Chalke Talk

The podcast from the Chalke Valley History Festival
Released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings

Latest releases

  • 192. KINGS OF YUKON: THE HISTORY OF THE SALMON RUN
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    The Yukon river is over 2,000 miles long, flowing northwest from Canada through Alaska to the Bering Sea. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of King salmon migrate the longest salmon run in the world. Adam Weymouth traces the profound interconnectedness of the local people and the fish to offer a powerful glimpse into the erosion […]

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  • 191. LANCASTER BOMBER PILOT
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    Rusty Waughman DFC is a former Lancaster pilot flying with RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War. He has incredible recall, and talks of those times with great frankness, detail and consideration for all he and his crew went through.

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  • 190. LES PARISIENNES 1939-49
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    How did the women of Paris live, love and die in the 1940s? Why did some Parisians collaborate while others resisted? From saving other people’s children, to embracing Nazi philosophy to retreating to the Ritz with a lover, acclaimed writer, Anne Sebba, examines the many different choices made by the Parisiennes in order to survive […]

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  • 189. LOTHARINGIA: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF EUROPE’S LOST COUNTRY
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    In 843 AD the territory of Emperor Charlemagne was divided between his three surviving grandsons. One inherited the area now known as France, another Germany and the third received the piece in between: Lotharingia, a huge swath of land that stretched from the mouth of the Rhine to the Alps. Simon Winder explains how the […]

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  • 188. MASTERS OF THE SEAS: NAVAL POWER AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
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    So much of our understanding of the First World War focuses on the conflict on land and yet the nation who controlled the seas also controlled the flow of resources, so critical in such a long and attritional war. In this lecture, one of our most eminent historians Professor Sir Hew Strachan shows why naval […]

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  • 187. NO CUNNING PLAN
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    Tony Robinson has spent much of his professional life immersed in the past, whether as Blackadder’s servant through the centuries or with Maid Marion and her Merry Men, or as the presenter of the pioneering archaeology show, Time Team. In this event, he discusses with Tom Holland his history highs, from Baldrick’s cunning plans to […]

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  • 186. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL: A MEDIEVAL MASTERPIECE
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    Over 800 years ago, work started on the new Salisbury Cathedral. Tim Tatton-Brown describes how one of Britain’s greatest cathedrals was built, from digging the foundations in 1219 to the completion of Britain’s tallest spire. Drawing on history, geology and his expertise in architecture, he will show the wider context of the building, situating its […]

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  • 185. THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, WESSEX AND THE CHALKE VALLEY
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    We speak English today; not Celtic, Latin, nor Norman French. England is England because of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Yet we know very little about how it happened. This talk describes astonishing new evidence, hidden in plain sight, spread across the whole length and breadth of England. Some of it in the Chalke Valley near Salisbury.

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  • 184. THE COLLECTOR EARLS OF PEMBROKE: WILTON’S HISTORY TOLD THROUGH ITS ART COLLECTION
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    Every picture tells a story and nowhere more so than in a private collection, still hanging in the house for which it was bought. The collection at Wilton is one of the oldest in Britain, dating back to the seventeenth century, when the Earl of Pembroke was among Van Dyck’s earliest English patrons. Art historian […]

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  • 183. THE FINAL TABOO: A HISTORY OF GRIEF
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    Death is the last taboo in our society, and grief is still profoundly misunderstood. In conversation with Dan Snow, Julia Samuel, a grief psychologist and Founder of Child Bereavement UK, explores past attitudes to grief and the historical context of death and dying in this country, from the Victorians to the present day, with particular […]

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