Oliver Cromwell. Queen Victoria. George V. All contenders for the title of England's greatest monarch, a poll for which took place on a twitter over the last week. We know that Athelstan went on to win, but in this episode Tom and Dominic run through the sovereigns who fell at the first hurdle. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After an intense tournament featuring sixteen of the finest Kings and Queens this island has to offer, the people have decided the greatest king of England also happens to be the first. The 10th century grandson of Alfred the Great united the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and saw off the Vikings, so Tom explains why we should all be Æthel-STANS. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Discovered this territory, 1770". So reads the inscription on a statue of Captain Cook in Hyde Park, Sydney. But did he really discover it? Tom and Dominic are joined by David Hunt to explore the long story of human settlement in Australia, and of the European explorers who reached it before Captain Cook ever sighted Botany Bay. (Also features giant wombats) *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1973: Major oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia quadruple the price of oil overnight, sending the West (particularly the United Kingdom) into crisis. The face of 20th century geopolitics is permanently altered. Slade are Christmas number 1. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who's England's greatest monarch? Voting starts on Saturday 13th November, go to @TheRestHistory on Twitter to get involved. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the anniversary of the day the guns fell silent on the Western Front, we look at the last moments of the First World War – and how we remember them. How did Remembrance Day start? What are the stories behind the Cenotaph and the Unknown Warrior? Why do we wear poppies? And will we always remember the fallen - or is it time to forget? *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the second part of our Alexander the Great special, we head to the limits of the known world, burning down palaces, storming mountain-top fortresses and battling elephants as we go. Might Alexander have kept his empire together had he lived? What killed him? Why is he in the Qur’an? *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alexander the Great is the most charismatic conqueror in history. Tom and Dominic, in the first of a two part special, trace the course of his dazzling career from Macedonia to his mysterious journey to the oracle at Siwa. Man or god? Visionary or blood-stained tyrant? The debate rages on! *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

‘Remember, remember / the Fifth of November / Gunpowder, treason & plot.” But what is it exactly we are remembering on Bonfire Night? Tom & Dominic explore what - if it had succeeded - would have been the most spectacular terrorist attack in British history: its background, its legacy, & the controversies that still bedevil our understanding of it. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Like Merlin, who lived his life in reverse, we go backwards in time as we continue our two-part series on paganism. Renaissance philosophers; green men; a pagan city in the early caliphate; hooded gods on Hadrian’s Wall; Stonehenge; cannibals (or were they?) in Cheddar Gorge; and the oldest evidence ever found of pagan practice in Britain. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the first of a two part Hallowe’en special, Tom and Dominic are joined by Professor Ronald Hutton to explore the history of modern paganism: from Wicca to Druids, and from Himmler to the Glastonbury Festival. Do its roots reach back to a genuine pre-Christian past? *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The word ‘medieval’ is often used to mean backward, benighted, unscientific. But is this fair? Historian of science Seb Falk joins Tom and Dominic to explore how the Middle Ages shaped and influenced the development of science. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, to be Dutch in the seventeenth century. Or Roman in 150 AD. Or British in the 1990's. Tom and Dominic debate the merits of various "Golden Ages" in history, and ask whether we might have seen the last. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Curator and art historian Aparna Andhare gives Tom and Dominic her selection of the ten buildings that best illustrate India’s past 4,500 years. Ranging from Mohenjo-daro to Narendra Modi, all the Subcontinent’s history is here. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Joey McCarthy Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How did the existence of dinosaurs come to be discovered, & what role have they played in the popular imagination over the past 200 years? And what can humanity learn from the extinction of dinosaurs - if indeed they ARE extinct? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook explore the constantly evolving after-life of dinosaurs. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Joey McCarthy Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did the industrial revolution really improve people’s lives? And why was Britain first to industrialise? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are joined by Emma Griffin, professor of modern history and author of Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite his overwhelming lead in the polls, President Richard Nixon’s paranoia leads to the criminal actions of the Watergate scandal. In this second part of our mini-series, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland explore the unravelling of the conspiracy and its consequences for US politics. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Harry Lineker Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What led Richard Nixon into the greatest political scandal in American history? Dominic Sandbrook, acclaimed historian of the period, leads Tom Holland on an extraordinary journey from Nixon’s humble beginnings through his political rise and to the precipice of his downfall. The first in a two part mini-series. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Harry Lineker Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The world’s most famous classicist, Professor Mary Beard, joins Tom and Dominic to discuss how the legacy of classical Greece and Rome has been interpreted and re-interpreted over the past millennium and a half. They range from Dante’s Satan snacking on Julius Caesar’s assassins in Hell to recent demands in the United States that Classics itself should be cancelled. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WARNING: THIS PODCAST INCLUDES SPOILERS ABOUT THE NEW JAMES BOND MOVIE. DO NOT LISTEN UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN THE FILM. What does the new Bond movie tell us about modern masculinity? And where does the franchise go from here? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland share notes on No Time to Die. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Harry Lineker Exec Producer Tony Pastor Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices