The Many Deaths of Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller was a trombonist, composer, band leader and late 1930s – early 40s musical icon whose work is utterly impenetrable to me. Not that I mean I can’t dissect it, and regurgitate some horrific approximation as background music (podcast listeners, much of the music this episode is stolen from Mr Miller) I mean in […]
Update: When The Swallows Come Back to Capistrano…
Hey all just a quick update. I’ve got this week’s blog post written, and the corresponding podcast episode recorded. I’m in the midst of putting the final mix, and background music together tonight. It might arrive a little late (Thurs, maybe Friday?) due to a couple of things I’ve got going on at the moment. […]
The Ghost & The Darkness
The human history of Kenya, were we to know it fully, would certainly be one of the longer histories out there. On the continent’s East, below the ‘Horn of Africa’, certain simian ancestors of ours, such as homo habilis and homo erectus have been found to have thrived there. Fossil records in the region show […]
The Infernal Machine
Trigger Warning, This Tale discusses gun violence. If an account of a mass shooting is likely to upset, it’s fine to give this one a miss. I’ll be back in a fortnight with a tale of Kenyan wildlife and other things. This week’s Tale begins on the Boulevard du Temple; in Paris, France. The date, […]
The Georgia Guidestones
Edit: 8 July 2022 – Hi there I can see a lot of traffic coming to my blog/podcast looking for this post at the moment. The following piece was originally written, on the fly over a couple of hours in late November 2020. It’s not as in depth as I’d like it to be but […]
The Childe of Hale – a Short Tale
The following is just a quick blog post I threw together this morning, needing something for the week – and having recently tied of a bunch of standby posts to planned podcast episodes for the 2023 season. In 1617 Gilbert Ireland, Sheriff of Lancashire, was presented before King James I of England. He’d made the […]
Spencer Perceval
Trigger Warning: The following episode discusses gun violence – particularly the assassination of a head of state. Note for the readers, I’ll get a blog only post up tomorrow – It’s Matariki in New Zealand (Maori New Year) so I have a day off to write. Today’s tale is set in foyer of the British […]
Update: Just cause I haven’t done one for a while…
Hey everyone, just dropping a quick update today. I hope wherever you are reading from life is treating you well in these crazy times. I’ve currently put both the blog and podcast more or less on autopilot for a month while I work on the next block of posts/episodes. I’m hoping if I can get […]
The Carrington Event
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden Strange, magical things were afoot in Boston, Massachusetts on September 2nd 1859. It is 9.30 am at the telegraph office on 31 State Street […]
Bearcat
Hey all I’m ‘taking a break’ for a month – well, more accurately going into writing and recording mode for a month. On the podcasts front I’m set to release two ‘from the vaults’ episodes – The Bagradas Dragon (blogged last year) and a heavily edited Carrington Event (from back in 2019 on the blog)… […]
The Old Man of The Mountain
Hey all this is the third and final instalment on the Assassins. If you’re coming to this first, part one is here – part two here. I want to start this episode with a confession – when I say the Mongols brought our tale of the Persian Assassins to an end, in a sense they […]
The Mongols are Coming!
Hi there this is part two of what will probably be a three part tale. If you haven’t checked out The Cult of Hassan-i Sabbah first, click here. To unravel this part of this tale, we needs must flash forward 96 years, then work back a ways. We left off in 1124. Hassan-i Sabbah, had […]
The Cult of Hassan-i Sabbah
This post/podcast episode is part one of a two (edit: probably Three) part Tale. I’ll be dropping part two in a fortnight. There is a shadowy tale from the medieval Near East that persists in the modern imagination. At some time in the 11th Century a heretical cult arose in the mountains of northern Iran […]
Alas, poor Tycho…
Hey all, I had something completely new in the works for both the blog and podcast this week… owing to a few things happening in my day job (a pending corporate acquisition had me messing with my CV the other night. It had been years since I’d last dusted that particular file off)I chose to […]
The Bottle Conjuror
Today’s tale is set on the night of January 16th 1749; the setting, The Haymarket Theatre – on London’s West End. Originally built in 1720, on a site formerly occupied by a pub and a gunsmith’s, there was something of ‘the little theatre who could’ about the place. While the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and […]
Beyond the Archway…
Content Warning: This episode discusses Pseudocide – the act of faking one’s own death. I also cut and slashed at this script considerably in the podcast editing process. I think some parts which still work here didn’t in that format this week. This week we start with a brief detour to Waitakere, New Zealand – […]
… A Thousand Words?
Hey all, the podcast episode I’m running this week is from the back catalog of blog posts – so I have new, blog only content this week. Today we’re going to look at a couple of famous photos – cartooned of course (cause it’s what I do). If I’ve yet to get back to part […]
Njinga of Ndongo
Today’s tale is set in the African kingdom of Ndongo, modern day Angola – we touched upon this kingdom a few weeks back in the Tale of Henry ‘Box’ Brown. Today we’re taking a closer look at that strand. The year, 1622. Joao de Sousa, the Portuguese governor of Luanda prepares to meet with princess […]
The Phantom Airships
Aurora is a small town in Wise country, in the North of Texas. The county came into being in the 1830s, following an armed standoff between 150 Native Americans and 18 cowboys. The latter, though outnumbered, won and planted a stake in the ground – owing to their superior technology. They brought guns to what […]
Premium Content: Yasuke
The following, like the recent Salmesbury Witches Tale, is a script for a Patreon bonus episode. Both these episodes are free to all – though most Patreon scripts will be subscriber only at a cost of US $10 a year. Patreon followers get both the script and a podcast episode for US $2 a month. […]
Dr Sweet’s Defence
Content Warning: This week’s post briefly discusses a lynching and other horrific things… Our Tale this week opens on an ugly siege. The date September 9th 1925. The location 2905 Garland Street, Detroit, Michigan. The eleven men and women inside the house have provoked the ire of the Waterworks Improvement Association – the offence? daring […]
Update: This week is delayed – new blog/episode tonight?
Hi all just a quick note. As some of you may know I’ve been a work from home person since before the pandemic. You may also know I rent a place where I have a couple of flatmates to help me pay someone else’s mortgage… The flatmates are normally not work from home people, and […]
Premium Content: The Salmesbury Witches
Hey all I’m taking the paywall off the next two Premium Tales. The podcast episode can be found on my Patreon. Normally you can access the bonus scripts here for $1.00 a month, the podcast episodes for $2.00 (USD) Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley and Ellen Bierley stood in the dock, shackled and bound. The setting, […]
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Tales of History and Imagination 