Category: Chapter Two

62 – Staffordshire Hoard: Rise Up O Lord

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Today’s episode features Cathy Shingler, of The Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent.  She will be discussing with us the iconic band, possibly from a cross, with Latin inscriptions along both sides of it.  We will also speak about the cultural significance of the materials used in many of the objects found in the Hoard, as well as a discussion regarding a rather intriguing Anglo Saxon god.  I hope you like it!

Below you’ll see a few photographs of the golden strip we’re discussing as well as links to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent, and the site dedicated to The Staffordshire Hoard.

A strip of gold bearing a Biblical inscription is held by a member of museum staff in Birmingham, central England

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Staffordshire Hoard: www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk
The Potteries Museum: www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag
The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: www.bmag.org.uk

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61 – Staffordshire Hoard: Introduction

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Today we are beginning our project on the Staffordshire Hoard.  We will be featuring interviews from major figures within the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent, and with the Staffordshire County Council.

The Staffordshire Hoard: www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk
The Potteries Museum: www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag
The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: www.bmag.org.uk

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59 – The Halloween Special

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As you might imagine since I’m doing an episode on it, Halloween has a lot of British influence upon it. In fact, the name itself comes from Scotland, where All Saint’s Eve (also known as All Hallow’s Eve) was shortened in the 16th century to Halloween. And the name stuck. But as you have probably gathered, originally the day was simply the day before All Saint’s Day (also known as All Hallows or Hallowmas). And this might come as a shock to you, but All Saint’s Day was the day in which early Christians commemorated all their saints… and it is still practiced today.

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57 – A Tale of Three Cities (sort of)

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Ok, we’ve been getting pretty deep into the weeds and have been getting farther and farther from a coherent story. On the one hand, the culture is the story, but on the other hand it’s hard to get attached to a story if you forget who we are talking about and the people involved. So I thought that now would be a good time to tell a story about a community that was living in the early post-Roman era. After all, I’ve been spending a lot of time telling you how things weren’t as bad as you imagine so I might have given you the impression things were fine. They weren’t. Especially in the early parts, people were sickly, their lives were bleak, and it was a scary and violent time to be alive. That isn’t to say that people in the Roman era, especially the poor, were healthy and happy… it looks like they were also in pretty dire straights when compared to their Iron Age kin. But I think it’s important to put some of this stuff into context and remember that, while things weren’t necessarily as awful and culturally devoid as people might imagine, things were still pretty rough. Especially in the early parts.

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56 – Telling the Full Story (a Bonus Episode)

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So I’m doing a short midweek episode because something’s been irking me. I’ve heard repeatedly from a variety of people that history is a guy thing. And that’s f#*king stupid. I mean, you could say that just on sheer mathematics, 51% of history is a female thing. But that’s not the truth of it. The truth is that history is a human thing. These are everyone’s stories and while there were a ridiculous number of biased primary sources who focused on almost exclusively on men, it is our job to rise above those sources because if you are ignoring over half of the population you are ignoring the majority of our shared history. But unfortunately, many historians and narrators don’t rise above it. The easy path is to just speak about the men of society because the great man approach has been a historical trope since at least the Roman era. But it’s incomplete.

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55 – Anglo Saxon Construction

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OK, So I had requests for an episode on construction. I actually had a surprising number of requests for it, actually. So we’re going to do a single episode on how things were built, and since we’ve been talking about feasts, we’ll talk about… of course… feasting halls.

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53 – Producing the BHP Full Time, a Proposal

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Ok, so right now I’m in a situation where I might need to make some hard choices on where my time goes. The thing is that this has been one of the best experiences of my life, but for financial reasons I might need to go back to law full time. The problem there being that law is one of those jobs that doesn’t leave room for much else.

Obviously, I would prefer to continue telling you stories. I think I have a knack for it, and I feel like discussing our shared history is important. And there’s a bunch of fun stuff that I have been working on and would love to do. Such as getting more interviews with experts, new side stories (similar to what I’ve been doing with St. Patrick) and I’ve even been looking into putting together tours. But for me to give this project the attention it deserves I need to do it full time, rather than as a hobby I squeeze in between cases.

So I thought I’d apply for the job of entertaining you. By my math, I need 150 new members in order to be able to afford to do this full time. After all, I’m not looking to get rich. I just want to be able to dedicate all my time to doing this podcast.

So if you like what I’m doing here, and you’d like me to do this full time, please consider becoming a member over at www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com. For around the price of a latte each month my day job could be telling you stories, hunting down new things to share with you, and bringing you interviews with experts on the material we have all come to know.

To pique your interest, I’ve got several incentives that I have listed over on the website which include a future series analyzing the tale of King Arthur, a special on Stonehenge, and even a trip to the UK with get togethers and perhaps even a group outing to the British Museum or something along those lines.

The truth of it is that I love this project. And I would really like to work for you full time. So I hope you’ll consider hiring me.

Besides, does the world really need another lawyer?

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