Hi all, welcome back (again) - sorry it’s a week later than planned… a few ongoing voice issues from the cold. This week we conclude the tale of Sidney Reilly and the ‘Red Terror.’

Sources Include:

R.H. Bruce-Lockhart ‘Memoirs of a British Agent’ Sidney Reilly + Pepita Bobadilla ‘ Adventures of a British Master Spy’ James Palmer ‘The Bloody White Baron’

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Tales of History and Imagination has ‘X-it-ed’ from Musk’s hellsite, sorry Twitter folk. But I can be found on…

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Hi all, welcome back - sorry it’s a week later than planned… I had a nasty cold. This week we’re in Russia just after the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks have taken over, plunging the nation even further into disarray. They’re determined to exit the First World War.

Britain, knowing this would be disastrous for their war with Germany need a hero to go in there and upset the apple cart - the kind of talented, yet completely amoral man Ian Fleming would draw on years later when crafting his best known invention - James Bond.

This week, part one of two: Who was Sidney Reilly, and how did Russia find herself in this mess?

Sources Include:

R.H. Bruce-Lockhart ‘Memoirs of a British Agent’ Pepita Bobadilla & Sidney Reilly ‘ Adventures of a British Master Spy’ This ‘Spycraft 101’ episode Featuring Giles Milton

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly.

Tales of History and Imagination has ‘X-it-ed’ from Musk’s hellsite, sorry Twitter folk. But I can be found on…

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Hi all, Happy Holidays! This year I’ve got a ghost story for you all. Today we travel to Greenbrier County, West Virginia in 1897.

Sources Include:

Again this week I’ve gone from a handful of online articles, a few online genealogy pages - and a couple of podcast episodes.

Including…

‘How The ‘Greenbrier Ghost’ Helped Convict a West Virginia Murderer in 1897’ by Joey Rather. This website on ghosts in West Virginia. ‘Can We ‘See’ Dead People?’ By Mark Shelvock. ‘The Greenbrier Ghost’ by Brian Dunning. Zona Heaster Shoe’s ‘Family Search’ genealogy page. Erasmus Stribbling Shoe’s listing on Find a Grave.

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination has made our ‘X-it’ from Musk’s hellsite (and will be deleting my profile in the new year,) but I’m still on

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This week we travel to Tana Island, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) in the midst of World War Two. God has returned - and not a moment too soon. Having abandoned them decades earlier, just as bad men with awful intentions arrived to steal their land - and send their people off to far away locales to be worked to death - he was back, as an American soldier named John Frum.

Sources Include:

This week a lot of articles (which I had saved in tabs - when my iPad crashed and needed a restore…This is as best I remember it.)

In John They Trust by Paul Raffaele This explainer in the Guardian This Guardian article by Christopher Lord Archiving a Prophecy: An ethnographic history of the ‘John Frum files’ (Tanna, Vanuatu, 1941–1980) by Marc Tabani This short piece on the NZ History site (that confirms my memory NZ too had blackbirded labour) How Blackbirding Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders into Slavery After the Civil War by Shoshi Parks Blackbirding and Indentured Labour in 19th Century Queensland by Sue Thompson From the Islands by Scott Hamilton (everyone should go and follow Scott on Twitter, if you’re still on there… I miss not seeing him in my feed, now I’ve X-ited) Hunting the Blackbirder: Ross-Lewin and the Royal Navy by Doug Hunt

There were a handful more, including pages of old newspaper clippings on the Daphne Slave-ship bust, and a couple of articles specific to Blackbirding in Peru - I apologise for not backing these sources up somewhere as I went…

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This week, how do I sum this up? I was freewheeling a little today, but have I got a tale of resistance, and a weird little man for you all. Anthony Comstock was a weird, joyless guy - and his ‘Comstockery’ ruined many ordinary lives - but hell hath no fury like Margaret Sanger and Katharine Dexter McCormick - our heroines this week.

Sources Include:

I was free associating things I knew this week, rather than going off a script - but Andrew Marr’s A History of the World was where I first came across this tale.

Tyler Mahan Coe’s episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones on Loretta Lynn’s The Pill is definitely in the mix on this one too…

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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Come over and follow me there - it’s better than hanging out on X with Elon… I’ll be deleting my profile over there in the coming days.

Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.

Hi there all, just dropping a quick note, before I return to the writing desk… USA I’m aghast… and worried, and saddened by recent turns of events. And tonight I just wanted to send you all my love (well, obviously not all of you… some of you voted for a fascist) and just explain why I’m pulling an upcoming episode… hit play, spoken me explains it all better… No ‘Sources Include’ tonight - unless you’re in fight back mode - in which case no specific recommendation, but I’ll be looking round for a good book on the French Popular Front movement who formed in 1936, and destroyed the ascendant French fascist party, the Croix De Feu. Paul Mason’s How to Stop Fascism is as good a place to start as any… Hang in there USA…

This week, it’s Halloween! So, naturally I’ve got a tale of… well, historic hotel rooms in Kansas City, Missouri… And a notorious murder carried out in Room 1046 of the Hotel President..

Sources Include:

This fantastic article by John Horner, which appears the font of a dozen or so other articles I read through. This post by the ‘Murder She Told’ podcast This article on Tom Pendegast by K.C. Yesterday

And a handful of things found in online newspaper archives and genealogy sites.

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.

This week we return to Cuba to conclude our miniseries on the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week we discuss arctic explorers, nuclear test sites, saboteurs, spy planes gone awry, submarines and why I think having such power out there in an age where a ‘mad king’ could come to power is still very disconcerting.

Sources Include: One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination is on

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Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.