Trapped History – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome back to Season 7 of Trapped History! And have we got a season for you, full to bursting with stories of unexpected heroes and uncharted histories which will inspire you, make you laugh and make you cry.

We’re kicking off with the magnificent broadcaster, journalist and Loose Woman, Charlene White, who joins us as we uncover the moving life story of Alford Gardner, one of the last surviving Windrush passengers. Born in Jamaica, Alford journeyed to England to fight for the ‘motherland’ in the Second World War. Job done, he went home – then came back, all the while trying to find a place of his own. It’s a universal story familiar to millions and Charlene shares her own family experiences of finding that place called home. It is a story full of joy and laughter – and tears and anger – and it is magnificently told by Charlene.

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We are just busting to tell you about Trapped History's new season – packed with hidden stories about people we weren't taught about in school.

Tune in to hear Charlene White talk about Windrush, Joe Dunthorne on his family's troubling past and Dame Jocelyn Bell on the mind-blowing women of science! There's Claire Thomson of 5 O'Clock Apron fame on Marguerite Patten, the cook who kept Britain fed during the war; journalist Alex Renton on how you cope with a shameful family history; and the glittery pop culture clutchbag which is Bond, Queer Bond.

You will laugh, you will cry – you may even do a bit of cooking. But more than anything, Trapped History will feed your curiosity and get you thinking about the past, the present and the future.

Find us at:

https://trappedhistory.com/

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Head over to www.trappedhistory.com to sign up to the award-winning podcast, get our newsletter, bonus episodes and much, much more.

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Picture a woman of the French Resistance, printing underground papers in her cellar, making bombs at her kitchen table, cycling across her country with codes hidden in her knitting. And then spin the globe 6,000 miles and find yourself in Vietnam.

Because this is what Madame Xuan Phuong did. As a teenager, Phuong fought in the jungles and mountains of Vietnam for her country’s independence against the Japanese. And then the French. And finally the Americans.

We are delighted and honoured to be joined by a very special guest to tell Xuan’s story – Madame Phuong herself. A legend in her homeland, named on the BBC’s 100 Women 2024 list and a recipient of the Legion d’Honneur, her fascinating story helps us see the Vietnam War through Vietnamese eyes.

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In today's Hall of Fame, Fiona Keating nominates a queer, Jewish poet and novelist who slipped through the cracks nearly 140 years ago. But late last year, Cambridge University proudly announced that they had acquired the Amy Levy Archive and the hope is that "one of Victorian literature’s most enigmatic figures" will finally get the recognition she deserves.

Amy's life may have been short and tragic – but it was also full to the brim. She knew W. B. Yeats, Eleanor Marx and Oscar Wilde (it was he who said Amy had a 'touch of genius') as well as a host of the literati both in England and France. She wrote short stories, essays and articles, and in her lifetime published two poetry collections and two novels (more would follow after her death). She was also one of the first generation of women to study at Cambridge.

Being Jewish and queer in an era of buttoned-up Victorian jingoism was hard enough but Amy also struggled with her mental health. Her final novel was met with scathing reviews and at the age of 27, Amy killed herself by suicide. Wilde wrote her obituary, hinting at the darkness which sat at the heart of her life, but we are also left with the last poignant words in her diary: "Alone at home all day."

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As we head into spring, Trapped History takes a brisk wintery walk through the streets of London’s Docklands to seek out the Limehouse Chinatown of the 1880s.

Jack the Ripper is striking fear into the heart of the East End, the Bryant & May matchgirls are on strike and the magnificent Ching Hook is knocking them dead at the Sebright Music Hall. And Pearl Fitzgerald, a young woman with a Chinese mother and an Irish father, is trying to secure her inheritance.

But Pearl isn’t real. She is a fiction, the main character in novelist Fiona Keating’s bodice-ripping Smoke & Silk. Everything else, though, is true – and so Fiona is taking us and you on a journey through Pearl’s world to re-discover London’s first Chinatown. Here you will find laundries and opium, poverty and anger – but above all else a small Chinese community, hanging on by its fingernails in the onslaught of the tabloid ‘yellow peril’ scare.

It's bracing, it’s exciting and it might help change your mind about Sherlock Holmes.

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Here's a great Hall of Fame nominee from Christina Wade – and it's another oldie. In 1275, Gillian Pykard told the sheriff's bailiffs in Exeter precisely what they could do with their rules. She was a brewer and knew what her customers wanted.

It's a small story but it's a slice of life which shows us so much about a world which seems so foreign to us in the 21st century. But if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that people and people – and they don't take kindly to being told what to do! Enjoy this medieval rebel's tale.

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With a name and a story Dickens would have killed for, Peg Plunkett owned Dublin in the 1780s. Surviving a horrific childhood, she escaped to the big city and swiped right and left to her heart’s content until she blew everything up with her incendiary memoirs.

Award-winning Filthy Queens author, Christina Wade, plunges us into the life of an 18th century courtesan – a world in which Peg is a modern day Samuel Pepys, with views on men, marriage, chastity and responsibility which seem so fresh and yet alien to her times. This is a rip-roaring, rumbustious tale – so buckle in and check your pockets!

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Sathnam Sanghera blows the doors off the Hall of Fame today alongside his nominee, the Pirate Queen of Ireland, Grainne – or Grace – O'Malley.

Born in County Mayo when Henry VIII was on the throne of England, Grainne would command a fleet of ships, raid neighbouring clans, revenge the deaths of her loved ones and take on the English army. She would even meet with Queen Elizabeth to – in the best Jack Sparrow tradition – 'parley' with her opponent.

Grainne was pretty special and is a worthy addition to the Trapped History Hall of Fame – and its new protector too!

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Mahatma Gandhi is a worldwide hero. Nehru led India through turmoil. But who in the West knows of Subhas Chandra Bose? Well, perhaps we should learn more about him because he is the man of the moment in Modi’s 21st century India.

Empireland’s Sathnam Sanghera joins us today to try to understand someone who lived and died by the maxim ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. We find out what that actually meant in the 1940s and how we can navigate the ethical and moral quagmire which led Bose into the arms of the Nazis. This is an important episode, summed up by Sathnam’s own maxim: ‘it’s complicated’.

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After demolishing and rebuilding Halls of Fame through the ages, our guest Habib Hajallie has chosen his own nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: the great Bill Richmond, an African-American born into slavery who by the early 19th century had become Britain's first Black sports star. Bill was the terror of the boxing ring, winning 17 of 19 matches, fighting the All England Champion, declining a title shot, and being a member of the sports first governing body.

More than that, Bill trained figures like Byron and Hazlitt, performed in front of European royalty and was an usher at George IV's coronation. His was an astonishing life and Bill is a worthy entrant to the Hall of Fame.

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