The British History Podcast

255 – Londonwic to London

on September 28, 2017July 13, 2021 By Jamie

London is a world unto itself, and it has been for most of its very, very long history. One of the weirdest things about the city is that it contains its own separate city – distinct from the rest of London. It has its own laws, its own government, its own walls. The City of London is a city within a city.

And it gets a lot of attention, not to mention money. Currently it houses the financial district which houses the most powerful banking institutions of not only the UK, but the entire world.

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254 – Worcester

on September 14, 2017July 13, 2021 By Jamie

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If you read of old Britain… even if you read of modern Britain… you’d be forgiven if you thought it was all London. And London does soak up a ton of the spotlight. It’s like the Stonehenge of the non-neolithic period. You can’t avoid it. And we won’t here, either. London will be covered regularly, because it has to be. But today, lets talk about a different town. Because while London is important, it’s not the only urban center on the island, and while we’ve been talking about the development of the economic landscape of the Anglo Saxon territories during the Viking Age… we haven’t yet talked about how these town specifically functioned and developed.

So today, let’s use Worcester as a non-London Anglo Saxon case study.

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253 – Anglo Saxon Market Towns in the Viking Age

on September 7, 2017July 13, 2021 By Jamie

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Cultures change all the time – yours is changing right now, in ways you may or may not realize. It’s a completely normal, everyday fact that has been with humanity since we began. Probably before we began. And yet, telling the story of how a culture changed is extremely challenging. Cultural shifts are messy, they’re chaotic, and they come with a boat load of caveats and exceptions. The entire theme of the BHP, right from the start, has been that people can’t be pigeon holed. They’re complicated, unique, and they never perfectly fit into a category.

And yet, even as we acknowledge that, we must recognize trends and norms and traditions – if for no other reason than they do actually change over time.

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