Hey everyone, hope you're all keeping well in these crazy times. Just a quick update from myself. Season 2 IS on it's way, though .... well hit listen :)

Simone. 

On April 10th 1815 the world experienced a near cataclysmic event - a volcanic eruption which burnt through as much energy in three days as the whole planet uses in three months' power consumption - in 2020. The statistics are shocking, and ultimately the eruption on Indonesia's Mount Tambora, would cost an estimated 10 million lives. 
It also acted as a prompt for a number of innovations that affect our lives today. Today's tale is the story of the tragedy of the Mount Tambora eruption, and the innovations it spawned. 

Yes, I am a little raspy in this one, my voice was feeling worse for wear from a niggling 24 hour cold - and worn from 8 hours on the phones... sorry listeners.

This is episode 8 in the initial 8 episode run. I will be back in 2 month's time with the next season. - Meantime the blog page www.historyandimagination.com will continue to post weekly blog postings till my return (I have written 2 months' worth and scheduled them to drop 10am every Tuesday, New Zealand time)

 A lifelong, professional soldier, Adrian Carton de Wiart's career started off on horseback in the late 19th Century - and wrapped up in the nuclear age. In this time he suffered 11 major gunshot wounds, multiple wars, two plane crashes, captivity, bombardments... you name it. 

In this episode Simone dives into the life and career of one of Britain's greatest warriors.

This tale begins close to it's chronological end, in September 1593, at a meeting between two queens - one Ralph Waldo Emerson's typical law-lord, the other a good, old fashioned warlord. Though both come from decidedly different backgrounds, they also had much in common, including an ugly conflict which dated back to the late 1550s. In this week Simone looks into the life and times of Grace O'Malley, pirate queen of Connaught. 

Hi all, seasons greetings! In Simone's latest tale we tell the stories of William Sydney Porter aka O Henry, and one of the greatest Christmas tales of all time.... and Lee Shelton aka Stagger Lee, and how a barroom murder turned a young pimp and murderer into a folk hero. 

If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippy counterculture movement, a high point of peace, love and understanding, then The Altamont Racetrack Free Concert of December 6th 1969 had to have been it's nadir - a fine day in hell. 

Simone T. Whitlow examines just what happened, why it happened, and why it was such an important event. 

Half a century before a certain other Jack stalked the ladies of Whitechapel, England, Spring Heeled Jack - The Terror of London roamed the streets of London looking for mischief. Who, or what, was this claw-handed, seemingly super-human revenant who attacked perhaps dozens of women from 1837 till maybe as late as 1904, and how has our perceptions altered his legacy?

To some the tale of Ignaz Trebitsch Lincoln is a spy story... I tend to take the long view and sell it as a picaresque novel. In the picaresque the protagonist - you can't always say hero cause sometimes they aren't very heroic - is a likeable rogue... lowly born, who has to live by their wits in a cruel, often corrupt world....
The following tale is the story of one such rogue, and the many twists and turns his remarkable life took. 

On 20th August 1612, in Pendle, Lancashire - 8 women and one young man were executed - largely on the testimony of a 9 year old girl. In the time leading up to this trial two others would die, one by hanging, another- the octogenarian 'Old Demdike' as a result of the squalid conditions prisoners were kept in, in those times. The cause? a young lady by the name of Alizon Device had an argument with the pedlar John Law, and things got out of hand. 

Bertrand Russell once said "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom" ... how much can fear and superstition cost two families. Tune in, dear listener, to this episode of Tales of History and Imagination.