on that, splitting the Danish kingdom into Denmark, the Faroes and Greenland, and splitting the UK into England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — arriving at 203 — precisely so nobody could come back afterward and say "but what about Kosovo?"
3 Britain came very early — country numbers seven through ten, in late 2013, just weeks after leaving Denmark. He crossed Calais to Dover after meeting Syrian refugees camped by the rail tracks, was refused as a foot passenger, and got across by knocking on car windows until a driver calling himself Rambling Rat let him ride along.
4 Travelling only overland and by sea teaches you something you cannot learn from an airplane: how enormous the world actually is, and how gradually it changes. Thor points out that at borders, people wear the same clothes, eat the same food, often share a language — and the plants and animals don't care which side they're on. The real changes happen further inland.
5 He became a Red Cross Goodwill Ambassador early on, which transformed the project. Within weeks he realized it wasn't a country project but a people project. Meeting national Red Cross societies gave him rapid, genuine insight into each country — its economy, its government, whether it was a strong or weak society — and gave balance to a social media feed that otherwise risked being relentlessly, artificially upbeat.
6 Two years in, in Central Africa, everything collapsed at once: he lost financial backing, his long-distance relationship was falling apart, he was recovering from cerebral malaria, he was suffering debilitating migraines for the first time in his life, and his life was at risk more than once. It was the point at which he genuinely broke — and the point at which he first wanted to go home. He still had eight years left.
7 The pandemic stranded him in Hong Kong for two years. He'd arrived expecting a four-day transit stop. Immigration eventually told him he couldn't stay indefinitely as a visitor and offered three options: marry someone, study, or work. He ended up employed by the Danish Seamen's Church as "junior assistant to a reverend who wasn't there," shopping for seafarers trapped aboard their ships and unable to come ashore.
8 Hong Kong was both the worst and best chapter. CNN picked up his story, which went viral and transformed his profile. The Hong Kong Tourism Board nicknamed him "Hong Kong's only tourist." By the end he had two apartments, two cars, a driver's licence, a temporary ID card and a dentist. It remains the place in the world he misses most.
9 He felt no joy at all on reaching the final countries. Sri Lanka, then the Maldives on 23 May 2023 — everything had become "automated and mechanic," and he was working through interviews while everyone else scuba dived and drank martinis. The project was successful in the Maldives, but it was completed when he got home to Aarhus, 31 days later by container ship — 40 container ships in total across the decade.
10 Thor's strongest observation about travel is that most of the world is deeply ordinary. People go to work, go to school, spend time with family, follow their sports teams. He travelled through the Game of Thrones years and found everyone everywhere talking about it. He saw a boy in Libya spinning a Captain America shield fidget spinner. We are, he argues, far more connected than we think.
⠀
Soundbites
1"I found out no one had accomplished it completely without flying. For most people that would be an uh-huh kind of moment, and then people would move on. But it struck me like lightning." — Thor on the email from his father that started everything.
2"There's a common phrase where people say it's a small world. It really isn't. If it was a small world, I think I would have been back home a lot sooner." — Thor on what a decade overland teaches you.
3"Around most border areas, people wear the same clothes. You get the same food on either side. The plants and the animals in the area do not care which side of the border they're on." — Thor on seeing where countries actually meet.
4"Within weeks I realized that this wasn't a country project, that this was a people project." — Thor on the shift that changed everything.
5"I was in Central Africa and I was deep in over my head. I lost financial backing. My long-distance relationship was falling apart. I was recovering from cerebral malaria. My life was at risk several times. And I just lost the motivation to continue." — Thor on the moment it broke him, two years in.
6"If there was a competition within hospitality globally, like the Olympics, we would be on the bench watching the other countries. We are kind and helpful and friendly — but we have no idea how friendly we could be." — Thor comparing Northern European and global hospitality.
7"I made an excuse that I was going to the bathroom, but really what I wanted to do was go and pay for all of us. And on my way there, they already knew what I was up to and shouted to the cashier — don't let him pay, we will take care of it." — Thor on his host Dafala in Sudan.
8"So I was hired to be the junior assistant to a reverend who wasn't there." — Thor on how he solved his Hong Kong immigration problem.
9"I arrived with my hat and my backpack, and when I was at my highest I had two apartments, I had two cars, I had access to the port, I had my driver's licence, I had a dentist. I had a life in Hong Kong." — Thor on two years stranded.
10"The real story here is that most of the world is such an ordinary place. It is just people getting by in life, making the best of the situations that they have. Going to work, going to school, spending time with family, falling in love, following their sports teams." — Thor on what a decade on the road actually revealed.
⠀
Chapters
00:21 Introduction — One continuous journey, every country on earth, and no airplanes
01:48 Where Does an Idea Like That Come From? — Twelve years in shipping, and an email from his father
03:46 The Lightning Bolt — Discovering nobody had done it without flying
04:30 Did He Know What He Was Signing Up For? — Four years becomes ten
04:54 Two Years In, Central Africa — Where it all fell apart the first time
06:30 THE NO FLYING RULE — What travelling overland and by sea actually gives you
07:20 How Big the World Really Is — Denmark, Texas, Greenland and the skewed world map
08:47 Where Countries Meet — Same clothes, same food, and animals that don't care about borders
09:36 Watching the Landscape Change — Desert to bushes to forest to mountains
10:17 Which Definition of a Country? — 193 UN states, and why Thor's list runs to 203
12:24 THE RED CROSS — How being a Goodwill Ambassador changed the journey
12:50 A People Project, Not a Country Project
13:22 What the Red Cross Gave Him — Rapid, genuine insight into every country he entered
15:08 Balance — Why it mattered to post things that weren't relentlessly positive
16:05 BRITAIN — Country numbers seven through ten, in late 2013
16:44 Calais — Meeting Syrian refugees by the rail tracks before crossing
17:28 Rambling Rat — Refused as a foot passenger, and getting across by knocking on windows
17:58 Bristol — An open-air museum of seafaring history
18:38 Wales — A kind host, a house with grass to the windows, and a toilet in the front yard
19:11 Minimum 24 Hours Per Country — And how fast the early legs moved
19:24 Northern Ireland — The James Bond of the Red Cross, and a city of walls
20:00 "It's Raining a Wee Bit" — Thor's accent problem
20:32 Scotland — Awestruck by the west coast, and on to Glasgow and Edinburgh
21:08 Edinburgh — His girlfriend, now wife, visits two weeks after he left home
21:34 London — Les Misérables, dodgy tickets, and an unexpectedly happy ending
22:48 Back to the UK — A missed ship to Iceland, and an unplanned return via Immingham
23:42 The Pharmacy Dash — Crawling under the shutters for seasickness pills
24:26 Scrabster — And a devastating email about a ship that isn't coming
25:04 Edinburgh Again, Then Inverness — Hogmanay with a bartender who takes in strangers
26:15 CULTURAL DIFFERENCE — Reading what people really think of you
26:50 The Hospitality Olympics — Why Northern Europe would be on the bench
27:40 Dafala in Sudan — Not being allowed to pay for anything
29:07 Poland and Hong Kong — Strangers who cook for you at midnight, and four days that became five months
29:54 "The Guest Is God" — Hospitality in India and Pakistan
31:02 The Arab World — Why you may never know what someone truly thinks of you
31:41 Denmark, Britain and America — Three different ways of masking contempt
33:12 THE UNITED STATES — How he got there and what happened
33:26 Iceland to Greenland to Canada — Crossing the Atlantic by ship
34:21 Immigration at Buffalo — Colin Farrell, a German form, and a very unimpressed officer
35:37 New York at 4 AM — Sleeping under a tree in Central Park
36:39 A Bird, a Beard and Free Wi-Fi — Central Park as a budget traveller's dream
37:04 Washington DC — Free museums, and more homelessness than the movies show
37:56 THE CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR — The train that changed the trip
38:09 Meeting Art — A chance conversation in the queue
38:45 Four Hours in Chicago — A grandfather's grave and a different ticket
40:06 The First Class Surprise — Art's private cabin, bunk beds and meals included
41:00 Communal Dining — Strangers, awkward seating, and solving global politics three times a day
42:18 San Francisco and Onward — To Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean
43:19 WHEN IT GOT HARD — The end of the good energy days
43:32 Naive Expectations — CNN, BBC and Nike were not, in fact, calling
44:49 Central Africa — "That is just a different level of hardship"
45:40 An Astonishing Part of the World — Beautiful, lush, friendly, and extremely hard to travel
46:34 Losing the Thread — Forgetting why any of it mattered
47:24 Migraines and Malaria — What his body did in response
48:40 At Gunpoint — And the moment he grabbed a steering wheel at speed
49:18 Where an Ambulance Might Not Come — The reality of a medical emergency in that region
50:03 MOST OF THE WORLD IS ORDINARY — Game of Thrones, fidget spinners and a Captain America shield in Libya
51:52 THE PANDEMIC — Two weeks' delay in the Solomon Islands, then the Marshall Islands
52:45 Four Days in Hong Kong Becomes Two Years
53:31 Down to the Last Nine Countries — And desperate to go home
54:24 Five Months With One Family — And the need for personal space
55:03 CNN Finds Him — The article that went viral and changed everything
55:38 Hong Kong's Only Tourist — Working with the Hong Kong Tourism Board
56:28 Immigration Runs Out of Patience — Marry, study, or work
57:35 THE DANISH SEAMEN'S CHURCH — Junior assistant to an absent reverend
58:27 Seafarers Trapped Aboard — Suicide rates, shipboard dentistry, and captains who died at sea
59:32 Shopping for the Ships — What Thor actually did for a year
01:00:17 Forty Container Ships — And the satisfaction of giving something back
01:00:27 The Luck of the Delay — Why being stuck in Hong Kong was better than the alternatives
01:01:20 A Life in Hong Kong — Two apartments, two cars, a dentist, and the place he misses most
01:02:04 THE END OF THE JOURNEY — Sri Lanka, then the Maldives
01:02:47 Bureaucratic Obstacles to the Finish Line — Not allowed to leave the ship
01:03:33 Flags, Friends and a Resort Island — And Gunnar Garfors breaking the story
01:04:14 No Joy At All — Working through interviews while everyone else celebrated
01:05:20 Successful in the Maldives, Completed at Home — And why he refused to fly back
01:06:06 The Milan Maersk — 31 days from Malaysia to Aarhus
01:06:46 Windmills in the English Channel — The slow return home
01:07:20 Homecoming — Rain, a crowd at the portside, and his wife
01:07:59 WHAT NOW? — The Adventurers' Club and a secret expedition
01:08:48 Africa, Camels, Volcano — Three clue words and nothing more
01:09:09 Life Today — Speaking engagements, film festivals and book events
01:09:34 Emirates Business Class vs Ryanair — A memorable downgrade
01:10:06 Wrap-Up — The Impossible Journey, out now, and Friends of Anglotopia
Video Version
Strictly Jane Austen Episode 1: The Regency Explained — Robert Morrison on the Most Consequential Nine Years in British History
14 sept. 2026
01:04:44
This is Episode 1 of a special six-part Jane Austen series, sponsored throughout by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company.
We talk a lot on this show about the Regency. It's the backdrop to Jane Austen, to Bridgerton, and to a thousand romance novels and costume dramas. But what actually was the Regency? Strictly speaking it was a brief window from 1811 to 1820, when George III's descent into apparent madness meant his eldest son ruled in his place as Prince Regent. And yet for such a short period, it cast an extraordinarily long shadow. To open the series, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Robert Morrison — literary historian, Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University in Ontario, British Academy Global Professor at Bath Spa University from 2019 to 2024, and author of The Regency Years, named a book of the year by The Economist and shortlisted for the HWA Crown Award. Robert walks us through what the Regency literally was, the constitutional crisis that created it, the extraordinary contradictions of the Prince Regent himself, and his bold central claim: that these nine years laid the foundations of the modern world. Along the way — why 1813 saw both Pride and Prejudice published and Charles Babbage begin dreaming of a thinking machine; why Mrs. Bennet's hysteria is really about the Napoleonic Wars; why Persuasion is Austen's greatest novel; and why Bath remains the beating heart of the Regency imagination.
🎀 OUR SPONSOR: STRICTLY JANE AUSTEN
This entire six-part series is brought to you by Strictly Jane Austen — Bath's most Austentatious travel company.
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Bridgerton in Bath — A private tour of the city's Bridgerton filming locations and Regency high society
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The Regency was not just a vibe or an aesthetic — it was a constitutional and political reality. It began on February 5, 1811, when Parliament reluctantly made George III's eldest son Prince Regent, and ended January 29, 1820, when the King died and the Regent became George IV. That gives it a weight, Robert argues, that "the Roaring Twenties" or "the Swinging Sixties" simply don't have.
George III's illness was long thought to be porphyria, a metabolic disorder. It is now more commonly believed to have been a severe form of bipolar disorder — with hysteria, hallucinations, insomnia, bouts of violence, and, in his final years, some form of dementia. He spent many days in a straitjacket at Windsor Castle and became a genuinely tragic figure.
Parliament had no choice in the matter. Under primogeniture you take the eldest son — you cannot skip to a more suitable brother. Robert's point is pointed: this is precisely why the world eventually decided it wanted democracy and leaders who can be removed.
The Prince Regent is a study in extremes: a drinking, gambling, womanizing wastrel hopelessly in debt, and simultaneously one of the great patrons of British taste. He kept a copy of every Jane Austen novel in all of his residences long before the world recognized her, and let it be known she could dedicate her next book to him — which is why Emma opens with a dedication to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent.
Robert's central claim is that the Regency is where modern Britain begins — because this is the moment when people across the social hierarchy start to dream of equality and a fairer, more just society, and gather in enormous numbers to demand it. The clearest example is Peterloo, when 60,000 people assembled in Manchester to demand parliamentary reform.
The Regency also gave us consumerism, celebrity culture, fashion and gossip in recognizably modern forms. Byron was arguably the first modern celebrity — when he moved to Geneva, people bought telescopes and camped across the lake to spy on him.
1813 is the hinge year: Pride and Prejudice is published, Charles Babbage begins thinking about a thinking machine that becomes the modern computer, and Thomas De Quincey sinks into the opium addiction he would later write about — creating our modern cultural conversation about substance dependence. Robert wrote the book partly to bring those collisions into view.
Austen's apparent silence on the Napoleonic Wars is not silence at all. Britain had around one million men involved in the Napoleonic struggle out of a population of just eleven million. Among them were hundreds of thousands who might have made good husbands — and they simply weren't there. That absence, Robert argues, shapes all six of Austen's novels and explains exactly why Mrs. Bennet is so frantic.
Robert makes the case that Persuasion — not Pride and Prejudice — is Austen's greatest novel. It begins after the romance has already happened and failed, it's sadder and more impassioned, and it shows men helping women and women helping men, with Admiral and Sophia Croft as perhaps the most successful couple in all of Austen.
The one myth Robert would most like to correct: there were an enormous number of very poor people in Regency Britain, and if you were at the bottom of the social hierarchy you lived in appalling circumstances. No modern medicine, no ventilation, no social safety net — it was possible to starve in the streets. But that grittiness, he argues, makes Austen's and Turner's achievements greater, not lesser. Their knowledge was hard won.
Soundbites
"The Regency is a constitutional political reality as well. It means the structure of the state was changed. And I think that gives it a greater weight than just coining a name for the period." — Robert on why the Regency is different from the Roaring Twenties.
"He is in a straitjacket in Windsor Castle many, many days and becomes quite a tragic figure. And if he could have seen what his son was up to, he would have been even more distressed." — Robert on George III.
"Jonathan, they didn't have any choice. Parliament couldn't say, well, we're not giving it to William, we're giving it to Harry. It's the system of primogeniture. And that's why the world said, you know what, we need democracy. We need leaders we can get rid of." — Robert on why Parliament handed power to a man they didn't trust.
"He's on one hand excess personified, and on the other he's going, 'I saw JMW Turner's painting this morning and I really think he's on to something.' That range is characteristic of the Regency." — Robert on the Prince Regent.
"He's betting on horses and he's gambling and he's whoring — and he's also sitting at home reading Jane Austen, Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Byron meets him at a party in 1812 and can't believe how much he knew about Greek poets." — Robert on the Regent's contradictions.
"So Babbage dreaming of the modern computer and Austen writing love stories happened in the same year. I really wanted to bring things like that into collision." — Robert on 1813.
"To a considerable extent, when we say 'I have fallen in love,' we mean we've fallen in love like Jane Austen describes it. She has defined for more than 200 years what that means." — Robert on Austen's enduring influence.
"Why is Mrs. Bennet semi-hysterical? Britain is a country of eleven million and one million men are involved in the Napoleonic Wars. Among those million there are hundreds of thousands who might have made a good husband, but they aren't there. That lack of men shapes all six of Austen's novels." — Robert on the war hiding in plain sight.
"Anne says, yeah, well, that's because it's all written by men. The pen has been in your hand. The pen has been in the hands of men. And Austen is writing a history for women." — Robert on the conversation at the end of Persuasion.
"If you were at the bottom of the social hierarchy, you didn't want to be in Regency Britain. And I guess the one thing that redeems the Regency for me is this amazing cultural flowering and this amazing ability to protest and to demand something better." — Robert on the myth he'd most like to correct.
Chapters
00:21 Introduction & Sponsor — Strictly Jane Austen, and what's coming in this six-part series
01:17 Today's Subject — What actually was the Regency?
02:01 Meet Robert Morrison — The Regency Years, Bath Spa, and Austen's Persuasion
02:55 What the Regency Literally Was — February 5, 1811 to January 29, 1820
03:21 What Is a Regency? — Ill health, incapacity, foreign wars, and a modern hypothetical
04:56 More Than a Nickname — Why the Regency is a constitutional reality, not just a vibe
05:33 Drawing the Lines — Romanticism, publishers, and why a decade is the right frame
07:41 The Book He'd Write Next — The 1960s in Britain, and a nod to Dominic Sandbrook
08:19 How the Regency Happened — George III, sixty years on the throne, and the first bout in 1788
09:24 What Was Actually Wrong with George III? — Porphyria, bipolar disorder, and Princess Amelia's death
10:49 The Politics Behind It — Why Parliament held its breath and enacted the Regency anyway
12:26 Who Was the Prince Regent? — Born 1762, and a lifetime of annoying his father
13:35 Talented and Dissolute — Beau Brummell, impressions, and a marriage that lasted a year
14:20 The Sympathetic Case — Barred from the battlefield, so he decided to have fun instead
15:11 What Was Remarkable About Him — Connoisseurship, Turner, and Austen's dedication in Emma
16:30 The Range Is the Regency — Gambling and whoring and Greek poets
17:02 Why Parliament Handed Him Everything — Primogeniture, and why the world wanted democracy
18:13 Waterloo and the Whigs — The government he kept, and the shockwave he sent
19:02 THE CENTRAL CLAIM: BRITAIN BECOMES MODERN
19:20 Where the Book Began — Waterloo, Turner, Constable, Robert Owen, Mary Shelley
19:55 Dreaming of Equality — Peterloo, 60,000 people, and demanding a juster society
20:28 Consumerism and Celebrity Culture — And the technologies that let it spread
22:16 Jane Austen Defines How We Fall in Love
22:56 Charles Babbage and the Thinking Machine — 1813, the year everything collides
23:35 Beau Brummell, Byron and the First Modern Celebrity — Telescopes across Lake Geneva
24:08 Coleridge, De Quincey and the Origins of Modern Addiction
24:57 Thomas Lawrence, Mary Shelley, Polidori and Turner — Frankenstein and The Vampyre from one circle
26:04 CROSS CURRENTS — Elegance on the surface, turbulence underneath
26:25 Science, Industry and the Luddite Riots — Technology stripping livelihoods, then and now
27:34 The Class Society — Darcy proposes, and Elizabeth says no
29:08 The Reform Bill of 1832 — And what popular protest actually achieved
29:39 British vs. American Democracy — Revolution versus evolution
30:11 Victoria's Discovery — How the monarchy gave up power and kept its grip
31:53 THE DARK UNDERCURRENT — Poverty, colonial conquest, slavery
32:42 Austen's Courage — No university, no marriage, and the cleverest person in the room
33:41 The Gritty Side — Wilberforce and opium, Byron's club foot, the challenges they overcame
34:36 AUSTEN, NAPOLEON AND BYRON — Why put these three side by side?
35:13 The Collisions — Wellington and Napoleon across the same battlefield
36:23 NAPOLEON AND THE WIDER WORLD
36:52 A Million Men — The war on the front page, every day, for years
38:15 The War of 1812 — When Robert's country and Jonathan's country go to war
39:00 The Other Side of It — How people carry on when the bombs are far away
40:17 JANE AUSTEN IN CONTEXT
40:33 Austen Wasn't Popular in Her Lifetime — Walter Scott was the great novelist of the age
41:53 Our Recognition Has Overtaken Historical Fact — Austen's England wasn't Bridgerton
42:34 She Wasn't Ignoring Events — Three daughters, no sons; five daughters, no sons
43:35 Why Mrs. Bennet Is Semi-Hysterical — One million men, and the ones who never came home
44:47 PERSUASION — Why Robert calls it Austen's greatest novel
44:59 The Phone Call from Harvard — And a moment of bravado
45:51 What Makes It Great — Sadder, more impassioned, and it starts after the romance failed
46:58 Admiral and Sophia Croft — Men doing domestic work, women doing business, and the reins
48:11 The Conversation with Captain Harville — "The pen has been in the hands of men"
49:37 Wentworth's Letter — And why Robert can't get through it without cracking
50:04 BATH — Why it looms so large in the Regency imagination
50:44 Walking Austen's Bath — Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and the gravel walk at twilight
51:30 Four Addresses and Six Novels — All of which mention Bath
51:39 Austen Didn't Like Bath — And why that's exactly why she wrote about it
52:16 Bath's Heyday — The 18th century spa town, and what it had become by the Regency
52:36 Robert's Bath Walking Tours — Thirty-five people, three times, and every plaque
53:08 Who You'll Find in Bath — Lawrence, Beckford, Piozzi, Parry, Siddons, Burney, Shelley, De Quincey and Austen
54:50 WHY THE REGENCY STILL GRIPS US
55:08 Reaching for Something That Didn't Exist — Paul McCartney and sunny days in the sixties
56:20 Bridgerton — A class well above Austen, and what you have to ignore to enjoy it
56:55 Poverty Then and Now — And why Austen wrote what she knew
57:22 The Grittiness Makes It Greater — Hard-won knowledge and stories about hope
58:48 THE REGENCY AND AMERICA — Emigration, Keats's brother in Kentucky, and the American dream
01:00:13 The Sticking Point — Slavery, and why it troubled British emigrants
01:01:17 THE MYTH ROBERT WOULD MOST LIKE TO CORRECT
01:01:29 There Were Lots of Poor People — And their lives were appalling
01:02:08 Regency Britain as Preface to the Modern World — The good and the bad
01:02:48 What Redeems It — Cultural flowering, and the ability to demand something better
01:03:06 Wrap-Up & Sponsor — Strictly Jane Austen, gift vouchers, and Friends of Anglotopia
Video Version
Double Agents, Dead Drops & Declassified Files: Inside the MI5 Archive of Official Secrets
11 sept. 2026
01:02:42
For over a century, in a building most of us could not name, an organization known only by its post office box number — PO Box 500, London — has been quietly reading other people's letters, following other people's footsteps, and keeping the realm's most closely guarded secrets. MI5, the British Security Service, was founded in 1909 in the nervous run-up to the First World War under the motto Regnum Defende — Defend the Realm. James Bond and George Smiley are the fictions. This is the real thing. In this episode, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Mark Dunton, Principal Records Specialist at the National Archives and lead curator of their hit MI5: Official Secrets exhibition, and Dr. Stephen Twigge, former Head of Modern Collections at the National Archives and a historian of the Cold War and code breaking. Together they've written The MI5 Archive: Official Secrets, a remarkable visual record drawn from the 6,000 files MI5 has released since 1997. They explain what it actually feels like to hold these documents, how MI5 differs from MI6 and GCHQ, how a secret becomes an archive, and how historians work with a record that is deliberately incomplete. Then come the stories: the German spy hanged by a lemon, the last man executed at the Tower of London, the astonishing Double Cross system that invented 27 fictional agents to deceive Hitler about D-Day, the surveillance transcript that records atomic spy Klaus Fuchs stoking his own fire, the truth about MI5's limited role in the Profumo affair, and the handwritten note authorizing a tap on the King's telephone during the abdication crisis.
MI5 has transferred over 6,000 files to the National Archives since 1997, and while most government departments operate under a twenty-year rule, MI5 works to an unofficial fifty-year rule. Strictly speaking they are not obliged to transfer anything at all — they choose to.
MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are, as Stephen puts it, "brothers from the same mother." All emerged from the Secret Service Bureau created in 1909, which had a domestic side and a foreign side. The two heads shared an office for about a month before going their separate ways. MI5 catches other people's spies at home; MI6 runs Britain's spies abroad; GCHQ, which began as the Government Code and Cypher School under MI6, provides signals intelligence to both.
Unlike the famously fractious CIA/FBI relationship in the US, the British agencies get on reasonably well — largely because they're staffed by lifetime civil servants rather than political appointees, and because people move between them (Dick White ran MI5 and then MI6). Less turf war, less budget anxiety.
The exhibition MI5: Official Secrets — which ran April to November 2025 and drew over 55,000 visitors — was the first time MI5 has ever collaborated with another institution to tell its own history. The book contains a great deal that wouldn't fit in the exhibition space.
Karl Muller, a First World War German agent, was caught because his invisible ink was lemon juice. Two lemons were found — one in his dressing table drawer wrapped in cotton wool, one in his overcoat pocket. He claimed they were for dental treatment. He was executed at the Tower of London. MI5 then kept writing letters in his name, asked the Germans for more money, received a handsome sum, and bought a staff car with it — which they nicknamed "the Muller." The Treasury told them off for unauthorized expenditure. The car was later stolen from outside MI5 headquarters.
Josef Jakobs, parachuted into Huntingdonshire in January 1941, broke his ankle on landing and fired his revolver into the air to summon help. He was found with a German torch containing a German battery, a road map of Great Britain, a forged ID card, and a torn-up cipher wheel. Uncooperative under interrogation at Camp 020, he could not be turned — and became the last man ever executed at the Tower of London.
The Double Cross System — officially the Twenty Committee, because XX in Roman numerals is twenty — turned virtually every German agent sent to Britain. MI5 then had to invent entire fictional networks of sub-agents to feed the Germans plausible material. Agent Garbo, a Spanish former chicken farmer who hated both chickens and Nazis, worked with his handler Thomas Harris to create around 27 wholly fictional sub-agents, all reporting on a non-existent army group massing in southeast England.
Agent Tate convinced the Germans there was a large minefield south of Ireland. On 1 January 1945 British intelligence intercepted a message to all U-boat commanders warning them to avoid the area. That deception kept the Atlantic convoy route safe and saved countless lives. Tate also misled the Germans about where V1 and V2 rockets were landing, causing them to adjust trajectories so the missiles fell in open countryside rather than urban areas.
On the Profumo affair, the files actually deflate the conspiracy theories. Contrary to the widespread impression that Stephen Ward was working for MI5 and was then abandoned by them, the files show MI5's involvement was genuinely limited — Ward met an MI5 officer two or three times, and was warned to be wary of Ivanov, not recruited. Director General Roger Hollis wrote that MI5 didn't get involved in that sort of "call girl racket."
Stephen's most striking find is a handwritten note from the Prime Minister's office to the head of the GPO during the abdication crisis, authorizing the monitoring of King Edward VIII's communications at Fort Belvedere — alongside Special Branch maps tracking Wallis Simpson's daily movements. Nobody, it turns out, is above surveillance.
Soundbites
"You're never sure what's going to come next when you turn the page. You get a letter, and it can be quite mundane at times — how are the kids doing from so and so. And it takes you to places you don't necessarily go to in normal life." — Stephen on reading the files.
"You get a very real sense that these were records which were not meant for public consumption. It's a bit like the title of the James Bond film — For Your Eyes Only." — Mark on handling MI5 documents.
"MI5 and MI6 are, I suppose, brothers from the same mother. The two heads of those organizations shared an office for about a month and then went their own ways." — Stephen on the origins of British intelligence.
"It's the first time that MI5 have ever collaborated with another institution to tell its history in this way." — Mark on the exhibition and the book.
"There's this riveting transcript derived from a listening device placed in the home of Klaus Fuchs. And it records him moving about, with little details like 21:07, Fuchs stoked the fire. It gives you an almost voyeuristic feeling that you're looking in on this person's life and listening in with the MI5 listeners." — Mark on the atomic spy surveillance logs.
"They asked him, what's this lemon for? And he claimed it was for dental treatment for his teeth. Which didn't necessarily go down well." — Stephen on Karl Muller's defence.
"MI5 kept sending letters in his name, and in one of them asked for some money. They received quite a handsome amount, and then they bought a staff car with it, which was then called the Muller. Which, even more embarrassing, was stolen outside MI5 headquarters in the 1920s." — Stephen on the most delightful footnote in MI5's history.
"He'd been a chicken farmer before the war, but apparently hated chickens. And he also hated the Nazis. And he had such a fertile imagination — together with his MI5 handler they cooked up about 27 fictional sub-agents." — Mark on Agent Garbo.
"You get this bizarre wilderness of mirrors, where the German intelligence authorities think they're doing wonderfully well. They've got all these agents around the country feeding them information — but little do they know it's all bogus." — Stephen on the Double Cross system.
"There's a letter that authorizes the tapping of the King's phone, which you wouldn't necessarily imagine to be released. It's a handwritten note from the Prime Minister's office. It's a fascinating idea that no one is above the law — everybody is capable of being monitored." — Stephen on the file that stayed with him.
Chapters
00:21 Introduction — PO Box 500, Regnum Defende, and the real thing behind the fiction
01:17 Meet the Guests — Mark Dunton and Dr. Stephen Twigge of the National Archives
01:44 What Does It Feel Like to Hold These Files?
02:56 For Your Eyes Only — Mark on a window into a hidden world
04:13 How the Book and the Exhibition Came About — Approaching MI5, and their surprising response
06:11 The Exhibition — April to November, 55,000 visitors, and why the book holds more
07:04 Where MI5 Fits — MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the Joint Intelligence Committee explained
09:51 Do They Actually Get Along? — Comparing British and American intelligence culture
11:19 PO Box 500 — The anonymous address, and how a secret becomes an archive
12:16 What MI5 Has Been Called — Secret Service Bureau, MO5, Security Service, and Military Intelligence Section 5
13:12 Opening Up in the 1990s — Regular transfers and 6,000 files
14:14 Working with a Deliberately Incomplete Archive — Redactions, gaps, PF numbers and the jigsaw
16:11 The 50-Year Rule — Why MI5 files are often less redacted than other departments'
17:49 Outside the Normal Framework — They're not obliged to transfer anything at all
18:37 Do They Only Release What They Want Us to See? — Mark on the Cambridge Spies
19:04 What Makes a Good Exhibit? — Turning a dry surveillance report into something you can feel
20:06 Klaus Fuchs Stokes the Fire — The listening device transcript that lingers
21:33 THE FATAL LEMON — Karl Muller and the First World War
22:11 An Ill-Trained Agent — Latvia, Antwerp, and a very short course in secret inks
23:37 A.E. Free — Lemon juice, a compromised post box, and a German baker in Deptford
25:12 Caught in Russell Square — Lemons, German clothing, and a story about dental treatment
25:58 Execution at the Tower — And what MI5 did next
26:26 The Muller — Asking the Germans for money, buying a staff car, and getting told off by the Treasury
27:07 Two Lemons — Black, shrivelled, and in the collection
27:33 THE SIEGE OF SIDNEY STREET, 1911
27:55 Refugees, Radicals and the East End — The context for a gunfight
28:53 The Gun Battle — Scots Guards, machine guns, and a building burnt to the ground
30:57 Why It Matters — MI5's shift from military counter-espionage to civilian subversion
32:01 Enter Winston Churchill — The Home Secretary who turned up for the cameras
32:47 JOSEF JAKOBS — THE LAST MAN EXECUTED AT THE TOWER
33:03 A Broken Ankle in Huntingdonshire — And a revolver fired into the air
33:42 Camp 020 at Ham Common — Where the parachuted spies were interrogated
34:06 Who Was He? — A dentist, and an exploitative role in Jewish emigration
34:43 Uncooperative Under Interrogation — Why he couldn't be turned
35:38 Shot by Firing Squad — The last execution at the Tower of London
35:59 The Objects — A German torch with a German battery, a road map, a forged ID and a torn-up cipher wheel
36:40 THE DOUBLE CROSS SYSTEM
36:58 How It Worked — An offer they couldn't refuse, and inventing entire fictional networks
38:38 Chicken Feed and Burning Aerodromes — Making the deception plausible
39:15 A Wilderness of Mirrors — And Operation Fortitude
39:47 Why "Twenty Committee"? — XX in Roman numerals
40:28 Operation Fortitude in Detail — Distracting the Germans from Normandy toward the Pas de Calais
41:44 AGENT GARBO — A Spanish chicken farmer who hated chickens and hated Nazis
42:15 27 Fictional Sub-Agents — And a non-existent US Army group in southeast England
42:51 Agent Treasure and Agent Tate
43:26 The Minefield South of Ireland — The U-boat warning of 1 January 1945
44:32 Saving the Convoy Route — And countless lives
44:36 The V1 and V2 Deception — Redirecting missiles into open countryside
45:04 What Happened to Them Afterwards? — Garbo's shop in South America, an MBE, and Ben Macintyre's research
46:18 THE COLD WAR — How MI5's job changed after 1945
46:38 Atomic Spies at Harwell — And higher stakes after 1949
47:20 From War Footing to Peacetime — Reduced budgets and a new focus on subversion
48:18 The Communist Party of Great Britain — An inordinate amount of attention
48:30 A Shadow War — Intelligence as back channel, and why sex scandals made the front pages
50:05 THE PROFUMO AFFAIR, 1963
50:25 The Cast — John Profumo, Christine Keeler, Stephen Ward and Eugene Ivanov
51:40 What the Files Actually Show — MI5's involvement was limited
52:36 Stephen Ward and the Man Called Woods — Warned about Ivanov, not recruited
53:15 Ward Reported Back Conscientiously — And was not working for MI5
53:52 Roger Hollis on the "Call Girl Racket" — And what the files do to the conspiracy theories
54:54 FICTION AND REALITY — Nick Harkaway's foreword, le Carré and Fleming
55:18 What le Carré Got Right — Moles, lamplighters, honey traps, and a vocabulary that entered common usage
55:53 It's Not James Bond — It's people sitting there watching people and writing down what they did
57:09 The Doris Lessing File — Why she was on MI5's radar, and how rounded these portraits are
57:46 Fleming and Naval Intelligence — Special Operations Executive and the daring-do end of the business
58:29 THE FILE THAT STAYED WITH THEM
58:42 Stephen's Choice: The Abdication Crisis — Tapping the King's phone at Fort Belvedere
59:28 Special Branch and Wallis Simpson — Maps of her daily routine
59:56 Mark's Choice: The Lemon — And a "license to peel"
01:01:04 All the Little Twists and Turns — Why the Karl Muller story is the perfect MI5 story
01:01:34 Wrap-Up — The book, publication details, and Friends of Anglotopia
Video Version
What’s On in London in September 2026 — Open House London, the Bayeux Tapestry & the Last Night of the Proms
02 sept. 2026
00:26:07
Recorded on location in Hammersmith at Emery Walker's House — the best-preserved Arts and Crafts interior in Britain, packed with original William Morris wallpaper and once home to William Morris's great friend and collaborator, the printer Emery Walker — this is the September edition of What's On in London. Jonathan makes the case that September might be the single best month of the year to visit London: the summer crush lifts as families return to school, everything is still open on summer hours, the weather turns crisp and golden, hotel prices drop, and the cultural calendar goes into overdrive. He covers Open House Festival (September 12–20, free, 621 listings including 10 Downing Street), Heritage Open Days across England, Totally Thames across twenty riverside boroughs, the London Design Festival in its 24th year, and the Last Night of the Proms — including the trick to getting in for eight pounds on the day. He then runs through the autumn's blockbuster exhibition openings, led by the Bayeux Tapestry's arrival at the British Museum (and the British Museum membership workaround for anyone who missed the sold-out ticket release), Nature and Us at the Natural History Museum in a gallery closed since 1943, the Burberry Trench at the V&A, and How We Lost America at Hogarth's House — curated by the very person who let him record this episode. Plus what's closing and when, live music and theater, family activities, the September weather outlook, and Jonathan's own remaining London itinerary.
Not for members and listeners: Due to the timely nature of this episode, I'm releasing it to members and general listeners on the same day, so there won't be a new episode Friday. This is this week's episode.
September is London's secret sweet spot. The overwhelming summer crush lifts as families return to school, yet everything is still open and running on summer hours. You get peak London without peak London visitors — and the weather turns crisp, clear and golden rather than oppressively hot and humid.
Hotel prices drop noticeably after the August peak, and the British government's VAT cut on tourist attraction admissions is still running — meaning roughly 20% off admission prices at major attractions on top of the seasonal savings.
Open House Festival is the month's headline event: September 12–20, completely free, in its 35th edition and the biggest yet with 621 listings across all 33 London boroughs. Private offices, livery halls, Georgian houses, Brutalist towers, working studios and hidden roof gardens all open their doors at no charge.
The single most important Open House tip: sign up for the Open House email list. The most sought-after buildings — including 10 Downing Street — are ballot-only, and you have to apply weeks in advance. Popular non-ballot venues queue from early morning, so pick two or three in one area rather than crisscrossing the city.
Three more citywide festivals run alongside it: Heritage Open Days (England's much larger national cousin to Open House, with 25,000+ participating organizations), Totally Thames (a month-long river festival across the twenty riverside boroughs from Richmond to Barking, over 100 events, much of it free), and the London Design Festival in its 24th year, hubbed at the V&A in South Kensington.
The Last Night of the Proms is on September 12 this year and sells out annually — partly because Royal Albert Hall seats are literally owned as private property, sold off as real estate to fund the hall's construction, passed down through families and now worth several hundred thousand pounds each. Those owners get first refusal.
But there is a way in: 1,000 standing tickets in the arena in front of the stage are held back for every single Proms concert, including the Last Night, and sold on the day for £8. They go online at 9:30am on the day of the concert, with a further allocation sold in person at the box office at Door 12.
The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum is the biggest cultural event in London this year — the first time it has left Normandy in its 900-year existence. But if you haven't booked, you won't see it this autumn: 2.5 million tickets sold in hours-long virtual queues when they were released in July. The next tranche, covering January onward, is expected in late October or November.
There is a workaround: a British Museum membership includes two tickets to the Bayeux Tapestry. If you're in London this autumn and desperate to see it, buy a membership immediately and reserve those tickets.
September is also when the summer season clears out, often in the first week. Marilyn Monroe at the NPG, Hepworth in Colour at the Courtauld and Project a Black Planet at the Barbican all close September 6; Monet and Renoir at the National Gallery closes September 15; Banqueting House closes September 20; Buckingham Palace State Rooms and Whistler at Tate Britain close September 27. Genuinely now-or-never.
Soundbites
"I'm recording this sitting in one of the rooms at Emery Walker's House in Hammersmith, which is right on the Thames — and it's the best preserved Arts and Crafts interior in Britain. A genuine time capsule packed with original William Morris wallpaper." — Jonathan on the location.
"September is the month that locals quietly know is perfect and visitors often overlook, purely because the calendar says summer's over." — Jonathan on the central idea of the episode.
"The crowds have evaporated. The kids go back to school, family holidays end, the overwhelming summer crush simply lifts — and yet everything is still open and running on its summer hours. You get peak London without peak London visitors." — Jonathan on why September works.
"If you plan a trip around one thing while you're in London in September, plan it around Open House London." — Jonathan on the month's headline event.
"They will open up 10 Downing Street — the home and office of the Prime Minister — but you have to apply for the ballot a few weeks in advance. You're not going to get in there if you don't even apply." — Jonathan's most actionable Open House tip.
"When they built the Royal Albert Hall, the seats were sold as pieces of real estate to fund its construction. Those seats get passed down through families or sold, and they're worth several hundred thousand pounds now." — Jonathan on why the Last Night of the Proms is so hard to get into.
"If you're canny and you're quick, you can get into the Last Night of the Proms for just eight pounds and experience the glory of it." — Jonathan on the £8 day tickets.
"It's the first time the tapestry has ever left Normandy in its 900 years of existence. But before you try and book a ticket — if you haven't already booked, you're not going to see it this September. You're not going to see it this autumn at all." — Jonathan on the Bayeux Tapestry.
"If you join the British Museum as a member, each membership gets two tickets. So there's a hack there." — Jonathan's workaround for the sold-out Bayeux Tapestry.
"Here's your case for September: the secret best month in London. Fewer crowds, kinder prices, glorious light, and a cultural calendar that rivals any month of the year. Book a little ahead, because word about September is getting out. Don't tell too many people." — Jonathan's closing pitch.
Chapters
00:21 Introduction — The September edition, recorded on location in Hammersmith
00:36 Where We Are — Emery Walker's House, the best preserved Arts and Crafts interior in Britain
01:10 A Full Tour Episode Is Coming — Look out for the dedicated Emery Walker's House episode
01:42 Why September Might Be London's Best Month
02:01 Everything Here Comes from the Londontopia Events Calendar
02:25 The Secret Sweet Spot — The big idea running through the whole episode
02:43 The Crowds Evaporate — Peak London without peak London visitors
03:32 Prices Drop — Plus the ongoing VAT cut on tourist attraction admissions
03:57 Peak Culture Month — You lose the crowds and gain the culture
04:16 OPEN HOUSE LONDON — September 12–20, free, 35th edition, biggest yet
05:00 What You Can See — Livery halls, Georgian houses, Brutalist towers, hidden roof gardens
05:12 The Tips — Ballots, early queues, and picking two or three in one area
05:37 10 Downing Street — Why you must join the mailing list and apply for the ballot
06:05 The Open House Directory — How to plan your days
06:29 HERITAGE OPEN DAYS — England's bigger national cousin, 25,000+ organizations
06:56 TOTALLY THAMES — A month-long river festival across 20 riverside boroughs
07:17 LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL — 24th year, hubbed at the V&A
07:39 Other September Highlights — Made X at the Barbican, Black on the Square, Luke Jerram's Pollinarium, Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court
08:21 Greenwich + Docklands and Summer by the River — End dates
08:28 THE LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS — The end of the traditional cultural season
09:36 September 12 This Year — And why it's worth planning a trip around
09:43 Why the Proms Sell Out — Royal Albert Hall seats are privately owned real estate
10:17 The £8 Ticket Hack — 1,000 arena standing tickets released at 9:30am on the day
11:10 BLOCKBUSTER EXHIBITION OPENINGS
11:33 The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum — The biggest cultural event in London this year
12:31 Why You Won't See It This Autumn — Hours-long queues, 2.5 million tickets, October's next release
13:30 The Membership Workaround — Two tickets with every British Museum membership
13:54 Nature and Us at the Natural History Museum — A Waterhouse gallery closed since 1943 reopens
14:19 Secret Treasures from Kyiv at the V&A — Opens September 14, free, running a year
14:38 9/11 at 25 at the Imperial War Museum — Bill Biggart's last photographs, free, from September 4
15:07 The Burberry Trench at the V&A — Opens September 21
15:17 Es Devlin at the Design Museum and How We Lost America at Hogarth's House
15:36 Curated by Today's Host — Lucinda's own exhibition, free, from September 22
15:40 Emma Reece at White Cube and Jenkin van Zyl at Somerset House
16:10 EXHIBITIONS ALREADY RUNNING
16:16 Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern — Jonathan is going later today
16:32 Schiaparelli at the V&A, Jurassic Oceans, Richard Dadd at the Royal Academy
17:02 Henry Moore at Kew, Ana Mendieta, Declaring Independence at the British Museum
17:29 Churchill the Painter at the Wallace Collection — And Jonathan's correction about the ticket price
17:45 WHAT'S CLOSING IN SEPTEMBER — LAST CHANCE
17:56 Monet and Renoir at the National Gallery — Closes September 15
18:09 Marilyn Monroe and Hepworth in Colour — Both close September 6
18:14 Banqueting House — Closes September 20, and Jonathan is booked in tomorrow
18:30 Buckingham Palace State Rooms — Closes September 27, booked back in February
18:52 The Queen's Fashion Exhibition — Sold out, but extended another six months
19:06 Whistler at Tate Britain, Star Trek at 60, Project a Black Planet
19:28 LIVE MUSIC — The Proms, Víkingur Ólafsson at Wigmore Hall, San Francisco Ballet at Sadler's Wells, Good Kid at the Roundhouse
19:59 THEATER & OPERA — The autumn season starts in earnest
20:08 Tilda Swinton in Man to Man at the Royal Court — Sold out, but day tickets released
20:27 Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy at Stratford East — Michelle Dockery and Laura Aikman
20:48 The Last Ship at Drury Lane, Hay Fever, Into the Woods, Golden Boy, Don Giovanni
21:12 FAMILY EVENTS
21:17 London Transport Museum Depot Open Days at Acton — September 25 & 27
21:39 Mudlarking Weekend at London Museum Docklands — September 26–27
21:51 Free Saturday Poetry, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Horniman Plant Fair
22:05 A Curated Slice — Where to find the full guide
22:20 THE WEATHER — Recorded from London, and what to actually expect
22:52 Everything Is Brown and Dead — London desperately needs the rain
23:12 A Typical September — Pleasant, cool, and it might rain, but rarely all day
23:36 What to Pack — Layers, walking shoes, light rain jacket, umbrella, sunscreen
23:59 IS SEPTEMBER A GOOD TIME TO VISIT? — Jonathan's verdict
24:22 The Case for September — Fewer crowds, kinder prices, glorious light
24:42 The Bayeux Tapestry as a Reason to Plan a 2027 Return Trip
24:52 Thanks to the Emery Walker Trust — And a reminder to book a tour
25:11 Where to Find Everything — The Londontopia events calendar
25:29 Wrap-Up — Friends of Anglotopia and signing off from London
Video Version
Open Gates and Victoria Sponge – Inside Britain’s National Garden Scheme with Richard Claxton
29 août 2026
00:54:29
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Richard Claxton, Chief Executive of the National Garden Scheme, for a conversation about one of the most quietly magical institutions in Britain. On weekends across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, ordinary people — and some rather extraordinary ones — throw open their garden gates and invite strangers in. You pay around six pounds, wander through someone's private paradise, and then sit down to homemade Victoria sponge and a cup of tea. Every penny goes to charity, most of it to nurses. Richard came to the role by an unusual route: a GP for 23 years in Tonbridge, he became a leading advocate of "green prescribing" — the idea that time in a garden can be genuine medicine — founded the charity Gardening4health, launched an NHS therapy garden, retrained as a garden designer specializing in healthcare spaces, and volunteered as a guide at Sissinghurst. He explains the real clinical evidence behind therapeutic horticulture, tells the story of Elsie Wagg and the 600 gardens that opened in 1927 to fund the Queen's Nurses, walks through how the scheme works today and how visitors can find and book gardens, describes the intensive care roof garden and the spinal unit gardens the charity funds, unpacks what makes an English garden English, tells the love story behind Sissinghurst, reveals his own favorite garden in the scheme, and — live on air — writes Jonathan a green prescription.
Note: Cover image is Wordsworth Garden in Cumbria, which I don't think is actually in the scheme, but it is the prettiest picture of a garden I had!
The National Garden Scheme is a charity, not a membership body — a network of around 3,500 private gardens across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands that open to the public on set days each year. Scotland has its own equivalent scheme. Entry is typically around six pounds, and there is almost always cake.
The scheme was founded in 1927 by Elsie Wagg, the daughter of a wealthy stockbroking family, who sat on the committee funding the Queen's Nurses — a fledgling service of community district nurses struggling for money in the era before the NHS. Her idea was simple: get as many people as possible to open their gardens and charge the public a shilling. In the first year, 600 gardens opened and raised £8,000.
Ninety-nine years later, the scheme has given away roughly £80 million, and currently distributes about £4 million every year. It is now the single biggest funder of many of Britain's major nursing and healthcare charities — including Macmillan Cancer Support, Parkinson's UK, Marie Curie, Carers Trust, hospices, and still, most enduringly, the Queen's Nurses.
The charity is tiny in staff and vast in reach: only 13 paid employees, supported by around 600 volunteers who coordinate garden openings county by county across the country.
Green social prescribing is not, as Richard is careful to stress, "mumbo jumbo." The evidence shows that ten sessions of therapeutic horticulture delivers benefit for moderate depression and anxiety roughly equivalent to ten sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy — at significantly lower cost — and roughly equivalent to a much longer course of SSRI antidepressants. Gardeners who grow their own produce also show lower rates of obesity, dementia, and several cancers.
About half a million pounds a year goes specifically to the charity's Gardens and Health program. Projects include a roof garden on an intensive care unit in London — designed so that ventilated, sedated patients can be brought outside to feel sun and breeze, with all life-support equipment plugged into cupboards concealed within the flower beds — and Horatio's Garden, which builds and staffs gardens at all eleven UK spinal injury centres.
Gardens are not selected by contest. Most owners approach the scheme themselves; occasionally the scheme approaches an exceptional garden. A county team member then visits to assess quality, access, parking, and catering arrangements, and to work out when in the year the garden looks its best.
Beyond the scheduled open days, many gardens offer "by arrangement" visits — meaning if you see a garden you like the sound of but there's no date listed, you can simply contact the owner directly, explain you'll be in the area, and more often than not they'll say yes and bake you a cake.
The classic English cottage garden — densely planted, lush, mixing vegetables and fruit with ornamental flowers timed to bloom in relay across the season — is changing under pressure from drought and hosepipe bans. Richard is seeing a marked shift toward Mediterranean-style planting, grasses, and drought-tolerant species.
The National Garden Scheme's centenary falls in 2027. Only about 75 of the original 1927 gardens still open today, but the charity is aiming for 150 to 200 of them next year, alongside gala events, concerts and dinners in gardens, a traveling exhibition, show gardens at county shows, and a full impact report covering the charity's first hundred years.
Soundbites
"It was the dream ticket for me, because it combined both gardening and health and visiting gardens and garden design and people — and cake. I really am the cat that got the cream." — Richard on landing the job.
"I would emphasize I'm not a complete hippie as a doctor. I'm not remotely new age. I was very conventional as a GP. Green social prescribing is simply a way of pointing out, in a holistic sense, a prescription that isn't necessarily in a packet of pills." — Richard on what green prescribing actually is.
"Ten sessions will be equivalent in benefit to a course of cognitive behavioral therapy for the same amount of time, and it will cost a lot less. It's not mumbo jumbo. There is real evidence behind it." — Richard on the clinical case for therapeutic horticulture.
"She said to her committee: why don't we get as many people as possible to open their gardens for charity and let the public in? And so in 1927, 600 gardens opened for the very first time and they charged a shilling a head." — Richard on Elsie Wagg's original idea.
"If I went and saw a movie at a cinema, that would be between fifteen and twenty-five pounds. Or if I went to a large public garden, twenty, twenty-five. These are six pounds a head. And there's almost always cake." — Richard on the value proposition.
"I'd literally not even got my feet under the desk and I was being asked to write checks for half a million pounds to these charities. It really brought home to me the value and the impact of what we do." — Richard on his first weeks in the job.
"Patients who are effectively on life support machines, ventilated and sedated, can come up and feel the sun on their face and the breeze. They can look into the tree canopy. It's been designed so you can plug in all the equipment that keeps them alive into cupboards buried in the flower beds." — Richard on the intensive care roof garden the scheme part-funded.
"All the best gardens are ones where there's a love story behind them. And Sissinghurst is the ultimate example of a love story garden for me." — Richard on why Sissinghurst is his favorite garden in the world.
"They lived in squares, they painted in circles, and they loved in triangles." — Richard quoting the saying about the Bloomsbury set.
"They set out the garden at the beginning of their married life with a wedding present ask for everyone who came to their wedding: a cutting, a small little plant of yew or box. And from those wedding presents they have grown the most extraordinarily beautiful topiary garden I've ever been in — with twelve-foot-high peacocks and dogs and chess pieces." — Richard on Balmoral Cottage, his favorite garden in the scheme.
Chapters
00:21 Introduction — Open garden gates, Victoria sponge, and one of Britain's most charming institutions
01:47 Welcome, Richard — Recording on a bank holiday Monday
01:59 From GP to Garden Scheme — Sweet peas with grandad, gardening through junior doctor years, and a roundabout route
03:26 Twenty-Five Years as a Community Physician — Recognizing that lifestyle problems could respond to time in nature
04:25 Building the Path — A therapy garden for the NHS, founding a charity, and a garden design diploma for hospital spaces
05:00 The Dream Ticket — Gardening, health, gardens, design, people, and cake
05:27 What Is Green Prescribing? — And a firm assurance that Richard is not a hippie
06:19 How It Actually Works — Ten sessions of therapeutic horticulture, and how it compares to CBT and SSRIs
08:12 Preventative Healthcare — Why gardeners are thinner, eat better, and have lower rates of cancer and dementia
08:46 The Bigger Picture — Food security, climate, biodiversity, loneliness, and what gardens can connect
09:13 Volunteering at Sissinghurst — And why they wouldn't even give him a pair of clippers
10:14 What Is the National Garden Scheme? — 3,200 gardens, four nations, and a charity not a membership body
10:44 The Origins — Elsie Wagg, the Queen's Nurses, and 600 gardens in 1927
12:12 Ninety-Nine Years Later — How the formula works today
13:29 Six Pounds and a Slice of Cake — Lemon drizzle, Victoria sponge, and why it's such good value
13:45 Why People Come Back — Inspiration, holidays, meeting family halfway, and buying plants propagated on site
14:59 Not Just Stately Homes — Ordinary back gardens, group openings, and allotments
15:47 What Is an Allotment? — Richard explains a very British institution to an American audience
17:17 How a Garden Joins the Scheme — Not a contest; the county team visit; access, parking, catering and timing
17:38 Thirteen Staff, Six Hundred Volunteers — How a tiny charity achieves such enormous reach
18:36 Finding a Garden to Visit — The website, the app, booking online or paying at the gate
19:08 Is It Only One Weekend a Year? — No: set days across the season, planned around what's in bloom
20:17 "By Arrangement" Openings — How to get a bespoke private visit, and why they'll probably bake you a cake
21:20 Where the Money Goes — £80 million lifetime, £4 million a year, and the charities it funds
22:03 Why These Charities Exist — The NHS, community care, and the charitable infrastructure alongside it
23:43 The Biggest Funder — Hospices, Parkinson's nurses, Macmillan, spinal units, veterans, and the Queen's Nurses
24:39 Every Slice of Cake — The duality of generosity that runs through the whole scheme
25:38 Writing the Checks — Half a million pounds in the first two months on the job
26:03 A Casino in Indiana — Jonathan's tangent about local charitable giving
26:56 Who the Real Beneficiaries Are — Not the charities, but the British public
28:11 Leaving Patients After 23 Years — And why the impact of this job is greater than one-to-one care
29:07 The Gardens and Health Program — Half a million a year, and what it funds
30:18 The Intensive Care Roof Garden — Life support in a garden, and equipment hidden in the flower beds
31:35 Horatio's Garden — Gardens at all eleven UK spinal injury centres
32:06 Smaller Projects — A garden for teenagers with mental health problems in a deprived northwestern area
32:43 What Makes an English Garden English? — The cottage garden style and where it came from
33:53 A Changing Climate — Drought, hosepipe bans, crispy brown lawns, and the shift to Mediterranean planting
35:33 Why Sissinghurst? — All the best gardens have a love story
36:21 Vita and Harold — Knole, inheritance law, a ramshackle ruin, and the tower like Rapunzel's
37:36 A Brilliant Pair — Harold laid the bones, Vita did the planting
38:11 The Bloomsbury Set — Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Keynes, Eliot, and living in squares
39:52 What You'll Actually See — The White Garden, the moat, the herb garden, the lime walk, and the view from the tower
41:14 Lucky Not to Inherit — Why losing Knole gave the world Sissinghurst
41:39 The Centenary in 2027 — Gala events, concerts, dinners, exhibitions, and 200 original gardens reopening
43:40 Richard's Favorite Garden in the Scheme — Balmoral Cottage in Kent
44:41 A Wedding Present Garden — Cuttings of yew and box, and twelve-foot topiary peacocks
46:08 Jonathan Asks for a Green Prescription — Live on air, and slightly off script
46:37 Shinrin-yoku — What a two-hour walk in green space does to your heart rate and cortisol
48:03 Grow Your Own — Nutrition, plot to plate, and why supermarket sweetcorn disappoints
49:03 Gardening as Exercise — Why an hour or two of gardening equals half an hour in the gym
49:51 The Real Advice — Start with a walk; if you like it, get an allotment
50:14 Hadrian's Wall — Jonathan's training walks and what they've done for his health
50:48 Making It Stick — Why the hardest part is building it into your life, and why gardens are just outside your back door
52:09 Wrap-Up — Where to find the National Garden Scheme, the app, and Richard's own Instagram
Video Version
Doggerland, Lyonesse & Cantre’r Gwaelod: The True History Behind Britain’s Drowned Lands
21 août 2026
00:49:45
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Professor Patrick Nunn — geographer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, and visiting fellow at Oxford — for a conversation that will permanently change how you look at the map of Britain. Patrick's new book, Whispers from Celtic Seas, published this month by Reaktion Books, makes an extraordinary argument: the legends of drowned kingdoms off the coasts of Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany are not fantasy at all. They are testimony — eyewitness memories of real catastrophes, passed down by word of mouth for as long as eight thousand years, which would make them quite literally the oldest stories we have. Patrick explains how a conventionally trained scientist came to take myths as seriously as data (via Pacific island oral cultures and Aboriginal Australian traditions), walks Jonathan through the twelve-thousand-year-old Colinda harpoon dredged from the North Sea in 1931 that first revealed Doggerland, describes the Storegga submarine landslide that severed Britain from mainland Europe 8,200 years ago, and unpacks the real histories buried inside the stories of Cantre'r Gwaelod, Lyonesse, and the sea-crossing giants of the Celtic fringe. Along the way: two islands drawn on the 1360 Gough Map that no longer exist, an eighteenth-century Cornish parson who got there first, why stone circles may have been climate mitigation strategies, and the Welsh mudflats whose name translates as "the place of weeping."
Patrick Nunn's central argument is that the coastal legends of Britain, Ireland and Brittany — drowned kingdoms, giants, mermaids, land-making witches — are not invented fiction but encoded memories of real environmental catastrophes, passed down orally for thousands of years. His challenge to skeptics is to explain the implausibility of the alternative: that pre-literate peoples had the leisure time to invent elaborate fictions and consign them to the river of history.
The moment of realization came in two stages. Working in the Pacific Islands, Patrick listened to elders recount stories for hours as if reading from a book — proving oral cultures can retain and transmit enormous quantities of information with total precision. Then, after moving to Australia in 2010, he encountered 34 separate groups of Aboriginal stories from around the entire coastline describing when the sea was further out and the ocean rose to cover the land — events that ended around 7,000 years ago, meaning the stories must be at least that old.
The Crater Lake example is Patrick's clinching argument. When European settlers reached Oregon, the Klamath people told them a mountain once stood where the lake is, that two gods fought, and that the mountain collapsed. Mount Mazama erupted and collapsed 7,600 years ago. There is no alternative explanation for how that story survived.
The Colinda harpoon — a twelve-thousand-year-old carved deer antler dredged from the floor of the North Sea by a Lowestoft trawler in 1931 — was the first widespread realization that people had once occupied the seabed between Britain and Europe. That landmass is now known as Doggerland, named for the Dogger Bank fishing ground.
At the coldest point of the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago, the ocean surface stood roughly 400 feet (125 meters) lower than today. Doggerland was not a "land bridge" — its inhabitants did not think of themselves as living on a bridge. It was simply a vast inhabited landmass supporting fishing, hunting, and free movement of people, animals, and vegetation between what is now mainland Europe and the British Isles.
Around 8,200 years ago, a huge section of the Norwegian continental shelf collapsed into the ocean depths — the Storegga Slide — displacing an enormous volume of water and generating tsunamis that struck Shetland, Orkney, Scotland, and the eastern seaboard of the British Isles. Driving south through the North Sea, it smashed passages through the already-shrinking remains of Doggerland. That event, in effect, created the British Isles.
The Welsh legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod in Cardigan Bay — sixteen cities lost when King Gwyddno's steward got drunk and forgot to close the sluice gates — has a genuine kernel of truth. People certainly lived in that area 10,000 to 12,000 years ago when sea levels were tens of meters lower, and those places were genuinely submerged. The drunken steward is later decoration added to make the story entertaining; the submergence is the empirical core.
The Gough Map of around 1360 — the oldest surviving map of Britain, held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford — shows two islands in Cardigan Bay that do not exist today. Patrick doesn't believe the islands still existed in the 1360s, but the memory of them was sufficiently compelling that the cartographer drew them anyway.
Patrick's explanation for giants is one of the book's most striking ideas. When a memory became too implausible for later generations — people walking across what is now thirty miles of open ocean — the story adapted rather than died. The walkers became giants, and the giants grew larger as the ocean gaps widened. Giants weren't invented; they were brought into narrative tradition specifically to keep true memories credible.
Patrick's two recommended places to stand and feel this history: Conwy Bay in North Wales, where the mudflats at its head are called the Lavan Sands, whose old name means "the place of weeping"; and the Outer Hebrides, particularly around North Uist, where 19th-century collectors recorded remarkably detailed stories about the Monach Islands — including the names of the last people to cross the land connection and those who drowned attempting it. That connection was submerged 6,800 years ago.
Soundbites
"I don't think people five hundred years ago or even five thousand years ago had the leisure time to develop elaborate fictions and then consign them to the river of history and pass them down through the ages." — Patrick on why he takes ancient stories seriously.
"When we look at stories of mermaids and giants, we're really looking into the minds of people hundreds, even thousands of years ago — the way they conceived the world and the way they encoded their observations of deep time." — Patrick on what folklore actually preserves.
"It became clear to me that people in oral cultures are in fact able to retain and organize and pass on huge amounts of information without the benefits of being able to write them down." — Patrick on the Pacific Islands research that changed his thinking.
"These stories by default had to be at least seven thousand years old. And that really blew my mind, as I guess it would that of any conventional scientist. But I was always trained: let the data speak." — Patrick on the Aboriginal Australian stories of coastal drowning.
"That volcano erupted seven thousand six hundred years ago. There is no alternative explanation for the Klamath story having been passed on since this cataclysmic event." — Patrick on Crater Lake, Oregon.
"Why are you skeptical that a story can be passed down for thousands of years? You're skeptical because it doesn't happen today. We've forgotten, if you like, what our ancestors in oral societies did." — Patrick's response to skeptics.
"That event, if you like, created the British Isles. It destroyed the land connection between the British Isles and mainland Europe around about eight thousand two hundred years ago." — Patrick on the Storegga Slide.
"We laugh about the drunken steward and the duties he failed to perform. But the essence of that story is that there once existed inhabited places on the floor of what is today Cardigan Bay, and these places became submerged. And of course that's absolutely true." — Patrick on Cantre'r Gwaelod.
"Those people became giants because that was the way you could rationalize these stories and make them credible to each new generation. And the giants became bigger and bigger through time because the ocean gaps became wider and wider." — Patrick on the origin of giants in Celtic folklore.
"The old English name for the Lavan Sands means the place of weeping. There is so much sadness associated with the loss of land in the past, and some of that sentiment is preserved in place names." — Patrick on Conwy Bay, North Wales.
Chapters
00:21 Introduction — Drowned kingdoms, giants, and the claim that these are the oldest stories we have
01:51 Welcome, Patrick — Anglotopia's first guest from Australia, and hello from the past
02:19 The Central Argument — Why these legends are memory, not invention
04:17 From Geographer to Folklorist — What made a scientist take myths as seriously as data
05:04 The Pacific Islands — Listening to elders recite for hours as if reading from a book
05:58 Aboriginal Australia — 34 groups of stories about coastlines that drowned, and what that proves
07:45 From Australia to the Celtic Fringe — How The Edge of Memory led to this book
09:53 The Skeptic's Objection — Does oral tradition degrade like a game of telephone?
12:06 Crater Lake, Oregon — The Klamath story and a volcano that erupted 7,600 years ago
13:46 The Colinda Harpoon — A 12,000-year-old antler spear dredged from the North Sea in 1931
15:37 Doggerland — Naming the drowned world beneath the North Sea
16:11 Life in Doggerland — 400 feet lower seas, free movement of people and animals, fishing and hunting
18:09 The Storegga Slide — How a Norwegian landslide 8,200 years ago created the British Isles
20:01 What Happened to the People? — Drowning, retreat to higher ground, and the normalization of submergence
21:34 Why Every Culture Has a Flood Story — Different events, shared memory of a world transformed
22:23 Lake Michigan — Jonathan wonders about flood legends in his own backyard
23:05 Wales: Cantre'r Gwaelod — Sixteen cities, King Gwyddno, and a drunken gatekeeper
26:13 The Gough Map — Two islands in Cardigan Bay drawn in 1360 that no longer exist
27:37 Cornwall: Lyonesse — The Arthurian drowned land off Land's End
28:01 William Borlase — The 18th-century Cornish parson who took the stories seriously
29:56 The Scilly Isles — Once a single island, now ten, and the trauma of being cut apart
32:08 Giants — Why implausible memories became giants, and why the giants grew
35:28 Method — How to tell a story encoding real events from a good story
37:38 Contemporary Resonance — What these stories teach us about climate change today
40:09 What Else Are We Not Listening To? — Volcanoes, seawalls, and mitigation
41:39 Stone Circles as Climate Mitigation — A genuinely startling idea
43:15 Where to Stand and Feel This History — Conwy Bay and the Lavan Sands, "the place of weeping"
44:46 The Outer Hebrides — North Uist, the Monach Islands, and stories recorded in astonishing detail
46:32 Alexander Carmichael — A tall man wading the fords, and the couplet that moves Patrick most
48:31 Wrap-Up — Whispers from Celtic Seas, out August 4 from Reaktion Books
Video Version
The Story So Far: Everything Before I Walk 84 Miles Across England Along Hadrian’s Wall
14 août 2026
00:59:24
This is a special one. Recorded on home soil just days before departure, this is Jonathan Thomas's complete pre-trip briefing before he leaves to walk the entire 84-mile length of Hadrian's Wall — coast to coast across Northern England. It has been fifteen years in the making. Jonathan walks through the whole story: the conversation with his wife a year ago that set everything in motion, the year of training that followed, why he chose this particular trail, and how a long-held someday became a definite date on the calendar. He then goes deep into the logistics — the Macs Adventure app and luggage transfer service, his full ten-stage itinerary from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, why he's walking east to west, the "day zero" plan to get the first five miles out of the way, the gear he's packing (and the beloved Ordnance Survey maps he's leaving behind), and the tradition he's borrowing from the Wainwright Coast to Coast. Finally, he lays out everything coming down the line: a ten-episode podcast series sponsored by SplashMaps, social posts from the trail, mini-documentaries, articles, a possible book, a possible revival of the Travels in Britain video series — and the extra week in England afterward, taking in the Settle & Carlisle line, four days in York, a day out in Yorkshire with Tim Barber, Castle Howard, and a final stretch in London that includes Buckingham Palace, the Ceremony of the Keys, the Wallace Collection's Churchill exhibition, and a recording of next month's What's On in London from inside Emery Walker's House.
The Last Cambridge Spy: Dr. Chris Smith on John Cairncross and the Cambridge Five
07 août 2026
01:13:30
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas welcomes back Dr. Chris Smith — historian at Coventry University, author of The Hidden History of Bletchley Park and The Last Cambridge Spy, and a returning friend of the podcast for his third appearance — to explore one of the most remarkable and troubling stories in modern British history: the Cambridge Five. Five young men, recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s, rose to the very heart of the British establishment — the Foreign Office, MI5, MI6, and Bletchley Park — and spent decades passing its secrets to Moscow. Dr. Smith takes Jonathan through the full arc: the political radicalization of the 1930s that made Soviet recruitment possible, the individual stories of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Anthony Blunt, and — above all — the fascinating, overlooked figure of John Cairncross, the ironmonger's son from a Scottish mining town who was never quite let into the fold, mocked for his accent, made to fetch the tea, and who nonetheless walked out of Bletchley Park with raw decrypts stuffed in his trousers and fed them to Moscow. The episode covers the Battle of Kursk and what Cairncross's intelligence really contributed, the extraordinary Venona Project that began unravelling the ring, why MI5 couldn't prosecute the men they knew were guilty, how Anthony Blunt accidentally revealed himself by threatening to sue Private Eye, and why the story of the Cambridge Five — class, betrayal, embarrassment, and the establishment protecting its own — still grips Britain seventy years on.
The Cambridge Five were not recruited because they were ideological fanatics — they were recruited because the 1930s presented them with a genuine political crisis: mass unemployment, fascism rising across Europe, a British establishment incapable of responding, and the Labour Party wiped out in 1931. Soviet communism appeared to be the only organized force willing to fight the Nazis.
Kim Philby did not seek out the NKVD — he fell into their hands almost by accident when he went to work with the Viennese underground and met Litzy Friedmann, whose contacts led straight to Soviet intelligence. His recruitment was as much luck as design.
John Cairncross was the only one of the five who did not come from the upper-middle or upper class. Born in 1913 in Lesmahagow, a mining town south of Glasgow, the son of an ironmonger and one of eight children, he arrived at Cambridge already primed with a chip on his shoulder — and was immediately reminded by An
What’s On in London in August 2026: Notting Hill Carnival, Buckingham Palace & London’s Newest Museum
31 juil. 2026
00:31:52
In this monthly episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas returns with his August edition of What's On in London — and this one comes with a personal twist, because Jonathan will be in London himself later in the month. August is London's most contradictory month: the busiest tourist season of the year, a million-plus visitors, packed attractions and carnival streets — and yet simultaneously the month when Londoners themselves flee to Cornwall and France, leaving whole districts strangely quiet. Jonathan covers it all: the Notting Hill Carnival (August 30–31, its 60th anniversary this year, Europe's largest street festival, free entry); the major royal and historic building openings including Buckingham Palace State Rooms, Houses of Parliament summer tours, and the freshly restored Banqueting House reopening August 1st; London's brand new museum, Trent Park House of Secrets — just opened July 21st, telling the extraordinary wartime spy story that was kept under the Official Secrets Act for over 50 years; new West End openings including Jane Eyre the Musical and Kimberly Akimbo; the blockbuster exhibitions still running and closing this month; live music at Victoria Park and Wembley; family-friendly highlights; the VAT tourist discount reducing admission prices across major attractions this summer; and Jonathan's own personal list of what he's booked and planning to see — including the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace's East Wing tour, the Wallace Collection's Churchill as Painter exhibition, and Trent Park.
Links
The Big One — Notting Hill Carnival (August 29-31, 60th Anniversary)
BritRail 101: The Definitive Guide to Train Travel in Britain for Visitors with Expert Tim Roebuck
24 juil. 2026
00:58:26
In this sponsored episode of the Anglotopia Podcast — brought to you by ACP Rail and BritRail — Jonathan Thomas sits down with Tim Roebuck, a man who has spent his entire career in rail travel: station manager, head of BritRail Travel International in New York, senior VP at ACP Rail for 25 years, and one of the most knowledgeable people alive on the subject of getting around Britain by train. This is the episode Jonathan has wanted to make for a long time — a complete, practical, friendly guide to understanding and using the BritRail Pass, demystifying the network for international visitors, and unlocking the kind of trip most Americans never imagine is possible. They cover the history of British Rail and the coming Great British Railways rebrand, how London's multiple terminal stations work, the game-changing Elizabeth line, the best scenic routes in the country (from the East Coast Main Line's North Sea coastal run to the Far North Line to Wick and Thurso), how train ticket types actually work and why the BritRail Pass cuts through all the confusion, the difference between a consecutive and a flexi pass, what the pass does and doesn't cover, seat reservations, luggage tips, apps to use, and Tim's all-time favorite rail journey. Plus: a giveaway. To celebrate this episode, Anglotopia and ACP Rail are giving away a first-class BritRail four-day flexi pass. Enter at anglotopia.net/britrail. Giveaway closes August 15th.
Dragons, Black Hens & Sleeping Warriors: The Legends of England’s Buried Treasure with Jeremy Harte
17 juil. 2026
00:43:53
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Jeremy Harte — folklorist, winner of the Catherine Briggs Folklore Award, curator of Bourne Hall Museum in Surrey, and author of Cloven Country: The Devil in the English Landscape and Travelers Through Time: A Gypsy History — to discuss his remarkable new book Treasures on Earth: Buried Wealth in the English Landscape, published by Reaktion Books. Jeremy has spent his career chasing the uncanny side of the English landscape, and in this book he has gathered hundreds of treasure legends together for the first time — organizing them not by region or date but by emotion: memory, ruin, strife, terror, failure, and longing. The result is one of the most original and quietly brilliant books on English folklore in years, and the conversation it generates is irresistible: Why did people surround buried gold with dragons, black hens, and demons? What does the moment a laborer on the River Ribble accidentally uncovered a Viking army's war chest have in common with Oak Island? Why is the folklore always cruelest at the very last minute? What is the real fantasy underneath the search for treasure — not gold, but escape, freedom, and the dream of never having to work again? And what does the figure of Mackenzie Crook's Detectorists, swinging their machines over Essex fields and dreaming of Saxon gold, tell us about the ancient human urge that these legends have always mapped?
Treasure legends are not really about gold. They are, as Jeremy Harte argues throughout, about the emotions that surround gold — longing, memory, failure, terror, and the fantasy of transformation. The stories survived because of what they did to the people who told and heard them, not because of any actual buried wealth.
The Cuerdale Hoard — the largest Viking silver hoard ever found in Britain, unearthed by laborers straightening the River Ribble in the 1840s — is one of the most powerful examples of how real treasure finds retrospectively generate legends. Almost all treasure "traditions" that seem to predict a find are only recorded after the find is made.
The classic Anglo-Saxon image of the dragon sitting on a barrow of gold — doing nothing but guarding it forever, sacrificing whatever life a dragon might have — is, Jeremy argues, an early cultural articulation of what happens when treasure takes over a human life. The same psychology drives Oak Island today.
Treasure guardians shift with the centuries — dragons and giants give way to fairies, then to demons, then to ghosts — not randomly but in response to what each era finds believable. A legend must sit in the zone between "obviously true" and "obviously made up" to function: too real and it's history,
Bonus Podcast: Genealogy 201 – Parish Records, Military History & the Secrets Hidden in Old Newspapers and Findmypast
13 juil. 2026
01:02:28
In this second sponsored episode with Findmypast — the follow-up to our Genealogy 101 introduction — Jonathan Thomas and Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast, go deeper into the records, techniques, and stories that turn a nervous beginner into a confident family historian. The episode covers the extraordinary richness of the 1921 census and 1939 register, why the newspaper archive is the place where ancestors stop being names and start being people, how the Industrial Revolution left its fingerprints across every family tree, the truth about name changes and spelling variations (it was almost never Ellis Island), how to avoid drowning in common surnames like Thomas or Smith, the unexpected discoveries that make genealogy so addictive — including Jen's own Cornish mail-order bride ancestor, an Irish great-great-grandfather with two arrests across two countries, and Audrey Thompson the World War II rat-catching champion — and how to connect all of it to the great currents of British history. The episode also covers parish records, military records, DNA testing, the role of offline archives, and the mindset that keeps family history a lifelong joy rather than a frustrating quest for perfection. If you haven't heard the first episode, Genealogy 101, go back and listen to that one first.
The 1921 census and 1939 register work best as a pair — together they bookend the interwar period, and used in combination they can anchor a family from living memory all the way back through the Victorian era. The 1921 is the most detailed census ever taken in England and Wales; the 1939 register is the only census-style record with full birth dates and tracks maiden-to-married name changes for women.
The 1939 register is the foundational document of the NHS — a living document updated for decades after the war, making it uniquely valuable for women's research. ARP warden and Home Guard volunteer roles recorded in its margins bring the home front of World War II vividly to life.
Less than 10% of historical records are currently available online. The other 90% live in county record offices, local archives, churches, and museums — and going to them in person, touching the original documents, is an irreplaceable experience that no screen can fully replicate.
Names were almost never changed at Ellis Island. Spelling variatio
Bonus Podcast: Genealogy 101 – Everything You Need to Start Tracing Your British & Irish Family History with Findmypast
13 juil. 2026
00:48:50
In this sponsored episode of the Anglotopia Podcast — brought to you by Findmypast, one of the world's leading family history websites — Jonathan Thomas sits down with Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast and a professional genealogist since 2010, for a warm, practical, and genuinely inspiring introduction to British and Irish family history research. Jen specializes in British social history and the British diaspora — exactly the intersection where family stories meet the great sweep of British history — and her own family tree reaches back to London in 1635. In this first of two episodes, Jen and Jonathan cover everything a complete beginner needs to get started: why family history is so addictive, how to interview living relatives before the memories are lost, what records to look for at home, the cornerstone British records (civil registration from 1837, the census from 1841, parish records, military records, and the extraordinary British Newspaper Archive), the common mistakes that trip up beginners, how to track ancestors who came to America via Canada or Australia, the surprising political dramas hidden inside census returns, and three quick wins that any listener can complete this week. A second episode, covering deeper research and connecting your family story to the wider sweep of British history, is coming soon.
Family history research is genuinely addictive — not because of the pedigree chart but because of the moment when a name becomes a person: someone with a job, a neighborhood, neighbors, a dog, and a life that intersects with historical events you already care about.
There is no such thing as a boring ancestor. Agricultural laborers, mill workers, sailors, and servants all lived lives of remarkable complexity — moving seasonally, navigating economic upheaval, living through wars and weather — and the records to explore those lives exist and are increasingly accessible online.
The golden rule of genealogy is to start with yourself and work backward one generation at a time. "Slow is fast" — taking time to verify each connection saves hours of untangling mistakes later.
Talk to your oldest or most vulnerable living relatives now, before the memories are lost. Don't ask them to recite facts — ask them to tell stories. Put a photograph in front of them. Ask about their first car, their father's job, the f
From D-Day to the Cold War: The Extraordinary Bond Between Winston Churchill and Eisenhower
10 juil. 2026
00:58:56
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Jonathan W. Jordan — New York Times bestselling military historian, Wall Street Journal book critic, and now federal judge — to discuss his richly researched new book Ike and Winston: World War, Cold War, and an Extraordinary Friendship. Spanning a quarter century from their first meeting on Christmas Eve 1941 — when Eisenhower was a little-known brigadier, and Churchill was the most famous man in the world — to Churchill's death in January 1965, Jordan traces one of the most consequential personal relationships of the 20th century. Their friendship forged through the pressure cooker of war helped launch D-Day, navigate the terrifying logic of nuclear weapons, and manage the fraught transition from British imperial power to American superpower. Jordan and Jonathan cover the early dynamic between the aristocrat and the Kansan, the strategic clashes over Anvil and Berlin, Churchill's habit of misrepresenting what Eisenhower had told him when he really wanted his way, the moral weight of decisions that killed tens of thousands, their shared love of painting, the goat on parade in Bermuda, and what these two remarkable men can still teach us about friendship, leadership, and bridging difference.
Churchill and Eisenhower first met on Christmas Eve 1941, three weeks after Pearl Harbor — but Churchill promptly forgot the encounter. In his memoirs, he incorrectly stated he first met Ike in June 1942. Churchill had also famously forgotten meeting a young assistant secretary of the Navy named Franklin Roosevelt years earlier.
Jonathan Jordan argues that Churchill's friendship with Eisenhower was ultimately more pivotal to world history than his famous friendship with FDR. Without Churchill's patronage, there is no Supreme Commander of D-Day, no NATO commander, and quite possibly no President Eisenhower.
Eisenhower had never heard a shot fired in anger when he was appointed Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean theater in 1943 — and every officer in the room, including Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, had more combat experience than he did. But Patton's observation captures what made Ike perfect for the job: no officer above the rank of colonel should know too much about tactics, or they'll interfere with the people who do.
Churchill and Eisenhower lunched together at least weekly during the run-up to D-Day, and met several other times during the week — sometimes for overnight visits at Chequers. Many of their interactions were not grand strategy but practical problem-solving: American drivers going too fast on English roads, landlords overcharging American officers for flats.
The biggest strategic clashes were over Anvil (the Allied landing in southern France, which Churchill w
Stonehenge, Druids & Folk Horror: The Myths Behind Britain’s Standing Stones With Paul Robichaud
03 juil. 2026
00:52:07
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Professor Paul Robichaud — Professor of English at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut — to discuss his remarkable new book, Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, published by Reaktion Books on July 6th. Paul is not an archaeologist but a literary scholar, and his book takes a completely different approach to prehistoric monuments: rather than asking who built them or how, he asks what stories people have told about them across the centuries — and what those stories reveal about us. From the earliest Greek account of a possible spherical temple on a northern island (possibly Callanish), through Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century account of Merlin flying Stonehenge from Ireland, through the antiquarian fantasies of Inigo Jones (who decided Stonehenge was Roman and helpfully corrected its geometry to fit) and William Stukeley (who invented the Druid connection that has never entirely gone away), through the Romantics — Wordsworth's visions of human sacrifice, Blake's prophetic paintings, Turner's atmospheric canvases — to the 1970s counterculture, folk horror films, and our own climate-anxious present, the book traces how five millennia of imagining these ancient places tells us as much about the people doing the imagining as it does about the stones themselves. Jonathan and Paul also share their personal favorite prehistoric sites, including Avebury, Wayland Smithy, and — Jonathan's top pick — Castlerigg in Cumbria.
The word "prehistoric" didn't exist until the mid-19th century. For most of human history, people encountering these monuments had no framework for understanding them as ancient — they were simply there, part of the landscape, and the stories told about them reflected whatever worldview the storyteller brought: giants, biblical patriarchs, Roman engineers, druid priests, or earth energies.
Stonehenge is unique among stone circles not because of its age or size but because of its distinctive architecture — upright stones with lintels resting on mortise-and-tenon joints, clearly intentional and clearly extraordinary. Its location on a relatively populated southern English plain also meant it was seen by far more people across the centuries than monuments in Wales or the Outer Hebrides.
The Ston
BONUS EPISODE: What’s On in London in July 2026: America 250, Exhibitions, Events & Heat Wave Survival Tips, What To See and Do
30 juin 2026
00:45:12
In this monthly bonus episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas returns with the July edition of What's On in London — a complete rundown of everything worth seeing and doing in the city this month. July is London at its most extroverted: Wimbledon fever, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, British Summertime at Hyde Park, open-air cinema across the city, and a remarkable cluster of new exhibitions opening across the major galleries. Particularly special this month are three America 250 exhibitions viewing the American Revolution from the British side — at the National Archives, the British Museum, and Benjamin Franklin's only surviving house anywhere in the world, just around the corner from Trafalgar Square. Jonathan also covers the ongoing blockbusters already running from June, gives an honest assessment of London's July heat wave (currently under a red weather warning), shares a firsthand account from an Anglotopia friend who was in the city during the worst of it, and walks through the practical survival tips that will make your summer visit not just manageable but genuinely wonderful.
Return to Gold Hill – The Hovis Hill Cottage You Can Rent — Melanie Fontana on Restoring Button Cottage
26 juin 2026
00:58:44
In this deeply personal episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas makes a big announcement — he and Mrs. Anglotopia are returning to Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, the place that inspired Anglotopia itself. As a teenager in Indiana, Jonathan hung a poster of Gold Hill on his bedroom wall and dreamed of going there; it became the reason he fell in love with Britain. After nearly 10 years away, he and Jackie are returning to stay in Button Cottage — a 400-year-old property sitting right on the famous cobbles, painstakingly restored by its owner Melanie Fontana over three years. Jonathan sits down with Melanie to hear the full story: how she and her partner fell in love with Gold Hill on an Easter weekend, found the cottage for sale on their phones, and spent three years stripping away decades of 1970s "improvements" — concrete floors, bitumen tar, plasterboard, blocked fireplaces — to reveal 450-year-old beams, Victorian elm floorboards, a fossil in the grouting, and one of the most atmospheric interiors in Dorset. The episode also covers the history of Shaftesbury, the legacy of the Ridley Scott Hovis advertisement, what it means to restore a Grade II listed building, and why Gold Hill remains one of the most unchanged streets in England.
Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset — the steep cobbled lane made famous by Ridley Scott's 1970s Hovis bread advertisement — is the place that inspired Jonathan to visit Britain as a teenager and directly led to the founding of Anglotopia. Jonathan and Jackie are returning to stay on the hill for the first time in nearly 10 years.
Button Cottage is a genuine 400-year-old property sitting directly on the cobbles of Gold Hill, restored from near-dereliction to authentic period condition by Melanie Fontana and her partner over three years — and it is available to rent on Airbnb.
The cottage was comprehensively ruined in the 1970s: beams were covered with plasterboard, the fireplace was blocked and converted to gas, floors were concreted over, and the entire structure was tanked with bitumen tar — stopping the building from "breathing" and trapping damp inside the walls for decades.
Stripping back the 1970s layers revealed 450-year-old oak beams still filled with ancient woodworm holes, Victorian elm floorboards underneath later chipboard, layers of wallpaper from the 1950s through the 1980s peeled from the fireplace wall, and a fossil discovered by hand with a pickaxe when the concrete floor was removed — now set into the grouting between the limestone floor tiles.
Restoring a Grade II listed building requires using period-appropriate materials throughout: lime plaster (not modern gypsum), limewash or breathable paint, reclaimed stone, and kiln-dried wood for the fireplace. Melan
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 100 – Britain, America & Chicago: A Conversation with His Majesty’s Consul General Richard Hyde
19 juin 2026
00:41:52
In this special on-location episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, recorded at the Chicago History Museum on the occasion of His Majesty the King's official birthday, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Richard Hyde — His Majesty's Consul General in Chicago and the senior British diplomatic representative across 14 states in the American Midwest. Speaking just before the British Consulate's King's Birthday Garden Party, Richard explains what a Consul General actually does, why Britain doesn't have a National Day, how he approaches representing modern Britain to the heartland of America, and what King Charles's address to a joint session of Congress meant for the Special Relationship. The conversation also uncovers a remarkable piece of Anglo-Chicago history: after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Queen Victoria and 8,000 British donors — including Disraeli, Tennyson, and John Stuart Mill — sent books to Chicago, directly founding the Chicago Public Library. Plus: the Beatles, Frank Lloyd Wright's Welsh roots, Abraham Lincoln's North Wales ancestry, and why Chicago is Richard's favorite city in the world.
Note: We had originally planned to do a 100th Q&A for our 100th episode, but a much bigger opportunity arose last week, which we thought was more fitting. We'll do the Q&A soon!
The United Kingdom is one of the only countries in the world without an official National Day — which is why British consulates abroad use the King's official birthday in June as their annual celebration, conveniently timed to coincide with Trooping the Colour.
Richard Hyde covers 14 American states as Consul General — roughly 25% of the entire United States — including 105 members of the House of Representatives and 28 senators, making the Midwest a critical region for understanding where American politics is heading.
After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Queen Victoria personally led a donation drive that saw 8,000 British donors — including Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and John Stuart Mill — send books to Chicago, directly founding the Chicago Public Library. Victoria's personally signed copy of a biography of Prince Albert is still in the library's special collection.
King Charles's address to a joint session of Congress during his America 250 visit was, in Richard's assessment, a masterclass in diplomatic communication — speaking to shared values rather than political divisions and reminding both nations of the deep historical thread connecting Magna Carta to the US Constitution.
Frank Lloyd Wright's family were Welsh; Abraham Lincoln's great-great-grandfather came fro
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 99 – Churchill’s Secret Life as a Painter — Dr. Lucy Davis on a Once-in-a-Lifetime Exhibition at Wallace Collection
12 juin 2026
00:54:09
Did you know that in addition to saving the free world, Churchill was also an accomplished painter? In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Dr. Lucy Davis — curator of paintings at the Wallace Collection in London and co-curator of Winston Churchill the Painter, the first major retrospective of Churchill's art in over 60 years and the first substantial UK exhibition devoted to his paintings since his death in 1965. The exhibition brings together nearly 60 works, roughly half from private collections rarely accessible to the public, and traces the full arc of Churchill's artistic life: from the tentative canvases he made during the darkest moment of his World War I career, through the luminous Mediterranean harbors and Moroccan cityscapes of his mature period, to the bold late works of a man who found in painting one of the greatest solaces of his life. Lucy walks Jonathan through the story of how Churchill came to paint, the three major artists who shaped his style — John Lavery, Walter Sickert, and William Nicholson — the single painting he made during World War II, the extraordinary Hallmark Cards world tour, and why the Wallace Collection is the perfect home for this once-in-a-lifetime show. The exhibition runs until November 29, 2026. Book your tickets now.
Lucy is very grateful to her colleagues at Hallmark Cards, Inc. for their research into the World Tour of Churchill's paintings, which she has referenced in this podcast.
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 98 – Best British History Books with Brendan Dowd from the History Nerds United Podcast
05 juin 2026
01:17:58
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Brendan Dowd — West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran, government consultant, and host of History Nerds United, one of the most respected history book podcasts in the business with over 220 episodes — for a pure, unfiltered book nerd conversation. Both hosts came with a stack of their favorite British history books and took turns sharing their picks, debating the merits, going gloriously off-topic about Darkest Hour, the new Wuthering Heights film, Bridgerton, and Dan Jones's upcoming castles book, and building what amounts to a British history reading list that will keep you busy for years. Between them, Jonathan and Brendan recommend over 20 books spanning Alfred the Great, the Tudors, the Regency, Victorian London, World War II, Thatcher, the Iranian Embassy Siege, and the hidden history of English wolves — plus a peek at what's sitting on each of their TBR piles right now.
BONUS EPISODE: What’s on in London in June 2026, Royal Events, Exhibitions, Theatre, Heatwave Travel Tips
04 juin 2026
00:35:24
In this special bonus episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas launches an experimental new monthly format: a London events guide covering what's actually on in the city this month. June is arguably London's finest month — 16 to 17 hours of daylight, the longest evenings of the year, and an events calendar absolutely bursting at the seams. Jonathan walks through everything worth knowing about June in London: the major royal events including Trooping the Colour and Royal Ascot, the blockbuster summer exhibitions at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the Royal Academy, the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A, and more, plus what's on in London theater from Shakespeare's Globe to the West End, live music at Wembley and the Roundhouse, and practical tips for surviving — and thriving in — a London heat wave. If this episode proves popular, Jonathan will make it a monthly fixture. Let him know what you think in the comments.
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 97 – City of Dreaming Spires – The Anglotopia Guide to Oxford – Travel, Tips, and Tricks
29 mai 2026
01:11:02
In this solo episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas delivers his definitive guide to Oxford — his favorite city in England outside of London and the subject of his guidebook 101 Oxford Travel Tips and Tricks. From the bleary-eyed chaos of his first visit in 2012 with an angry 16-month-old and the Mini Cooper factory ring road at midnight, to two stays as a student on the Oxford Experience program, Jonathan brings nearly 15 years of personal history with the city to bear on a comprehensive, enthusiastic, and practically useful travel guide. The episode covers how to get there, how long to stay, the Oxford Experience immersive student program, the colleges you must see, the Bodleian Library's remarkable layers, the essential museums, the unrivaled bookstore scene led by Blackwell's and its famous five-mile Norrington Room, Oxford's extraordinary literary connections from Lewis Carroll to Tolkien to Philip Pullman, the day trips that demand your time — including Blenheim Palace and the Cotswolds — and the practical tips that will make your visit infinitely more enjoyable.
Oxford is Jonathan's favourite city in England outside London — and most Americans either skip it or see it in a rushed half-day bus tour that barely scratches the surface. Two days minimum is the right call; three is better. Oxford is just 60 miles and 40-45 minutes by direct train from London Paddington, making it one of the easiest day trips or overnights in Britain — and you can also get there direct by bus from Heathrow without going into London at all.
The Oxford Experience — a residential immersive programme at Christchurch offering one-week courses for adults in July and August — is Jonathan's single highest recommendation for anyone who wants to truly inhabit the city. Courses cost £1,500–£2,000 all-in and include room, board, lectures, and excursions; book in November when the schedule is released as
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 96 – Churchill the Writer – Gary Stiles on My Early Life and the Craft Behind the Legend
22 mai 2026
01:05:29
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Dr. Gary L. Stiles — physician, medical researcher, former Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Research at Duke University, and lifelong Churchill scholar — to discuss his new book A Prelude to Immortality, published by Unicorn Publishing Group. Gary's book is the definitive study of Churchill's most beloved work, My Early Life — his only autobiography, written in 1930 when Churchill was in his mid-fifties, and never out of print in nearly a century. Drawing on previously unpublished letters from the Churchill Archives, Gary walks Jonathan through the five specific reasons Churchill wrote the book, the remarkable ambulatory dictation process by which he composed it, the POW escape from the Boers that made him internationally famous, the strategic gifting of inscribed copies to over 100 influencers including T.E. Lawrence, Churchill's Nobel Prize for Literature and his complicated feelings about it, and the surprisingly human, vulnerable side of Churchill that his nanny shaped and that the history books rarely capture. The episode closes with a Churchill lightning round — favorite quotes, anecdotes, books and films — including the extraordinary story of Churchill reciting Hamlet from memory alongside Richard Burton at the Old Vic.
My Early Life, published in 1930 when Churchill was 55, is his only autobiography — covering only the first 27 years of his life — and has never gone out of print in nearly a century. It was also the book most prominently cited when Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.
Churchill wrote My Early Life for five specific reasons: to reinvigorate his public persona as the wilderness years approached; to describe the Victorian era that formed him; to tell his story in his own voice for posterity; to generate desperately needed income; and to inspire a post-WWI generation he felt was paralyzed by fear and disengagement.
Churchill's writing method was "ambulatory dictation" — he would pace his library at Chartwell, mumbling and testing sentences aloud for cadence, rhythm, and word sound, while secretaries stood ready to transcribe. He never wrote My Early Life by hand; every word was dictated.
The book is deliberately written in the voice of Churchill at the age of each event — as a frightened schoolboy, a cavalry officer, an escaped prisoner of war — not as a 55-year-old man looking back. This was a conscious literary choice to make readers feel what he felt, not intellectualize it.
Churchill's escape from a Boer prisoner of war camp in 1899 — a 400-mile solo journey through hostile territory — was the pivotal moment that made him internationally fa
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 95 – Lights, Camera, Britain: A Film Scholar on What Makes British Cinema So Distinctively British
15 mai 2026
01:05:35
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Spencer Murphy — Assistant Professor in Media and Communications at Coventry University, specialist in film theory and cross-cultural cinema, and founder of the Coventry East Asian Film Society — for a wide-ranging, enthusiastic, and genuinely entertaining conversation about British film. What is a British film, exactly? Is it about the money, the cast, the crew, the story, or the setting? How does class permeate almost every British film ever made, from Ealing comedies to Harry Potter? Why does the British landscape function as a character in its own right? And why do Americans connect so deeply with British cinema when its sensibility — restrained, ironic, self-deprecating — is so different from Hollywood's? Jonathan and Spencer also trade their top five British films each, debate the new Wuthering Heights adaptation (neither of them liked it), and discuss why British cinema's literary inheritance is both its greatest strength and, sometimes, its creative limitation.
Defining what constitutes a British film is genuinely one of the hardest questions in film studies — it can't be reduced to funding source, shooting location, cast, or director alone. Both Jonathan and Spencer agree the most satisfying answer involves who is behind the artistic vision, but even that gets complicated fast.
The "Mary Poppins test" is Spencer's shorthand for films that feel very British on the surface but aren't authentically so — the tourist's vision of Britain, the chocolate-box version that meets an expectation rather than reflecting a reality.
British film has a deep and complicated two-way relationship with how Britain represents itself to tourists — Hollywood's vision of Britain shapes what visitors expect, and British places have increasingly adapted to meet those expectations, from Harry Potter shops in York's Shambles to the way villages brand themselves around filming locations.
Class is the single most persistent thread running through British cinema across every decade and genre — from Ealing comedies to Downton Abbey to Trainspotting — and Spencer argues it's almost impossible to think of a major British film that isn't, consciously or not, about the class system.
British cinema's literary inheritance — the endless cycle of Jane Austen, Brontë, and Robin Hood adaptations — is both a commercial lifeline and a creative constraint. Spencer sees it as potentially reducing the space for new voices and contemporary stories, though he acknowledges the money it generates can fund smaller, more singular films.
The British landscape is not just a setting in British cinema — it functions as a character, carrying regional pride and identity in a way that Hollywood rarely matches. Spencer notes that British loca
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 94 – The Tudor Podcast Pioneer – Heather Teysko on Obsession, Community & TudorCon 2026
01 mai 2026
00:44:26
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Heather Teysko — host of the Renaissance English History Podcast, founder of TudorCon, and one of the true pioneers of independent history podcasting. Heather started her podcast back in 2009 on a Labor Day weekend whim, with a cheap microphone and no idea how to edit audio, and has since built it into one of the longest-continuously-running independent history podcasts in the world, alongside a book community, online summits, a Tudor planner, and TudorCon — the world's first Tudor history convention, now in its seventh year. Jonathan and Heather swap stories about falling in love with Britain, building history audiences online, resisting the shiny lure of algorithm-chasing, and why genuine passion is the only thing that makes any of this work. They also dig into TudorCon 2026 — taking place October 23rd–25th at the extraordinary Agecroft Hall in Richmond, Virginia, a genuine 15th-century English manor house that was disassembled and shipped to America piece by piece — where Anglotopia is proud to be a sponsor.
Anglotopia Listeners can use the code ANGLOTOPIA to get 15% off the Tudorcon ticket price or Tudorcon from home.
Heather Teysko launched the Renaissance English History Podcast in 2009 — the only Tudor history podcast in existence at the time — and very nearly canceled it in 2013 when she discovered it was getting 40,000 downloads a month without her having posted a new episode in nearly a year.
The spark for Heather's Tudor obsession was singing William Byrd's Ave Verum Corpus in a high school choir and realising that Byrd was writing secret Catholic music in Latin while serving Elizabeth I's Protestant court — a teenage existential crisis that never really ended.
TudorCon, which began as an online summit and went in-person in 2019, is now expanding significantly for 2026 — moving from a single-track event at Agecroft Hall to a multi-track conference with five classrooms and a reception hall, thanks to a new partnership with Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia.
Agecroft Hall is a genuine 15th-century Lancashire manor house that was purchased, disassembled stone by stone, and shipped to Richmond, Virginia in the 1920s by a wealthy tobacco entrepreneur who wanted to live in an authentic English manor — including the original medieval glass, which had to be transported separately by road to avoid cracking.
TudorCon is deliberately designed to sit between an academic co
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 93 – 600 Years in One House – Magnus Throckmorton on Coughton Court & Its Extraordinary History
24 avr. 2026
00:42:53
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Magnus Birch Throckmorton, the latest custodian of Coughton Court — a Tudor manor house in Warwickshire that has been home to the Throckmorton family for over 600 years. Coughton Court is one of England's most historically charged houses: its great gatehouse was built during the reign of Henry VIII, its walls conceal a double priest hole from the Reformation, and on the night the Gunpowder Plot collapsed in 1605, it was the very house where the plotters' families waited for news. Magnus walks Jonathan through six centuries of survival, faith, and family — from Sir George Throckmorton's audacious confrontation with Henry VIII over Anne Boleyn's marriage, to the sacking of the house during the English Civil War, to the remarkable women of Coughton who kept it alive through every crisis. Magnus also shares what it's like to raise his young children in this living, breathing house, what he and his wife Imogen have introduced since taking over direct management in March 2026, and why American Anglophiles should make Coughton a priority stop on any Midlands itinerary.
The Throckmorton family has lived at Coughton Court since 1409 — predating Columbus's voyage to America — making it one of the longest unbroken family occupancies of any historic house in England.
Sir George Throckmorton, who built the great gatehouse around 1530, was audacious enough to confront Henry VIII directly over his marriage to Anne Boleyn — and somehow survived by throwing himself on the king's mercy.
Coughton Court has a double priest hole: a decoy chamber above a hidden second chamber, designed so that searchers would find the first and assume it empty, never discovering the one below.
The Throckmorton family were connected to — but not directly implicated in — the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The plotters' wives and Father Garnet waited at Coughton for news of whether the plan had succeeded or failed.
During the English Civil War, Coughton was sacked and plundered, leaving it in a state of ruin that took generations to rebuild.
Among the most remarkable objects in the house are a chemise believed to have been worn by Mary Queen of Scots at her execution in 1587, and a cape attributed to Catherine of Aragon and her ladies-in-waiting.
The award-winning gardens were designed from scratch in 1991 by Magnus's mother for his grandmother, including a rose labyrinth deliberately full of dead ends, designed to slow visitors down and make them appreciate the colours and scents.
Since taking over direct management from the National Trust in March 2026, Magnus and Imogen have introduced a café using hyper-local producers, a charity bookshop, artist residencies, workshops from willow weaving to botanical pottery, Tai Chi, yoga, a monthly supper club, and a summer programme of outdoor theatre.
Coughton is just 20 minutes from Stratford-upon-Avon and easily reachable from the Cotswolds — making it a natural addition to any Shakespeare Country itinerary.
The property includes two churches — one
We Want Your Questions about Britain for our 100th Episode Q&A
20 avr. 2026
00:02:36
A quick but exciting announcement from Jonathan: the Anglotopia Podcast is approaching its 100th episode, and to celebrate, Jonathan and Jackie — Mrs. Anglotopia herself — are sitting down together for a special no-script, no-agenda Q&A episode, just like they did for Episode 50. Anything goes: the history of Anglotopia, upcoming trips, favorite corners of Britain, TV recommendations, the monarchy, British culture — you name it. Submit your questions now using the link in the show notes, or drop them in the comments on here, YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook. Don't wait — they're recording soon!
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 92 – Tudor 101 – A Complete Crash Course in England’s Most Dramatic Dynasty With Sarah Morris
17 avr. 2026
01:15:12
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Sarah Morris — creator of the Tudor Travel Guide, author of multiple Tudor books, including her novel about Anne Boleyn, and co-founder of Simply Tudor Tours — for a sweeping, entertaining, and deeply informative crash course in Tudor Britain. Calling it Tudor 101, Jonathan and Sarah walk through the full arc of the dynasty: from the unlikely origins of Henry VII emerging from exile to win the crown at Bosworth, through the world-altering reign of Henry VIII and the break with Rome, the short and turbulent reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, and the remarkable story of Elizabeth I and how she turned vulnerability into a kind of genius. Along the way, they tackle the most misunderstood Tudor wife, untangle the confusing web of Marys in the family tree, explain the real-world devastation of the dissolution of the monasteries, and map out the social hierarchy of Tudor England from vagabonds to dukes. Sarah also shares her essential must-visit Tudor sites for American Anglophiles, gives insider tips on getting the most from historic houses and ruins, makes a passionate case for the Mary Rose Museum, and reveals which controversial Tudor drama she secretly loves — and why it launched her writing career.
The Tudor dynasty was a genuinely unlikely outcome — Henry VII spent 12 years in exile before winning the crown at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, and his claim
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 91 – Roundabouts, Speed Cameras & Country Lanes – Driving in Britain Explained With a Retired UK Traffic Cop
10 avr. 2026
01:15:28
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Ben Pearson — retired West Yorkshire Police traffic officer, Police Interceptors TV veteran, bestselling author, and mental health advocate — for the ultimate American's guide to driving in the UK. Ben spent 19 years on one of Britain's elite roads policing units, handling high-speed pursuits, fatal collisions, and serious organized crime, and he brings that expertise to bear on every question American drivers have about navigating Britain's roads. The pair cover the most common mistakes tourists make, how roundabouts actually work (and why signaling is advisory, not legally binding), the truth about speed cameras and the 10% rule, how the UK's "ghost licence" system means your speeding history follows you every time you return to Britain, what to do if you're stopped by police, how to handle narrow country lanes without panic, and why you should never — ever — touch your phone while driving. Ben also opens up about his diagnosis with complex PTSD after 19 years on the front line, the Code Zero mental health app he co-created for emergency service workers, and his life since leaving the force.
Always carry your driving licence and documents when driving in the UK — police can't issue a ticket without ID, which means you may be summoned to court instead, and non-compliance complicates everything significantly.
UK speed limits are a maximum, not a target. The national speed limit sign (white circle with a diagonal black line) means 70mph on motorways and dual carriageways, but drops to 60mph on single carriageway roads — and vans have different limits again.
Speed cameras allow a 10% plus two mph tolerance due to speedometer variance — but this is not a green light to speed, and a traffic officer can still stop and deal with you regardless.
The UK operates a "ghost licence" system for foreign visitors — a record that accumulates points each time you're caught. Hit 12 points across multiple visits and you can be disqualified from driving in the UK and potentially arrested on your next trip.
Roundabout rule: give way to traffic from your right, choose your lane based on your exit (left lane for left, middle for straight on, right lane for right), and always indicate. But treat all indicators as advisory — never assume another driver will follow through on their signal.
Narrow country lanes require a completely different mindset to American roads — go slower than you think you need to, never cut corners, hug the left kerb line, and if in doubt, pull over and wait. No one will be angry with you for being cautious.
Never touch your phone while driving in the UK — the law is extremely strict, members of the public can film and report you (as Cycling Mikey does in London), and the consequences include points, fines, and potential prosecution.
If you're stopped by a UK police officer, stay in your car, be calm and polite, and have your documents ready. British
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 90 – The Real Yorkshire – A Blue Badge Guide’s Insider Guide to England’s Biggest County
03 avr. 2026
00:56:31
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Tim Barber, Yorkshire Blue Badge guide and founder of Real Yorkshire Tours, for an in-depth traveler's guide to one of England's most captivating and varied regions. Tim brings over a decade of guiding experience and a background in geography, geology, and marketing to the conversation, explaining why Yorkshire — at 6,000 square miles — deserves far more than a single day stopover between London and Edinburgh. The pair cover everything from the dramatic differences between the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors, to the best way to experience York Minster, to why the Yorkshire Wolds is the region's best-kept secret. Tim also unpacks his hugely popular All Creatures Great and Small filming locations tour, explains what the Blue Badge qualification actually means for travelers, shares his personal recommendations for how many days to spend and where to stay, and offers practical advice for Americans planning their first Yorkshire adventure — including the one language misunderstanding that left him without his lunch.
The Blue Badge is the gold standard qualification for British tour guides — an 18-month course equivalent to a foundation degree, requiring practical exams, written tests, and specialist site accreditations. Always look for it when booking a guide.
Yorkshire is England's largest region at 6,000 square miles, with more landscape variety than almost anywhere else in the country — from wild Pennine moorland and rolling Dales to a hundred miles of coastline and the little-known chalk uplands of the Yorkshire Wolds.
If you only have one day in the countryside, Tim recommends the Yorkshire Dales over the North York Moors — not because the Moors aren't spectacular, but because the Dales offer slightly more varied scenery and you'll still get a taste of moorland driving over the tops.
York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe and contains 65% of all medieval stained glass in England — saved during the Civil War by a Yorkshireman who threatened his troops with death if they touched it.
The All Creatures Great and Small new series has overtaken Downton Abbey in US viewing figures on PBS Masterpiece — and Tim's filming locations tour takes in Grassington (Darrowby), Helen's Farm, the church where James and Helen married, and more.
The Yorkshire Wolds — a chalk upland area east of York — is Tim's top hidden gem recommendation: barely known even to locals, with picture-postcard villages, chalk streams, and stunni
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 89 – Inside the Brontë Parsonage – The Museum, the Moors & the Wuthering Heights Moment
27 mars 2026
00:36:40
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Mia Ferullo, Digital Engagement Officer, and Sam, Programme Officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire — and co-hosts of the museum's own acclaimed podcast, Behind the Glass: A Parsonage Podcast. Together they explore what makes the Parsonage one of Britain's most atmospheric and emotionally resonant literary destinations, from the world's largest collection of Brontë artefacts to the wild moorland that inspired the novels themselves. The conversation spans the remarkable story of three sisters who published against the odds under male pseudonyms, the often-overlooked legacy of Anne Brontë and patriarch Patrick Brontë, the concept and standout episodes of Behind the Glass, and the swirling cultural moment around Emerald Fennell's new big-screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Mia and Sam also share practical advice for American Anglophiles planning their first visit to Haworth, including the best time of year to go and how to get there.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth is home to the world's largest collection of Brontë artefacts, including handwritten manuscripts, first editions, writing desks, and extraordinary miniature books the sisters made as children.
Almost everything on display in the Parsonage is genuine Brontë furniture and objects — not set dressing — making it one of the most authentically preserved literary homes in Britain.
The Brontë sisters published their novels under male pseudonyms not just for anonymity, but to avoid the prejudice that would have greeted female authors — and the books were still considered shocking and coarse when they appeared.
Anne Brontë is widely regarded as the most overlooked of the three sisters, lacking the pop culture adaptations and name recognition that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have accumulated over generations.
Patrick Brontë, often cast as a footnote or even a villain in the family story, played a significant role in his daughters' development — educating them in the classics and sparking their imaginative lives by bringing home a set of toy soldiers for Branwell.
Behind the Glass: A Parsonage Podcast invites guests to choose a single object from the collection as a jumping-off point, allowing deep dives into rarely seen items — including Charlotte's tea cosy and its fascinating gendered history.
Emerald Fennell's new Wuthering Heights film has driven a surge of visitors to the museum, with people noting in the visitor book that the film brought them to Haworth for the first time.
Controversy around Wuthering Heights is nothing new — the original 1847 novel was condemned as vulgar and depraved by contemporary reviewers, making modern critical debate very much in keeping with Emily Brontë's legacy.
A new television adaptation of Jane Eyre has been announced, which the museum is already looking ahead to as potentially another major cultural moment.
August is the best month to visit Haworth when the heather is in full purple bloom on the moors, though autumn's fog and mist give the village
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 88 – Castles, Crime & Cake – A Retired British Copper’s Accidental Guide to History
20 mars 2026
00:44:34
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, host Jonathan Thomas sits down with retired British police officer, military veteran, and author John Donoghue to discuss his remarkable journey from the Royal Navy and British Army to 40 years in the police — and then, in retirement, accidentally becoming a castle guide at Pembroke Castle in Wales. John's new book, *Castles, Crime and Cake: A Policeman's Accidental Guide to History*, blends laugh-out-loud stories from the beat with medieval history, bizarre forgotten British laws, and surprisingly profound reflections on finding purpose in later life. Along the way, Jonathan and John explore how British policing differs from American policing, the absurdity of some 999 emergency calls, what it means to police without firearms, the infamous Salmon Act of 1986, and the ghost of a murderous monkey haunting a Welsh castle.
John Donoghue served in the Royal Navy, British Army, and police across a 40-year career before retiring to become an accidental castle guide.
British police operate without firearms in most situations, relying instead on communication, humor, and patience to defuse confrontations.
The UK has 43 regional police forces, each covering a defined geographic area and handling all crimes within it — unlike America's layered federal, state, and local system.
"Policing by consent" means British officers see themselves as part of the community, earning authority through trust rather than force.
The 999 emergency line receives some truly baffling calls — including reports of stolen snowmen, dogs looking at people funny, and complaints about McDonald's breakfast hours.
John accidentally became a Pembroke Castle guide after sending a CV that included a photo of his dog eating birthday cake — and still got the job.
The Obscure Crime Preservation Society (membership: two, including Jonathan) was founded to highlight Britain's forgotten and bizarre laws still on the statute books.
The Salmon Act of 1986 makes it illegal to handle a salmon in suspicious circumstances — and John tried to get himself arrested under it.
Police humor and dark comedy are genuine coping mechanisms for officers exposed to high levels of trauma and PTSD.
The biggest life lesson John took from policing: approach everything with a sense of humor — it won't always work, but it's the best tool you have.
Soundbites
"I could either go to university like my brothers had, or do something more exciting. For me it was a choice between more schoolwork or a life of adventure — so I chose the latter." — John on why he joined the Royal Navy at 18.
"I thought, what other job would you have where a dog comes into the room and just does a poo and nobody says a word? So I thought, I've got to start writing these stories down." — John on the incident that convinced him to write his police memoirs.
"I've been punched, kicked, had broken bones, been stabbed in the face, put in hospital. That's the downside — but we don't carry guns because our public don't carry guns." — John on the realities of unarmed polici
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 87 – How to Walk Hadrian’s Wall – Tips from the Man Who’s Done Every National Trail
13 mars 2026
00:44:25
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas welcomes back photographer and adventurer Quintin Lake to discuss the Hadrian's Wall National Trail. They explore Quintin's experiences walking the trail, its historical significance, the unique landscapes, and the challenges of photography along the route. The conversation also touches on memorable moments, iconic sites, and practical advice for those planning to walk the trail themselves.
Quintin Lake has walked all 16 of Britain's national trails.
Hadrian's Wall is a unique trail steeped in Roman history.
The trail offers a rich experience with museums and historical sites.
Walking the trail can be both contemplative and physically challenging.
The landscape varies from flat agricultural land to rugged moorland.
Photography along the wall requires attention to light and distance.
The best time for photography is during golden hours.
Planning for resupply is crucial when walking the trail.
Memorable moments often come from unexpected encounters with history.
The experience of walking connects you to the past in profound ways.
Soundbites
"It's more like walking an idea than walking a trail. You're in the Roman world from beginning to end and that's really exciting." — Quintin on what makes Hadrian's Wall unique among all 16 national trails.
"I kind of thought it'd be a bunch of old stones and after half a day I would have had enough. But actually it was so rich and deep and they're all different. It's way more fascinating than I thought." — Quintin on being surprised by the wall's depth.
"There were these huge blocks of stone with Roman drill holes where they've tried to wedge them apart. And they've clearly given up. That was the moment I felt most connected to history on the journey." — Quintin on finding abandoned Roman quarrying at Limestone Corner.
"The notes they're writing home were things like, 'Please send me new socks.' It's very domestic stuff — saying how boring it is, how wet it is. They're looking forward to seeing their wives." — Quintin on the Vindolanda tablets.
"I remember as a young man seeing it as quite a small tree and then seeing it again as a full tree. It's like a measure of one's own
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 86: Codebreakers, Spies, and Secrets – The Truth About Bletchley Park and Alan Turing
06 mars 2026
01:00:53
This episode of the Anglotopia Podcast delves into the hidden history of Bletchley Park, exploring its origins, growth, and the significant role it played during World War II. Dr. Chris Smith joins us to discuss the secrecy surrounding the operations, the organizational structure, and the cryptanalysis processes that led to the breaking of the Enigma code. The discussion also highlights the impact of Bletchley Park's intelligence on military operations, the social dynamics and gender roles within the workforce, and the legacy of this crucial establishment in British history. We also unpack some of the myths around Bletchley Park, Alan Turing, and the development of the first computers.
Bletchley Park grew rapidly due to the demands of war.
The workforce at Bletchley Park was predominantly women.
Secrecy was maintained through strict measures and the Official Secrets Act.
Bletchley Park's structure was organized into specialized huts for efficiency.
The Enigma machine was a complex cipher system with vulnerabilities.
Intelligence from Bletchley Park significantly influenced military strategies.
Alan Turing's contributions were pivotal but not the sole focus of Bletchley Park's success.
The legacy of Bletchley Park continues to be relevant in discussions of intelligence and secrecy.
Social dynamics at Bletchley Park reflected broader class and gender issues in British society.
Bletchley Park is now a museum, preserving its history and contributions.
Sound Bites
"Churchill says that Bletchley is his goose which lays these golden eggs and never cackles. Well, actually some of them did cackle, but on the whole it's a remarkable feat that they kept it as secret as they did." — Chris on the limits of wartime secrecy.
"If you wanted to produce an accurate movie about Bletchley Park, it would probably be a woman working on a typewriter for ten hours a day. That doesn't produce a very interesting narrative for the audience." — Chris on Hollywood vs. reality.
"159 quintillion possible settings. If you tried to brute force this one letter at a time, that period of time is longer in seconds than the universe has existed." — Chris on the power of Enigma.
"Enigma can never encipher a letter into itself. You can press A 26 times and you'll never get A again. That's an inherent weakness." — Chris on how the unbreakable code was broken.
"The person who sort of handed them the Official Secrets Act had a gun on the table. The implication was that if you break this secret, this could carry the death penalty." — Chris on how secrecy was enforced.
"The British basically sell Enigma machines to other countries after the war but
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 85 – The Poles – The Royal Family Henry VIII Tried to Erase With Adam Pennington
27 févr. 2026
00:55:51
In this engaging conversation, Adam Pennington, a Tudor and Plantagenet historian, shares his journey from a corporate media consultant to a full-time historian. He discusses his passion for Tudor history, particularly the story of Margaret Pole and her family's tumultuous relationship with Henry VIII. The conversation delves into the complexities of the Exeter Conspiracy, the brutal execution of Margaret Pole, and the significance of the Plantagenet bloodline. Adam also highlights his work with Simply Tudor Tours, aiming to bring history to life through immersive experiences. He concludes with insights into his upcoming projects, including a book on royal consorts.
Margaret Pole was a significant historical figure.
The Tudor claim to the throne was tenuous.
The Exeter Conspiracy involved complex family dynamics.
Margaret Pole's execution was a tragic event.
Reginald Pole survived as a key figure.
Simply Tudor Tours aims to make history accessible.
The role of consorts in history is often overlooked.
Adam's upcoming projects will explore royal history.
Soundbites
"The House of Tudor was one which should never have been, let alone taken the throne." — Adam on how tenuous the Tudor claim really was.
"Margaret was a niece in the male line of two of England's kings. She had a lot of royal blood, and that royal blood was passed on to her children." — Adam introducing Margaret Pole.
"Anne Boleyn has become the poster girl of the 16th century for many Tudor history fans. For me, it was the film Anne of a Thousand Days that really introduced me to her." — Adam on his gateway into Tudor history.
"He compared Henry VIII to ancient dictators like Caligula and Nero. He accused him of being worse than a rotting beast. Understandably, this did not go down well." — Adam on Reginald Pole's blistering attack on the king.
"They can find absolutely nothing against Margaret Pole. She absolutely nails it. But even so, an act of attainder is passed against her." — Adam on the injustice of Margaret's conviction.
"She's woken on the morning of the 27th of May 1541 and told, 'You're to die within the hour.' It was so rushed that there hadn't been a scaffold prepared." — Adam on Margaret Pole's brutal end.
"Even thinking about the King's death made you guilty of high treason. So speaking of the King's death was categorically treason." — Adam on the 1534 T
Anglotopia Podcast: Bonus Episode – Don’t Make These Expensive Mistakes Traveling to Britain
24 févr. 2026
00:40:56
After 25 years and roughly 25 trips across the Atlantic — including one where he ran out of money and had to beg his parents from a London phone box and another that ended with a $1,200 phone bill — Jonathan Thomas has learned how to travel Britain without going broke. In this special bonus episode, he introduces the completely rewritten third edition of 101 Budget Britain Travel Tips, walks through what's new (including 30–40 tips that have never been in the book before), and reads 10 of his favorite tips covering everything from the mandatory new Electronic Travel Authorization to the airport drop-off fee that cost him £140, why you don't need an Oyster card anymore, and the supermarket meal deal hack that saves his family hundreds every trip. Whether you're planning your first visit or your twentieth, this is the episode to listen to before you book.
This is a complete rewrite, not just an update. The 3rd edition has 30–40 brand new tips never in the book before, the free attractions lists have been consolidated into a master appendix by country, and the book is roughly twice as thick as the previous edition.
The UK's Electronic Travel Authorization is now mandatory. As of February 24, 2026, it is being strictly enforced. If you don't have one, you're not boarding the plane. Use the official UK government app — it costs £16. Anyone charging more is a third-party service skimming money.
Airport drop-off fees can sting you badly. Jonathan got hit with a £140 total charge (£100 penalty + £40 rental car processing fee) for forgetting to pay the Heathrow drop-off fee within 24 hours. The cameras scan your license plate and the bill goes to the rental car company.
You don't need an Oyster card anymore. Contactless credit/debit cards now work on London's entire transport network with the same daily fare caps. Just tap in and tap out — it settles up at the end of the day at no more than about £7–8.
Book trains up to 12 weeks out to save money. A same-day journey can cost 4–5 times more than one booked a month or two in advance. Jonathan recommends op
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 84 – Learning The Knowledge – A London Cabbie’s Guide to the City’s Hidden History
20 févr. 2026
01:03:14
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas speaks with Billy Cullen, a London taxi driver and history enthusiast, about the unique experience of navigating London's rich history through the lens of the iconic black cab. They discuss the rigorous training known as 'The Knowledge,' the challenges of being a tour guide, and the impact of modern technology like Uber on the traditional taxi industry. Billy shares insights on hidden gems in London, the importance of supporting local businesses, and the evolving landscape of tourism in the city.
The Knowledge is a rigorous training process for London taxi drivers.
Billy Cullen combines his passion for history with his taxi driving.
London's history spans over 2000 years, offering endless exploration.
The black cab experience provides a personal connection to the city.
Supporting local businesses is crucial for the economy.
Uber has changed the landscape of the taxi industry in London.
Layover tours offer a unique way to experience London in a short time.
Hidden gems like Greenwich are often overlooked by tourists.
Film and TV locations are increasingly popular among visitors.
The future of London's museums is promising with new developments.
Soundbites
"I started thinking about doing the knowledge for freedom, working for myself. Freedom and a cool city." — Billy on why he became a cabbie.
"You have to see the map of London in your head." — Billy on what the Knowledge actually requires.
"They say you can't fail the knowledge, you can only quit." — Billy on the grueling examination process.
"Some driver drove past and shouted out the window, 'Don't bother mate, the game's dead, give it up.' I was furious. After about five minutes, I shrugged it off and carried on my run." — Billy on nearly being discouraged.
"It's a proven fact that the London black cab driver has a significantly larger hippocampus than the average person." — Billy on what the Knowledge does to your brain.
"You'll be on Regent Street and someone will come out in front of you and just start taking loads of pictures and you feel like you're a celebrity." — Billy on driving an iconic black cab.
"99% of the time, people are amazed by the stuff they weren't expecting. It's the secret things that also make up London, not just the stuff you see on pamphlets." — Billy on what surprises American tourists.
"If there's one reason why you should use a black cab rather than Uber, it's because we actually care. Our badge is worth millions of pounds. It's a lifetime of employment." — Billy defending the trade.
"Support local, support the local businesses. Don't pay up to a multi-billion company t
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 83 – How the Beatles Built the Greatest Team Ever (And What We Can Learn)
13 févr. 2026
00:49:26
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas speaks with Dan Absher, a lifelong Beatles fan and CEO, about the cultural impact of the Beatles and the insights he has drawn from their success for his upcoming book, 'The Fab Four Pillars of Impact: Building Dynamic Teams the Beatles' Way.' They discuss Dan's early memories of the Beatles, his experiences in Liverpool, and the lessons that modern businesses can learn from the Beatles' journey, including the importance of unity, vision, and adaptability.
Dan Absher's lifelong passion for the Beatles began at age five.
The Beatles' charisma and humor were key to their early success.
Ringo's role was essential as the steady drummer of the group.
Family traditions often incorporate Beatles music, especially at milestone birthdays.
Cliveden, where the Beatles filmed, was a significant experience for Dan.
Liverpool has transformed into a vibrant city with a Beatles economy.
Freda Kelly provided unique insights into the Beatles' personalities.
The Beatles' success was driven by the right people and a catalytic vision.
Internal conflicts and differing visions contributed to the Beatles' breakup.
The Beatles' legacy continues to influence modern business practices.
Soundbites
Here are 10 interesting soundbites from the episode:
"It wasn't until much later that I started to realize how great of musicians they were too. Right then it was their charisma, their personalities, their humor." — Dan on watching the Ed Sullivan show at age five.
"I might have been coerced into picking Ringo because they needed a drummer and not another guitar player. But I fully embraced the Ringo role." — Dan on childhood Beatles roleplay with his brother and cousin.
"Every occasion I can think of, particularly in my life, a Beatles song gets played a lot at family outings." — Dan on how the Beatles are woven into his family traditions.
"John's vision was to save the world. George's was to save his soul and be close to God. Paul wanted to remain relevant in music his whole life. And Ringo — his vision was, have fun with my buddies." — Dan on how their diverging visions fractured the band.
"It sounds absurd to think of the four of them having a strategic planning retreat, but that's what they needed." — Dan on what could have saved the Beatles.
"Paul was clinging so hard to try to keep them together. I think that clinging itself had
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 82 – Your Travel Guide to Britain in 2026 – Major Events, Exhibitions, Museums, and More!
26 déc. 2025
00:50:41
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas discusses exciting plans for 2026, including his personal goal of walking Hadrian's Wall, the revival of Anglotopia's online store, and major cultural events happening across Britain. He highlights significant Royal anniversaries, exhibitions, and theatre performances to look forward to, emphasizing the importance of planning ahead for Anglophiles. The episode concludes with a call to support Anglotopia through the Friends of Anglotopia Club.
Walking Hadrian's Wall is a personal goal for Jonathan.
Anglotopia is reviving its online store after ceasing imports.
2026 marks Queen Elizabeth II's 100th birthday with special events.
The Bayeux Tapestry will be exhibited at the British Museum.
Celebrations for Beatrix Potter and other British icons are planned.
New museums, including V&A East, will open in 2026.
Winston Churchill's paintings will be featured in an exhibition.
Theatre performances in London's West End are highly anticipated.
Planning ahead is crucial for Anglophiles traveling to Britain.
Joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club supports British culture.
Sound Bites
1. The Big Commitment (Line 38)
"So we closed this deal about a month or two ago and that's a big deal because now I have to do it. There's people counting on me to do this. Macs Adventure is counting on me doing it, my business is counting on me to do it, so I have to do it. I don't have a choice."
2. The Challenge Ahead (Line 14)
"It involves physically preparing to walk 84 miles on purpose. And I, as you can see, I'm not in the best of shape. So the idea of walking so many miles is kind of daunting to me."
3. You're All Coming Along (Line 44)
"That's the big thing for Anglotopia in 26 is I'm walking Hadrian's Wall. I don't have a choice and you're all coming along for the ride with me."
4. Personal Health Stakes (Lines 26-28)
"It's for my own health. I'm not in great health. Preparing training for the walk will improve my health and having done it will also improve my health, and I'm hoping that it kind of ushers in a new era where hopefully once a year I do one of these famous long distance walks in Britain."
5. The Bayeux Tapestry Coup (Lines 105-106)
"I don't know how they got the French to agree to this. Apparently it took years of negotiations, but the Bayeux Tapestry is gonna leave France and come to the British Museum for a special
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 81 – British vs American Christmas – 40 Years of Festive Culture Shock with Expat Amanda Graves
19 déc. 2025
00:47:08
In this engaging Christmas episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas and guest and Anglotopia columnist Amanda Graves explore the fascinating differences between British and American Christmas traditions. Amanda shares her experiences of celebrating Christmas in both cultures, discussing everything from the timing of decorations and Christmas dinner to the significance of Boxing Day and the King's speech. The conversation highlights the unique aspects of each tradition, the challenges of blending cultures, and the joy of preserving cherished customs while adapting to new ones.
Amanda shares her first culture shock during her first American Christmas.
The tradition of opening presents on Christmas Day is a significant difference between the UK and the US.
Christmas dinner in the UK typically includes turkey, stuffing, and Christmas pudding, while Americans often opt for ham or beef.
Amanda has adapted to American traditions while still trying to maintain some British customs.
Christmas crackers are a fun British tradition that Amanda tries to introduce to her American friends.
The misconception of fruitcake in America differs greatly from the British version, which is often enjoyed.
Boxing Day is a day of recuperation and charity in the UK, but is largely unknown in America.
The King's Christmas speech is an important tradition for Amanda, providing a moment of reflection during the holiday.
Christmas television specials are a cherished part of British culture that Amanda misses.
Amanda enjoys the festive spirit of Texas, where Christmas decorations are often extravagant.
Sounds Bites
Here are 10 compelling sound bites from the episode with timestamps:
1. The Decoration Culture Shock (02:22-02:51)
"Suddenly everybody had tons of decorations up. Everybody had wreaths on their door. Everybody was putting lights into their bushes outside their door. And I'm thinking, I didn't know that we were supposed to do that."
2. Tree Timeline Shock (02:51-03:18)
"A lot of people put their Christmas trees up super early, right after Thanksgiving. That was a bit baffling to me because at home we really didn't put up our Christmas tree until the week of Christmas."
3. The Cactus Christmas (04:12-05:02)
"When I first met my husband, he had a large cactus and he would put some really funny ornaments on the cactus. He has some funny ornaments like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, which hangs from that. We still have a small Christmas tree that we put the tacky ornaments on as a nod to his previous indifference of Christmas."
4. The Breakfast in Bed Disaster (06:48-07:37)
"We decided to make my mother breakfast in bed. We had no way of knowing that very late the night before she'd gone to midnight mass and had trod dog poo all the way up the stairs and had to spend two hours scrubbing the stairs, had fallen into bed at about three o'clock in the morning and we woke her at
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 80 – The Magic, History, and Nostalgia of British Christmas Television with Tom Salinsky
12 déc. 2025
00:54:36
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, host Jonathan Thomas and British TV expert Tom Salinsky delve into the rich tradition of British Christmas television specials. They explore the cultural significance of these specials, the evolution of Christmas Day TV schedules, and highlight some of the most beloved and memorable Christmas episodes from shows like Wallace & Gromit, Doctor Who, Only Fools and Horses, and Gavin and Stacey. The conversation also touches on the nostalgia associated with classics like The Snowman and the impact of streaming on traditional viewing habits. Salinsky shares insights into the history of Morecambe and Wise, the role of sports in Christmas TV, and the unique approach of shows like EastEnders during the festive season. The episode concludes with a discussion on the importance of the Radio Times Christmas double issue and a promotion for Salinsky's new podcast, All British Comedy.
British Christmas television specials are a cultural institution.
Christmas specials often feature nostalgia and beloved characters.
The Snowman is a quintessential part of British Christmas.
Only Fools and Horses Christmas specials are highly anticipated events.
Gavin and Stacey's serialization contributed to its popularity.
Christmas Day TV schedules have evolved over the years.
The Radio Times Christmas double issue is a cherished tradition.
Not all Christmas specials are successful or well-received.
EastEnders often delivers dramatic and intense Christmas episodes.
Streaming has changed how audiences engage with Christmas specials.
Sound Bites
1. On why British Christmas TV became a tradition: "I think it was EastEnders that made the difference. In 1986, EastEnders devoted its Christmas episode to the Den and Angie storyline absolutely coming to boiling point... The viewing figures were phenomenal—something like 30 million. Half the population was watching." — Tom Salinsky
2. On the unique appeal of Christmas specials: "The difference between writing a regular episode of Doctor Who and a Christmas special is there will be non-fans watching at Christmas. The 14-year-old says, everybody has to shut up so I can watch this. And then uncle and auntie and grandma and grandpa are all in the room anyway." — Tom Salinsky
3. On nostalgia and Christmas television: "Nostalgia and Christmas, certainly for British television, seem very intertwined. It's a time when we want to hark back to the past... Even Vengeance Most Foul, which is a brand new piece of work, feels old-fashioned, has that old-fashioned charm about it." — Tom Salinsky
4. On why EastEnders goes dark at Christmas: "If what we tune in for is misery and torment and betrayal, then at Christmas it needs to be maximum misery and maximum betrayal. No one is starved o
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 79 – Celebrating British Christmas as a British Expat Living in the USA – Jolly Posh Foods
05 déc. 2025
00:59:15
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast sponsored by Jolly Posh Foods, host Jonathan Thomas speaks with Lucy Pask, a British expat in Chicago, about the significance of British food during Christmas. They discuss the offerings of Jolly Posh Foods, Lucy's journey from the UK to the US, and the unique aspects of British Christmas dinner traditions, including the importance of specific dishes and the cultural nuances that come with being an expat. The conversation also touches on Boxing Day traditions and the challenges of finding authentic British food in America.
British food is a significant comfort for expats during the holidays.
Jolly Posh Foods provides authentic British food to expats in America.
Lucy Pask's journey reflects the passion for British culture in the US.
Christmas dinner in Britain includes unique dishes like pigs in blankets and roast potatoes.
Boxing Day is a day for leftovers and family traditions.
The importance of Yorkshire pudding in British cuisine cannot be overstated.
Mince pies are a staple of British Christmas, despite their acquired taste.
Ordering British food early is crucial for expats during the holiday season.
Cultural differences in food can lead to humorous misunderstandings.
The joy of sharing British food traditions with American family members.
Sound Bites
"The correct answer is always to say my family. But the honest answer, Jonathan, is that I really miss Waitrose and Marks and Spencer."
"When you're in the UK, the whole of the UK, not just England, you're never more than about six foot away from a bacon butty."
"When you have a proper breakfast sausage in the UK for the first time, it's almost like a revelation. You're like, I've been doing sausage wrong my whole life."
"Being able to access this food and share it with them is one of my greatest joys in life."
"I honestly don't think I could eat a Christmas dinner if I wasn't wearing a paper crown. I've never tried it and I don't want to."
"Over 750 million pigs in blankets are eaten in the UK during Christmas... every citizen eats 13 pigs in blankets on Christmas Day."
"We thought, well, what can we take to Thanksgiving? Why don't we take a Christmas pudding? We'll set fire to it and it'll make them laugh. And now we have to do it every year."
"There's something about Chicago and a Midwestern attitude that's actually very British. It's a little self-effacing, fun, open to being humble and funny about yourselves."
"It is treated with the same reverence and panic as booking Coachella tickets or Eras Tour tickets."
"Full disclosure, I messed the whole thing up... Christmas Eve in the UK is one of the biggest nights out of the year. It is a full-on festival of going out to the pub. All the pubs and bars were shut at 10."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to British Christmas Food
04:11 Lucy Pask's Journey to Chicago
19:58 Exploring British Christmas Dinner Traditions
25:54 The Quintessential British Christmas Dinner
34:54 Christmas Pudding and Its Traditions
38:25 Understanding Mince Pies
50:17 Boxing Day: The Day of Leftovers
54:56 Ordering British Foods
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 78 – Did Churchill Know? Unraveling the Myths of the Coventry Blitz and Wartime Espionage
21 nov. 2025
01:00:54
In this episode, historian Dr. Chris Smith discusses the Coventry Blitz, marking its 85th anniversary. He explores the myths surrounding the event, particularly the narrative that Churchill sacrificed Coventry to protect intelligence secrets. The conversation delves into the scale of the bombing, the city's industrial significance, the immediate aftermath, and the role of propaganda. Smith also highlights the reconstruction efforts and the lasting legacy of the Blitz in Coventry's identity, emphasizing themes of resilience and reconciliation.
Note: I'm aware of the technical problems with the guest's video - unfortunately, there is no way to fix it, but the audio is fine. Also, there will not be a podcast next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
The Coventry Blitz is framed by both historical and modern narratives.
Myths surrounding the Blitz, particularly about Churchill, persist despite being debunked.
The bombing raid on Coventry was one of the largest of the war at that time.
Coventry's industrial significance made it a strategic target during WWII.
The aftermath of the bombing revealed a complex public reaction, not just unity.
Propaganda played a crucial role in shaping public perception of the Blitz.
The reconstruction of Coventry was influenced by pre-war modernization plans.
The new cathedral symbolizes peace and reconciliation after the war.
Coventry's identity is deeply tied to the events of the Blitz.
Commemoration of the Blitz remains significant in Coventry's cultural memory.
Soundbites
Here are 10 interesting soundbites from the Coventry Blitz podcast:
On the scale of the raid: "They dropped something in the region of 30,000 incendiary bombs, 500 tons of high explosives and 50 landmines. They even used some brand new types of explosive that they hadn't really been using to that point. It's a really, really massive raid by the standards of the war to that point."
On the Churchill Ultra myth: "There's no evidence that Churchill made a decision to sacrifice Coventry. It's an absolute fantasy which basically has to rely upon either Churchill being the most evil man who has ever existed or the most incompetent man who has ever existed."
On strategic bombing's true purpose: "One of the points of strategic bombing is terror, is to cause terror amongst the citizens... the British actually have a really nasty euphemism for this, which was to 'dehouse people' as a result of bombing. And that's how they basically described killing citizens and making other citizens homeless."
On Coventry's industrial importance: "Coventry is hugely important industrially to Britain's war effort... by the time we get into the 20th century, bicycle manufacturing, the auto industry, the car industry becomes very im
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 77 – Anglotopia Guide to Churchill’s Britain – Where Churchill Lived, Worked, and Made History
07 nov. 2025
00:33:09
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, Jonathan Thomas takes listeners on a journey through significant locations in Britain associated with Sir Winston Churchill. The discussion begins with key sites in London, including the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, and the Cabinet War Rooms, highlighting their importance in Churchill's life and career. The conversation then shifts to notable places outside of London, such as Blenheim Palace and Chartwell, which were pivotal in shaping Churchill's identity. The episode concludes with a look at international connections to Churchill's legacy, including museums and archives in the United States.
Churchill's connection to London was profound and influential.
The Houses of Parliament served as a key location for Churchill's political career.
Chartwell was not just a home but a source of inspiration for Churchill.
Blenheim Palace is significant as Churchill's birthplace and family heritage site.
The Cabinet War Rooms provide insight into Churchill's leadership during WWII.
Churchill's speeches were often first delivered in the House of Commons.
The Churchill Archives at Cambridge is a valuable resource for research.
Churchill's legacy extends beyond the UK, with significant sites in the US.
The Wallace Collection will host a major exhibition of Churchill's paintings in 2026.
Visiting Churchill-related sites offers a deeper understanding of his impact on history.
Sound Bites
"If he had a single place of work that was most important to him, it would be the Houses of Parliament and the Palace of Westminster."
"He genuinely had a great love and affection for the Houses of Parliament. He thought they were beautiful. He thought they were the heart of the empire. He thought that it was an immense privilege to work there."
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 76 – Craftland – A Journey Through Britain’s Disappearing Crafts with Author James Fox
31 oct. 2025
00:56:38
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas speaks with art historian and broadcaster James Fox about his new book 'Craftland: In Search of Lost Arts and Disappearing Trades.' They explore the significance of traditional crafts in British culture, the impact of geography on craftsmanship, and the challenges faced by artisans in a modern, digital age. The conversation highlights the importance of preserving these skills and the cultural heritage they represent, as well as the potential for a craft revival in contemporary society.
We are a species of makers, connected to our craft heritage.
The art of making still matters in our digital age.
Geography significantly influences the types of crafts practiced.
Craftspeople are often the last custodians of their trades.
The decline of traditional crafts reflects a broader economic shift.
Craftsmanship can teach us about patience and value in a fast-paced world.
There is a growing interest in crafts post-COVID-19.
Apprenticeships are crucial for sustaining traditional crafts.
Crafts can reveal much about local and national identity.
Sound Bites
1. On the crisis facing British crafts: "Of all of our traditional crafts, about half of them are endangered, about quarter of them are critically endangered. And in the last 10 years or so, five crafts have gone extinct in Britain."
2. On the cricket ball revelation: "I read in the newspaper that the art of cricket ball making had gone extinct. And I thought this was completely outrageous for a country that invented the game of cricket, which I'm sure you know, Jonathan, is the greatest sport in the world, that we weren't even making cricket balls anymore."
3. On breaking down art vs. craft distinctions: "These distinctions are completely false. You know, there is for me one great spectrum of making that exists for human beings... craftspeople... are just as culturally important as our famous artists and actors and composers that have generally got much more credit."
4. On the 10,000 hours principle: "All the people I know who are successful are successful because they work hard and they do not give up and they've dedicated to themselves to doing something and to doing it right."
5. On learning a craft the hard way: "I thought it would be very easy actually dry stone walling... as soon as I started doing it I realized it is far more difficult than you think... I embarrass myself greatly."
6. On what other countries do better: "If you are a top crafts person in Japan or South Korea or even in France, you can be called a living national treasure where the state actually pays you to promote your craft and to pass it on. We do not have such a scheme in the UK."
7. On
Anglotopia Podcast: Episode 75: Exploring Britain on $100 a Day – Complete Anglotopia Guide to the UK on a Budget
24 oct. 2025
00:52:36
In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, Jonathan Thomas discusses how to travel around Britain on a budget of $100 a day. He shares practical tips on accommodation, transportation, attractions, and dining, emphasizing the importance of planning and making use of available resources to save money. The conversation covers various strategies for budget travel, including the use of budget chain hotels, public transportation, and free attractions, while also providing insights into dining options and money-saving tips.
Links
VisitBritain.com – official UK tourism website with deals, itineraries, and regional guides.
BritRail Pass – britrail.net for rail pass information and booking.
National Rail Enquiries – nationalrail.co.uk for live train times and prices.
National Trust – nationaltrust.org.uk for passes, properties, and cream tea stops.
Traveling around Britain on a budget is achievable with careful planning.
Accommodation is often the largest expense; budget chain hotels can save money.
Public transportation is affordable and efficient for getting around Britain.
Many attractions, especially museums, are free to enter.
Using a Britrail pass can be economical for train travel if used wisely.
Dining at pubs and local grocery stores can significantly reduce food costs.
Avoiding airport purchases can save a lot of money.
Planning meals and taking advantage of hotel breakfasts can help budget.
Memberships for organizations like English Heritage can provide access to multiple attractions.
Advanced booking for accommodations and attractions can lead to significant savings.
Sound Bites
“Budget travel around Britain is possible — and in these belt-tightening times, it can make or break whether a trip even happens.”
“You don’t need British cash anymore. I haven’t purchased pounds in fifteen years — Britain is almost entirely cashless now.”
“If you’re smart about where you stay, you can get a clean room for £30 to £50 a night at a Premier Inn or Travelodge — that’s the secret to keeping your budget.”
“The BritRail Pass lets you travel anywhere in Britain for one set price — it’s your ticket to freedom on the rails.”
“Fill up on the free breakfast, grab a £3 supermarket meal deal for lunch, and have a pub dinner — tha