Chalke Talk

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

Chalke Talks for REGION: Russia


  • 43. BAITING THE RUSSIAN BEAR
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    With Mary Ann Sieghart in the chair, Peter Frankopan, Marina Litvinenko and Edward Lucas look at the historical background to the rapidly re-emerging cold war. From the Napoleonic Wars to the Second World War and beyond, through to the current escalating tensions, they explain why the West has traditionally had such a fraught relationship with […]

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  • 88. EAST-WEST STREET: BACK TO THE 1930’s?
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    Acclaimed international human rights lawyer and winner of the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize, Philippe Sands, traces the origins of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity,’ a journey that took him on a very personal quest to uncover the tragic fate of the Jewish communities in Lviv and the area around it in what is […]

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  • 160. A SPY AMONG FRIENDS: KIM PHILBY AND THE GREAT BETRAYAL
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    With access to newly released MI5 files, Ben Macintyre unlocks perhaps the last great secret of the Cold War. A story of intimate duplicity, loyalty, trust and treachery about the most notorious British defector and mole in history, Kim Philby is revealed as agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, and betrayer of secret Allied operations […]

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  • 182. THE IMPERIAL TEA PARTY: FAMILY, POLITICS AND BETRAYAL
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    Before King George infamously denied his Romanov cousins asylum when the Bolsheviks were closing in, there were three extraordinary encounters between the British and Russian royal families. Although well intentioned and generally hailed as successes, Frances Welch shows that these meetings, beset by misunderstandings and misfortunes, were to have far-reaching consequences for twentieth century Europe […]

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