Chalke Talk

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

Chalke Talks for REGION: USA


  • 04. THE PARIS PEACE TREATIES
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    This talk by Dr Peter Caddick-Adams for senior pupils at the Chalke Valley History Festival for Schools, challenges some assumptions about the aftermath of the First World War. The armistice in 1918 was a truce but fighting continued in Eastern Europe and the Middle East for several years. He explains that the Treaty of Versailles […]

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  • 07. THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE EMPIRE OF THE IMAGINATION
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    Worshipped, pilloried, and forever debated. Such is the fate of Thomas Jefferson, whose actions and ideas — more than those of any of the other Founding Fathers —still divide Americans two centuries later. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard Professor Annette Gordon-Reed extends the analysis of Jefferson in light of prevailing attitudes towards politics, slavery, genetics, […]

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  • 15. BEHOLD, AMERICA: A HISTORY OF AMERICA FIRST AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
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    Professor Sarah Churchwell offers a history of “America First,” one of Trump’s campaign slogans. Although popular wisdom attributes the phrase to Charles Lindbergh and the isolationist “America First Committee” of 1940-1941, the expression has a longer, and darker, history, a story of nativism and the Ku Klux Klan, of “100 percent Americanism” and isolationism, and […]

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  • 42. AFRICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS
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    In this talk to senior school pupils, Dr Gareth Davies explains what ‘Jim Crow’ was, and what sustained it before examining what destabilised and finally destroyed it. He finishes by discussing what replaced ‘Jim Crow’ and shows evidence of progress.

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  • 91. KISSINGER 1923-1966: THE IDEALIST
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    No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Hailed as the ‘indispensable man,’ he has also attracted immense hostility. One of our most renowned historians Professor Niall Ferguson reveals an extraordinary panorama of Kissinger the man: from his Jewish upbringing in Germany to his rise as one of America’s most […]

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  • 94. WHEN BRITAIN BURNED THE WHITE HOUSE: THE 1814 INVASION OF WASHINGTON
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    In August 1814, the United States’ army was defeated in battle by a British invading force just outside Washington DC. In his compelling style, broadcaster and journalist Peter Snow recounts this unparalleled moment in American history, its far-reaching consequences for both sides and Britain’s and America’s decision never again to fight each other. 

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  • 96. THE VIKING AGE OF EXPLORATION
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    Dan Snow tells the story of the Viking expansion across the North Atlantic to the New World. What does the archeology tell us? How did they navigate across the vast expanse of ocean and why did they use reindeer droppings as a preservative? Dan Snow has followed the Vikings from Estonia to Newfoundland and here […]

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  • 128. AMERICA TRUMPED: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
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    Who better than the charismatic broadcaster Matt Frei to explain the extraordinary phenomenon which was the then President of the United States of America? The award-winning journalist was Washington correspondent for the BBC and Channel 4 News for many years and recently made the documentary ‘Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President.’ So how did […]

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  • 150. ROBERT KENNEDY: WORKING FOR BOBBY
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    In 1968, a year that saw America divided by the Vietnam War and shocked by the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Steve Isenberg, a 27-year-old political novice, joined the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He recounts his adventures on the campaign trail and reveals the highs and lows of a campaign that […]

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  • 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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