Michaela Strachan's nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is one of the most selfless people we have heard of – Jill Robinson, who has dedicated her life to saving bears from the cruelty of the bear bile industry in China and across Asia.It is a story rooted in horror but also in love. And Jill's life bears witness to our capacity for both. If you feel moved by her story, please visit Animals Asia to see how you can support Jill in her fight to save bears from this torment: https://www.animalsasia.org/support-us/
We have a wonderful season opener for you – as wildlife TV legend Michaela Strachan joins Trapped History to help us tell the tale of the woman who fought for nature. Her name was a bit of a mouthful – Ethel Haythornthwaite – but we know her as the defender of Britain’s National Parks and the Green Belt. She even has nearly 100 hills named after her (don’t worry, they’re ‘Ethels’ not ‘Haythornthwaites’!).It's a delightful episode, full of passion, joy and hope as Michaela shares her love of nature, walking and conservation. She even persuades Oswin to pull on his boots . . .
We're delighted – chuffed even – to welcome you to Season 6. Trapped History is out of nappies and toddling all over the place (we're three years old this Christmas), clutching two international awards and a host of fabulous guests as we go!So here's a quick taster of some of the stories you're going to be hearing over the next few months. Sit back, relax and set your reminders: the first episode drops on Monday 15th December.Hope to see you there!
Join us for Helen Lewis' nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame: Constance Bulwer-Lytton, daughter of a Viceroy, sister to an Earl – but one of the bravest suffragettes of them all.In changing women's history, she was imprisoned four times for campaigning for the vote, carved "V" for votes on her breast, went on hunger strike and was force-fed by prison guards.In Constance's own words, which can stand for so much political action:"People say, what does this hunger strike mean? Surely it is all folly. If it is not hysteria, at least it is unreasonable. They will not realise that we are like an army, that we are deputed to fight for a cause, and for other people, and in any struggle or any fight, weapons must be used . . . These women have chosen the weapon of self-hurt to make their protest, and this hunger strike . . . involves grave hurt and tremendous sacrifice, but this is on the part of the women only, and does not physically injure their enemies. Can that be called violence and hooliganism?"Constance celebrated women winning the vote in 1918, a milestone in women's history – but she did not live to see women wield the vote in true equality with men. Because it was only at the 1929 general election that men and women aged 21 and over entered the voting booth as equals. But Constance, fatally weakened by her treatment in prison, had already died six years earlier in 1923, at the age of 54.Hers was a bright short life in women's history: forgotten, unsung and hidden – but it is one captured beautifully by Helen here.
We are delighted to be joined today by Helen Lewis, whose new book, The Genius Myth, rips apart the stories we like to tell ourselves about ‘them’ – the heroic geniuses we idolise and adore. This is the ultimate history reboot.And it's one of the reasons we created Trapped History in the first place – because we don’t need more stories about Leonardo, Churchill or Elon. We need the hidden history, the forgotten history, the untold stories. But if anyone can take down ‘The Great Men of History’ it’s going to be Helen!So strap in as we rip through the centuries and the rulebook of what makes someone ‘special’, what constitutes ‘importance’ and why we might just be able to live without these geniuses.
Jet's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is an oldie – 850 years old, to be precise. A Renaissance Woman centuries before the Renaissance, a medieval queen of music, philosophy, science and medicine, the Mother of Everything: we give you Hildegard von Bingen. Throw in poetry, mysticism and sainthood and you have perhaps the greatest genius of the medieval world. A paragon of women's history and cultural history. Kings, emperors and popes certainly thought so as they sought our her teachings on the weightiest matters of the medieval age.So tune in to find out why a Gladiator thinks an Abbess should be in the Hall of Fame . . .
There’s a photo – you can google it – which when you see it, you’ll laugh, you’ll double-take, you’ll think ‘whaaaat?’. It’s of a young woman, she’s small, five foot nothing and she’s in a fitness gym. But it’s what she’s carrying that makes you stare. Because balanced on her shoulders is none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger.Her name is Lisa Lyon and she is a legend in the fitness world. The first female bodybuilding world champion, the inspiration for the Marvel superhero Elektra and the muse for the mould-breaking photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. So tune in for a very special episode as Carla and Oswin are joined by none other than Jet from Gladiators, Diane Jetstrong, to celebrate a woman who shook the worlds of fitness, art history, gender and health.
Tune in for a riveting Hall of Fame as Joshua Levine nominates Mick Gurmin, a member of the SAS before the SAS even existed. This is the very apex of forgotten history, hidden history and untold stories.Warned by the debonair master of deception Dudley Clark that "any carelessness or indiscretion on your part may well upset carefully arranged and important plans and have far-reaching consequences" Mick and a fellow soldier carried out their mission to bring the SAS to life with perfection.Find out what they did, what it meant and what Mick did next.
It's time for a history reboot. In this Trapped History Special, Oswin and historian Joshua Levine discuss truth, myth and storytelling in front of an invited audience at an event hosted by Saboteur, a London-based brand agency.In a wide-ranging conversation which covers everything from Trump and Putin to Downton and Dunkirk, we grapple with the fundamentals of what we mean when we talk about history, hidden history, forgotten history and unsung heroes. Josh gives us some fascinating insights into how history is turned into entertainment from his time as a historical consultant on blockbuster movies, while Oswin gives you his best (or actually his worst) Churchill impression! With extraordinary and sometimes shocking tales about the SAS, 911 and America's longstanding desire for Canada, this is a great summertime listen which will set you up nicely for the rest of the season.
Tune in to hear the historian Gwen Strauss' nominee for the Trapped History Hall of Fame. A hidden history hero of the Resistance, she is someone we have truly never heard of but she is perhaps one of the bravest people we should know about.Please be upstanding for Odette Pilpoul, the Parisian soul of the French Resistance who took it upon herself to document and save evidence of atrocities when she survived a series of concentration camps and bore witness to the horrors perpetrated against the Resistance and the people of France.
It’s October 1940 and you are walking down a dusty lane when someone slips a scrap of paper into your hand. You hold it tightly in your palm, waiting until you’re round a corner and away from prying eyes. When you manage to find that moment and open the folded paper square, you read: “Milena from Prague requests a meeting.”You are Margarete Buber-Neumann and you are a prisoner in Ravensbruck concentration camp. The note in your hand is from Milena Jesenska, a Czech legend who has just arrived in the camp after being swept up in the Holocaust. It is a note which heralds the beginnings of hope, of friendship – of love – in the midst of death.Join Oswin and Carla as the Holocaust historian Gwen Strauss tells the life-affirming and heart-breaking tale of Grete and Milena as they try to find a reason to live among the ruins of the Holocaust. Theirs is a forgotten history, a hidden history of queer life and death and it should act as an inspiration to us all.
Please put your hands together for Sarah-Jane Morris' Hall of Fame nominee, music's hidden hero Mary Margaret O'Hara. So many of our nominees are lost in the mists of history. They are part of our forgotten history, our hidden history. But Mary Margaret O'Hara is very much still with us.She is loved and admired by other music industry greats, such as Michael Stipe, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones and Everything But The Girl. Mary makes music magic and Sarah-Jane thinks we should love her too. And we think she's right!
A decade before Dylan, there was Connie Converse – arguably the very first singer-songwriter with inner-city tales of loss and longing. But have you heard of her? Have you heard her music?Connie's story is the epitome of forgotten history, hidden history. But her name deserves to be shouted from the rooftops.Oswin and Carla are joined today by the singer Sarah-Jane Morris to help us understand the joy and sorrow of Connie’s short life, the pressures on women in the music industry then and now and how luck, time and place can conspire to sweep unsung heroes away – even as their music still remains.
Nihal Arthanayake's nomination for the Trapped History Hall of Fame is a great one. The lost, forgotten and overlooked Sri Lankan hidden hero of architecture Minnette de Silva.She was the first Asian woman elected to the Royal Institute of British Architects and a friend of Le Corbusier and Picasso. But she's been overshadowed by those men of architecture and cultural history.So tune in to hear her architecture story and why she means so much to Nihal.
How do you hear the testimony of someone who has been terrorised and tortured? How do you listen as a perpetrator defends their crimes? How can two peoples who have hated and killed each other throughout history learn to live in peace?These are the questions unsung hero Helen Bamber asked herself when she travelled to Belsen at the end of WW2 and bore witness to untold stories when she engaged survivors in conversation. She would spend her whole life working with victims of genocide, torture and human trafficking and her questions are as vital today as they were 80 years ago as we try rebooting history.Tune in for a riveting conversation as the broadcaster and author Nihal Arthanayake joins Oswin, Carla and MK for our season opener on why we need to have this conversation, why listening is as important as talking and why connection is our only hope for the future.
Our new season kicks off proper next week with an enthralling episode where the broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake helps us tell the story of the woman who listened – the great Helen Bamber. And we’ll be taking you all the way through the summer till it starts getting cold again – introducing you to the tragic tale of the first singer-songwriter alongside the Communards’ Sarah-Jane Morris, the first female bodybuilding world champion with Jet from Gladiators, a story of love among the ruins of the concentration camps with the historian Gwen Strauss and the rollicking tale of genius and self-deception with the author Helen Lewis.But to whet your appetite . . . we are absolutely delighted to give you this wonderful taster from the brilliant Astrid & Chinny, the brains behind the award-winning It’s A Continent Podcast. Which uncovers key moments in African history, one nation at a time. It is bite-sized history, it is accessible history and it is history which will deepen and broaden all of our understanding. So I strongly recommend seeking them out on apple, spotify, wherever you listen to stuff, right after you’ve listened to this episode.Which we particularly want to share because Astrid and Chinny got there before us! I really think that this person is someone we should all know about and carry his name in our hearts. He is Patrice Lumumba, and he was a distinguished Pan-African politician who served as the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo after the country gained independence. Patrice was well-connected but as he became more politically active and vocal, calling for an end to Belgium's rule and advocating for his country's independence, he became a target of both the Belgian and American governments.To such a point that we need to give you a trigger warning: there is a graphic depiction of death at the 29 minute mark.In the meantime, sit back, enjoy the ride and make sure you’re back here from 1st July for the rest of Trapped History’s summer season.
A heads-up for Season 5 of Trapped History which drops from 1st July. Carla can't wait and neither can we, so head over to trappedhistory.com and subscribe!
We've spent so long asking our guests who they'd like to see in the Trapped History Hall of Fame, that for our 30th episode we thought we'd do something a bit different.And so Carla, MK and Oswin have each brought along someone they'd like to see honoured in the Hall of Fame. Tune in for a whistle-stop tour through the lives of a First World War heroine, a couple who fought for freedom in South Africa and a union leader who was a conscientious objector.Three different stories, four hidden heroes and forgotten stories, but we hope you will agree, they led some of the fullest and most compelling lives you will hear of.We want to hear your own nominations for the Hall of Fame, so be inspired and head over to trappedhistory.com to send us your own nominees.
Here's a taster of Season 4, starting with Mishal Husain's Broken Threads before moving on to Mishka Sinha on Untold Lives, Kim Wager on Making Sense of Murder, Chris French on the Amazing Randi, Clare Mulley on Agent Zo and finally, Martin Burton AKA Zippo the Clown on the Animal King. Enjoy!
Roll up, roll up for the Season Four closer — as we take a trip to the circus!At Trapped History, we look at lives and stories which have been forgotten or ignored, and there is one community in Britain which is still shrouded in mystery even in the 21st century: that of the circus people. So who better to lift the curtain than the King of the Ring himself, Zippo the Clown — or just plain Martin Burton to us.Not only does Martin shine a light on the lure of the circus but he also joins us on a journey back in time, when America was in thrall to the greatest showman of all — Frank Bostock, the Animal King from Darlington. Frank's is an astonishing story and an amazing life, which tells us so much about the glory years at the turn of the 20th century when technology, travel and theatre collided to create the magical potion of 'Spectacle'.