Episodes

  • Paris in the Belle Époque with Marie Kawthar Daouda

    Paris in the Belle Époque with Marie Kawthar Daouda
    Jul 25 2024
    Marie Kawthar Daouda, author and a lecturer in French language and literature at the University of Oxford, joins EI's Alastair Benn to discuss how Belle Époque-era Paris continues to fascinate, with its burgeoning commercial culture, everyday beauty and glittering department stores.

    Image: Jean Béraud's painting 'Paris, rue du Havre', c. 1882. Credit: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo
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    24 mins
  • Bringing history to the public with Alice Loxton

    Bringing history to the public with Alice Loxton
    Jul 18 2024
    The historian and broadcaster Alice Loxton joins the EI team to discuss her forthcoming book, Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, and her fight to bring serious history to a wider public.

    Image: A jigsaw puzzle from the early nineteenth century, bearing representations of the Kings and Queens of England from William I to George IV. Credit: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo
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    31 mins
  • How advertising consumed the counterculture with Ian Leslie

    How advertising consumed the counterculture with Ian Leslie
    Jul 11 2024
    EI's Alastair Benn sits down with Ian Leslie, author of Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together, to discuss how the counterculture went mainstream.

    Image: An advert on the Nike store at Oxford Circus. Credit: Matthew Chattle / Alamy Stock Photo
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    18 mins
  • Ronald Reagan's grand strategy with William Inboden

    Ronald Reagan's grand strategy with William Inboden
    Jul 4 2024
    EI's Angus Reilly discusses how Ronald Reagan put economic openness at the heart of the battle for ideas against Soviet Communism with William Inboden, author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.

    Image: Ronald Reagan at the Durenberger Republican convention Rally, 1982. Credit: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
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    32 mins
  • Marketing Classical music with Richard Bratby

    Marketing Classical music with Richard Bratby
    Jun 27 2024
    EI's Alastair Benn discusses the condition of Classical music today with Richard Bratby, chief Classical music critic of The Spectator.

    Image: Music scores. Credit: Tim Gainey / Alamy Stock Photo
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    22 mins
  • John Law and financial crises with Kwasi Kwarteng

    John Law and financial crises with Kwasi Kwarteng
    Jun 20 2024
    EI's Iain Martin is joined by Kwasi Kwarteng, historian and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, to discuss the turbulent life of the 18th-century financial speculator John Law, whose innovative ideas were credited with bringing Ancien Régime France to the brink of ruin. There are echoes of what happened when the Truss government tried its own financial experiment, he acknowledges.

    Image: A cartoon of John Law (1671–1729), the Scottish economist who was appointed Controller General of Finances of France under King Louis XV. Credit: PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo
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    28 mins
  • Women of the ancient world with Daisy Dunn

    Women of the ancient world with Daisy Dunn
    Jun 13 2024
    The leading classicist Daisy Dunn joins EI's Paul Lay to discuss her new book, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It.

    Image: Nikolaos Gyzis, a 19th Century painter, depicts Sappho playing the lyre. Credit: Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo
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    37 mins
  • The history of democracy with Erica Benner

    The history of democracy with Erica Benner
    May 30 2024
    Erica Benner applies ancient wisdom to modern problems in her new book Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power. She shares her insights with EI's Deputy Editor, Alastair Benn.

    Image: Gathering of the Areopagus, a deliberative court that met in the open air in ancient Athens. Credit: North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo
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    56 mins