Tales of History and Imagination – Details, episodes & analysis

This week on Tales we enter the vaults to revisit - and re-record - one of the five early episodes still on here that was recorded on my cheap, starter microphone. (We’ll knock the other four off next year in mid-season breaks.) 

With Christmas just around the corner this seems as good a time as any to follow a young Charles Dickens around Canongate Graveyard in Edinburgh Scotland looking for ghosts… And we meet the man who - most likely - influenced one of his most famous characters - John Elwes, The Miser of Marcham Park.

Apologies for the break between parts one and two of The Tichborne Claimant. I’m hoping to get that out in the last week of December. 

Sources this week include: 

Sorry all I never took down any of my sources for this at the time of the original. In revamping the piece though I referred to 

This BBC Article. This Mercat Tours blog post This Edinburgh Enquirer article by David Forsyth This BBC piece on Robert Fergusson And this piece on Fergusson from Roderick Watson at Scottish Poetry Library This piece from the Royal College of Physicians on Dr Andrew Duncan Very rare for me, I referred to Wikipedia for more on Dr Andrew Duncan This piece on Giusto Fernando Tenducci And this piece on Tenducci by Aoife Barry in The Journal And John Elwes: The Miser Who Inspired Dickens by Kaushik Patowary

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly - (give or take… sorry all it’s been a rough year… Back to fortnightly Wednesdays in 2026?).

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Quick note all: This episode is approx 29 minutes long… I’ve accidentally left some background music or something muted at the end + will delete that and re-upload once home again… Sorry all, there is no secret Easter egg at the end of this episode, it’s ok to hit stop when the end credits roll…  This week On Tales we return to the Australian outback - this is the last time we visit my neighbours to the west of Aotearoa/New Zealand for a while, I promise. The year is 1866, the location Wagga Wagga. 

Tom Castro, the town’s Chilean-born butcher has a good life, living in ‘Castro villa’ with his young wife and step-daughter. He enjoys his work, horse riding and his larrikin mates down at the local pub… But then one of those larrikins turns his life upside down with a newspaper article. 

Was Tom secretly Baronet Roger Tichbourne, a British peer who disappeared in mysterious circumstances off the coast of Brazil a dozen years earlier?

This is part one of a two parter. Apologies ahead of time, I’ll more likely than not have to pause part two till late December/early January to allow for a Christmas episode.  

Content warnings: Not too much on this one. Some animal cruelty, and appearance being central to this tale, I have to comment on the protagonist’s appearance in ways not intended to offend… but I may slip up on this one     

Sources Include:

Robyn Annear’s The Man Who Lost Himself| Rohan McWilliam’s The Tichborne Claimant

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly.

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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to the wreck of the Batavia. In part two we discuss heresy, and the harrowing life of under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz. 

This is part two of a four parter.

Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, child mortality, religious extremism.   

Sources Include: Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons. 

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This is a re-upload of the original Episode 9, Buried Alive! It’s the same script as in 2020, but recorded with much better gear. I’ll be re-uploading the first 25 or so throughout 2022 and 2023

This week's Tale is a quick, bonus tale. I’ll be back with proper episodes 21st April. Content warning this episode is all about premature burial – and was first posted Halloween 2020.

You can read the episode here.

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This is a re-upload of the original Episode 5, The Beast of Gevaudan. It’s the same script as in 2019, but recorded with much better gear. I’ll be re-uploading the first 25 or so throughout 2022 and 2023

Today’s tale is set in the former province of Gevaudan in South-Central France. The years between 1764 and 1767, following the bloody, and costly Seven Years War – a Proto World War if ever there was one – which had left deep scars in the psyche of many a European nation – France included- and left many a monarch broke in its’ wake.

An isolated, rugged, rural spot – The terrain rough and mountainous – it is far too rocky to grow much by way of crops. The locals eke out a living in the hills, tending to livestock. From youth, the locals worked alone, out in the elements – constantly on the lookout for wild predators on the lookout for a free meal. Gevaudan is also surrounded by a vast forest; a dangerous and lawless place full of wolves, lurking outlaws, footpads and highwayman. It really is the kind of place you could imagine in the most vicious Grimm Brothers tales.

It’s against this backdrop that La Bete du Gevaudan - the beast of Gevaudan - came roaring into the consciousness of the French.

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This is a re-upload of the original Episode 4, Eilean Mor. It’s the same script as in 2019, but recorded with much better gear. I’ll be re-uploading the first 25 or so throughout 2022 and 2023

The Flannan Isles, sometimes referred to as the 7 Hunters, are a tiny group of islands in the Outer Hebrides – a string of islands in the North of Scotland. Uninhabited, hilly and rocky, covered only by grass … people kept well clear of these, allegedly haunted isles. In 1899 a lighthouse was build on the island. Just what happened to the three lighthouse keepers?

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This is a re-upload of the original Episode 3, Tipu’s Tiger. It’s the same script as in 2020, but recorded with much better gear. I’ll be re-uploading the first 25 or so throughout 2022 and 2023

One day a prince named Tipu went out hunting in the forest with a friend. The experience would affect him for the rest of his life - reflecting in his art, signature, uniforms…. And musical instruments?  

The blog post of the episode is here.

Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. 

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination is on 

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Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. 

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This is a re-upload of the original Episode 2, Hannibal in Bithynia. It’s the same script as in 2019, but recorded with much better gear. I’ll be re-uploading the first 25 or so throughout 2022 and 2023 Today’s we’re Asiatic town of Libyssa, in Bithynia – modern day Turkey. The date, some time around 182 BCE. Hannibal Barca, one of the greatest Generals to ever live, is pacing his enclosure like a caged Barbary Lion. His life, from the age of nine had lead to this point – ever since his father made him take an oath he would “Never be a friend of Rome.” 

How did it all come to this for the Carthaginian strongman?

The blog post of the episode is here.  Sources include: Hannibal Barca by ‘Captivating History’  A History of Rome by Max Cary and H.H. Scullard. 

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  Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This is a re-upload of the original Episode 1, Martial Bourdin. It’s the same script as in 2019, but recorded with much better gear. I’ll be re-uploading the first 25 or so throughout 2022 and 2023.

“At 4:45pm precisely, GMT, 15th February 1894, the grounds of Greenwich Park, London – home of the Royal Observatory, and a clock we’ll discuss later – are shaken by a resounding boom. Staff at the observatory recalled a “sharp and clear detonation, followed by a noise like a shell going through the air”. Peering through windows in trepidation, they attempted to work out what just happened. A park warden and a group of students ran towards the epicenter of the blast – where a solitary young man lay dying. The young man, who died not long after in a local hospital, was identified as 26 year old Frenchman Martial Bourdin.”

Just who was this young man, and what was his target that cold winter day? Sources? Sorry all, I started off badly by not collating and sharing them. It’s something I get better at doing over time. This was collated together from several online articles, and a project management textbook (for the section on Frederick Winslow Taylor.)  This tale first reached me via an introduction to the Wordsworth edition of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.  The blog post of the episode is here. 

Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. 

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is by sharing an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination is on 

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Visit Simone’s 

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This week on Tales of History and Imagination we return to Australia for a real life soap opera that was considerably more bloody than Neighbours or Home and Away. First we need to take a cruise on a Dutch VOC flagship called The Batavia, the year 1629. 

In part one of a four parter, we discuss the voyage; how and why folk took such risks to travel to the end of the earth like this - and the voyage itself, right up until the ship wrecked on Houtman’s Abrolhos. 

Note: Apologies all, as you can hear my voice is still a little scratchy on this one… I’ve had a bit of a nasty cold, and figured better to get this out now, than keep you waiting a month and a half to start this. Part two should be less so… 

Trigger warnings: Murder, colonialism, attempted genocide and sexual assault.   

Sources Include:

Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash Ocean by John Haywood And Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons. 

Support Tales on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. 

Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination can be found on…

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