Showing results by narrator "Greg Jenner" in All Categories

Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realize. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience....

Responding to fifty genuine questions from the public, Greg Jenner takes you on an entertaining tour through history from the Stone Age to the Swinging Sixties, revealing the best and most surprising stories, facts and historical characters from the past. From ancient joke books, African empires and the invention of meringues, to mummies, mirrors and menstrual pads—Ask A Historian is a deliciously amusing and informative smorgasbord of historical curiosities.

Historian Greg Jenner uses a random date generator to visit somewhere in the BBC's vast archives of remarkable sound clips from the last 100 years. Using that clip as a jumping-off point to explore what has changed between then and now, Greg talks to experts and those connected to the archived people, places, and ideas, including Stephen Fry, writer Naomi Alderman, playwright Nell Leyshon, social historian Carol Dyhouse, author and disability campaigner Dr Amit Patel, food historian Annie Gray, and inveterate tennis fan Geoff Dyer.