Cold War

How did certain people come to be called ‘the Great’? Is the notion of great men and women outmoded? Can anyone today be reckoned ‘great’? Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook take a wide rang…

From the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, history is littered with the building of barriers aimed at keeping people out, and sometimes in. Do they work? Are they ever a good thing? Tom Holland…

Who is the greatest British Prime Minister of them all? The bookmakers have Winston Churchill favourite to lift the crown, but William Gladstone and Maggie Thatcher won’t give up the fight without a s…

History is littered with stories of espionage and its capacity to change the course of events. But does spying truly matter and has the human operative finally been replaced by the computer? Ben MacI…

It was one of the great political ideologies of the 20th century, vying with capitalism for supremacy. Now communism has retreated from the political mainstream having failed to create the utopia of…

No war has divided public opinion more than the conflict in Vietnam. Andrew Preston, Cambridge University Professor of American History, joins Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland to discuss the internat…

Tom and Dominic continue their journey through the history of the Olympics, turning their attention from post-war to the present day.  They discuss Cold War rivalries, financial extravagance, the…

60 years ago this month, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) began building a barrier that divided the city of Berlin. It stood until 1989 and came to symbolise the front line of the Cold Wa…

The year is 1983, and on November the 8th the world is the closest it’s ever been to nuclear destruction, yet nobody at the time realises. Dominic and Tom are joined by author and historian Taylor Dow…

Writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade joins Dominic and Tom to discuss the pan-African movement and the varying ways in which African states became independent from their European colonisers during the 20t…

The fictional British agent James Bond returns to our cinema screens this week, but what do the history and evolution of Ian Fleming’s iconic character tell us about our changing society? Dominic Sand…

As Angela Merkel bows out of German politics, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland explore the surprisingly colourful world of Germany’s Chancellors since the Second World War. It’s a story of rebels, ex…

1973: Major oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia quadruple the price of oil overnight, sending the West (particularly the United Kingdom) into crisis. The face of 20th century geopolitics is perm…

The USA's Central Intelligence Agency is a mysterious organisation which has used covert methods to assassinate enemies, influence governments and tip whole countries into revolution - or so countless…

In Tom and Dominic's inaugural livestream for the Rest is History Club, we dive into one of the most seminal decades in modern history: the 1960s. Should the period be remembered as a byword for cultu…

To kick off our 12 Days of Christmas mini-series, Tom and Dominic remember the birth of the Holy Roman Empire and Mikhail Gorbachev's resignation *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and…

It's New Year's Eve - switch off the Hootenanny and tune in to hear Dominic recount extraordinary tales of coups, cousins and the rise of an emperor in the Central African Republic. Later on in the po…

On today's episode Tom and Dominic are joined by Friend of the Show, Professor Andrew Preston, to talk about the relationship between the US and religion, both at home and abroad in the 20th and 21st…

[Episode 1 of 4] Welcome to our new four part series on the latter years of the Soviet Union, its fall, Putin's early life and his subsequent rise to power. Today's episode focuses on Brezhnev…

[Episode 2 of 4] This episode of The Rest Is History marks the second instalment in our four part series on the Soviet Union, Russia and the rise of Vladimir Putin. From the 70th anniversary o…