Tag Archives: podcast

Norman Centuries by Lars Brownworth

Recently (2025) I have been revisiting some of the initial material which informed Three Acres And A Cow’s early days (2012) and it was a happy week last week as I made time to relistened to the Norman Centuries podcast, made back in 2009.

This was very early days for podcasting and the production values are highly variable, verging on almost unlistenable in places – with one episode that is distorted all the way through! But the research and presentation is compelling and very very useful for anyone who wants to truly understand English history.

I would class this podcast as ‘Norman aversion therapy’ due to it being the main source of information that allowed me to cultivate some grudging respect for the Normans and as well as some empathy for Guillaume the bastard, as his childhood was frankly a horrific shit show.

https://normancenturies.com

Popular Protest in Early Modern England (47 mins)

Yale University lecture on Popular Protest by Professor Keith E. Wrightson is taken from his Open Yale online course Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts which has links to all the lectures as videos – the one on Popular Protest can be found as a podcast here or in video form here.

If you read our blogs often, you’ll know that we are massive fans of the podcast in the herd. This one was sent over to us by Peter Bearder who has recently launched an excellent book called Stage Invasion, on the history of spoken word and poetry.

BBC ‘In Our Time’ on the Highland Clearances (51 mins)

I’ve posted links to Melvyn Braggs ‘In Our Time‘ podcasts/radio shows a number of times on this website but it has to be said that I’ve always been a little weary of them… something about the fact that the large majority of the guests are Oxbridge academics and the number of massively posh accents always leaves a little bell of warning ringing somewhere that I’m getting the official ruling classes imperial spin on history.

I remember having a post show email disagreement with one of Melvyn’s academic guests after their ‘Putney Debates’ show managed to completely ignore the issue of land during the civil war period which still seems a critical oversight from other things I’ve learnt and read.

I’ve had a number of people email me the recent episode on the Highland Clearances (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tc4tm) which seemed quite revisionist to my mind when I listened to it. I thought nothing more of it at the time, but then someone posted a fine response via Bella Caledonia which I think is worth bringing to your attention: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/11/in-our-time-but-not-in-our-voice/