history café
stories that need a fresh brew
A Brilliant Cut Production
100 evergreen episodes
WHAT'S NEW
WHAT'S NEW
Broadcasting now
MURDER. MYSTERY AT THE NORTH POLE
In 1908 and 1909 two white Americans, one black American Mat Henson, and six Inughuit: Ittukusuk and Aapilaq, Egingwah, Ootah, Ooqueah and Seegloo claimed to have reached the North Pole – a patch of constantly moving sea ice. US Navy Commander Robert Peary who led the later expedition spent the rest of his life trying to cover his own dubious tracks and to prove that the earlier claim on the Pole by his old companion Dr Frederick Cook had been a fake. Since the technology of the day made it impossible for anyone to prove they’d reached the Pole we ask what mystery drew them to risk madness and death nearly 500 miles out onto dangerously thin sea ice. It turns out to be a heady cocktail of American money, ambition and self-doubt. The Wild West on ice! [Four episodes]
The History Café is the place to try out new ideas about historical episodes. We can check out stories that have got stuck in our collective memory and yet don’t seem to us to ring true. Together, we can ask ‘why would they do that?’, ‘can we believe that?’
We’re never going to be able to cram everything into one narrative. Like a good cup of coffee, there are going to be dark and complex secrets underneath the frothy top of events.
Finding another layer is always exciting. And we want you to pull up a chair, get yourself a hot drink, and join in the conversation.
Why the History Café?
What kind of history do we do?
We take a new and entertaining look at the stories we discuss. What marks out our conversations is that, however much we knock new ideas around, and however much fun we’re having with them, under the surface we’re always looking for the best research and working with sharply rigorous method. After all, there are sack-fulls of exciting new research hidden away in obscure and difficult academic publications, all waiting to be turned into stories that everybody can enjoy. So we follow our hunches and begin putting some of this history through our History Café mill.
When you stop to think about the history we all know, you quickly start to wonder whether we’ve got the right story …
For example, we rarely stop to ask how Hitler was able to mount a costly, mechanised world war when Germany had few of the raw materials needed for weapons and so soon after its defeat in World War One and the effects of the depression.
Most of us grew up thinking Hitler meant to invade Britain in 1940. But as soon as you stop to think about it, it makes no sense. Hitler had far more urgent targets - like the Soviet Union - and every ranking German officer knew that his navy was never anywhere near big enough to pull it off. German planes had sunk a few British ships while they were in harbour or just outside. But their pilots told Hitler to his face they could not protect a German seaborne invasion in the open Channel. So what was really going on?
Henry VIII puts his kingdom at risk because some junior maid at his court held out on him. You really have to be joking.
In 1605 Guy Fawkes and one other man were horribly tortured into ‘confessing’ that they were going to blow the English Parliament up. Nobody takes confessions extracted under torture seriously these days. So why is there no other evidence for the Gunpowder Plot at all?
Why did President Kennedy make a world-threatening crisis out of Soviet missiles on Cuba in 1962 when his own experts - and his allies - were all telling him loudly and clearly that he could safely just ignore them?
The British ended enslavement because the government was finally persuaded it was a bad thing to do? Or was it a matter of avoiding a financial crash?
Emmeline Pankhurst told her supporters that votes for women had been achieved in 1918 because of her exceptional leadership. It doesn’t look like it. In 1916 Mrs Pankhurst wrote to Tory politicians to say that she would be perfectly happy for the soldiers to get the vote, and not the women at all.
It’s always more exciting
than we expected
You let us do the hard thinking. We let you know what we find. Conspiracy theorists eat your heart out. This is history rooted in the best research and the best method. And what comes out of our History Café mill is astonishing and fun, history like you’ve never heard it.
Our big series are interspersed with individual episodes and short series on stories as diverse as Isaac Newton’s alchemy, the invention of Scottishness, and the hidden importance of 1930s Hollywood dress designer Adrian Greenberg.
What makes us different?
We immerse ourselves in the latest scholarship on a subject in world class libraries. Then we take a tough, rigorous look, before we sit back and throw it around at the History Café. And there….
We tamp down the evidence
We look at the story everyone knows, and then ask ‘what don’t we know?’ and ‘what do we really know?’ and how does that differ from ‘what we’ve been told?’ ‘and by whom?’ ‘and for what reason?’ And what do the sources tell us about who wrote them, and who they were written for?
We look around the room
We find out what else was going on at the time. The trick is to leave behind the usual suspects historians have got into the habit of talking to and take a moment to glance around a bit. Pull up some more chairs. Maybe go and sit at another table and see things from a different perspective. Widen the conversation. We ask ‘who has been left out of this story’, ‘by whom?’ and ‘for what purpose’? We see what they’ve got to say.
We run the story through our history coffee machine
We think about change over time – how the story develops as it goes on. Also about cause. History is real life. And real life is complex. Every event has many causes. Every individual has many motivations. We throw away the used grounds of myth and propaganda.
And we chat
Finally, because this is the History Café, we try out new ideas or theories on each other, and invite you to join in the conversation. Let us know what you think about our ideas. Contact us on Facebook, Twitter or through our contact page.