In this episode Robert Sackville-West takes us back to the desperate days of the First World War a century ago. He shows us how the bereaved attempted to come to terms with their loss.

Long into the sixteenth century monasteries remained a familiar and vital part of English society. And yet within a few short years in the 1530s, 850 of these institutions vanished for good. In this episode Clark takes us back to 1540, a year at the very heart of this dramatic, contentious, violent story.

In January 1649 King Charles I was executed at Whitehall. This violent event came at the end of a tumultuous decade of civil war and religious strife. It preceded a year that was notable in other ways. In today’s episode Malcolm Gaskill takes us on a tour of 1649 to see the death of a king, the birth of a movement and an accusation of witchcraft.

In this episode we meet the resistance fighter Catherine Dior, youngest sister of one of France’s most renowned designers, and we consider the question: how can individuals and nations ever move on from the trauma of war? 

Tutankhamun. That one word is enough to conjure up enticing images of Ancient Egypt: dashing chariots, mighty temples, skiffs sailing on the Nile and, most of all, Tutankhamun’s transfixing Golden Mask.  But who really was this figure who has come to represent so much?

Skara Brae is the best-preserved Neolithic settlement in all Western Europe and, for today’s guest Neil Oliver, it is a place that continues to enchant him. In this beautifully-described episode he takes us back to the third millennium BC to see Skara Brae as it lived and to ponder why it died.

Not far from the coast, at the mouth of the River Scheldt, sits the city of Antwerp. It’s location, both geographically and politically, has shaped the city’s rich and enticing identity. As Michael Pye, this week’s guest, tells us, in the sixteenth-century Antwerp was known as the ‘city at the hub of the world.’

Few inventions have reshaped human society like that of the printing press. In this absorbing episode the author Susan Denham Wade takes us back to the year 1454, to a little workshop in the city of Mainz, to witness a magnificent moment in technological history.

Sunday 18 June 1815 is a date of enormous consequence in western history. It was the day when the two pre-eminent military commanders of their time – Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington – came face to face in battle.

Welcome to Season Five! In this first episode we sit down with one of the world’s great historians. Stephen Greenblatt takes us back to the late sixteenth century to witness the death of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Welcome to a whole new series of exciting history podcasts, from Travels Through Time!