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Oleg Gordievsky was the highest ranking KGB officer ever to work for Britain. For 11 years, he acted as a secret agent, reporting to the British Secret Intelligence Service while continuing to work as a KGB officer. He gave such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the whole system of Soviet government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism.

Millennium is a stunning panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state. The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe - restless, creative and dynamic - was forged from out of the convulsions of these extraordinary times is as fascinating and as momentous as any in history.

A topsy-turvy science-y history podcast by Sam Kean. I examine overlooked stories from our past: the dental superiority of hunter-gatherers, the crooked Nazis who saved thousands of American lives, the American immigrants who developed the most successful cancer screening tool in history, the sex lives of dinosaurs, and much, much more. These are charming little tales that never made the history books, but these small moments can be surprisingly powerful. These are the cases where history gets inverted, where the footnote becomes the real story.

Documenting Edinburgh’s lesser-known hauntings and ghostly goings-on. Eerie Edinburgh: the home of Edinburgh’s ghost stories.

In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan, Columbus, and Marco Polo brings alive the singular life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake, the pirate/explorer/admiral whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson’s quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. His challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know.

This work was published in 1724, under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson, by an unknown British author, usually assumed to be Daniel Defoe. This work is the prime source for the biographies of many well-known pirates of that era and shaped the popular notions about pirates of the day. Included are Blackbeard, Black Bart, Jolly Roger, Anne Bonny (aka Anne Bonn), Edward Teach, Henry Avery, Mary Read, and many more.

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and non-conventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato.

In 1621, 57 women undertook a three-month journey to Jamestown after responding to an advert placed by the Virginia Company, looking for wives for its tobacco planters in the New Colony. They travelled of their own free will, but the Company was effectively selling them at a profit, having set a bride price of 150lbs of tobacco for each woman. But what did the women want? Why did they make the perilous Atlantic crossing to a dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within a few years?

For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book.

In 2010, the BBC and the British Museum embarked on an ambitious project: to tell the story of 2,000,000 years of human history using 100 objects selected from the museum's vast and renowned collection. Presented by the British Museum's then director Neil MacGregor, each episode focuses on a single object - from a Stone Age tool to a solar-powered lamp - and explains its significance in human history.

Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.

One of the best selling History titles of 2009. Examining the Second World War on every front, Andrew Roberts asks whether, with a different decision-making process and a different strategy, Hitler’s Axis might even have won. Were those German generals who blamed everything on Hitler after the war correct, or were they merely scapegoating their former Führer once he was safely beyond defending himself?

Part One Winston Churchill's superlative account of the prelude to and events of the First World War is a defining work of 20th-century history. With dramatic narrative power Churchill reconstructs the action on the Western and Eastern Fronts, the wars at sea and in the air and the advent of tanks and U-boats.

The scientific theories that were first discovered and made public in the years 1700-1900 are some of the most pivotal in history. Landmark theories of planetary motion, the workings of nature, and the speed of light were all ideas that took the world by storm. Now you can share in that story of discovery in a series of 36 lectures designed to give you a rock-solid understanding of the great discoveries of Newton, Darwin, Franklin, Pasteur, and so many others.

As Brits we pride ourselves as stoic defenders, boasting a record of resistance dating back to 1066. Yet, even a cursory examination of the natural world reveals that while interlopers of the human variety may have been kept at bay, our islands have been invaded, conquered and settled by an endless succession of animals, plants, fungi and other alien lifeforms that apparently belong elsewhere. Indeed it’s often hard to work out what actually is native, and what is foreign.

In this original and meticulously researched narrative history, Gareth Russell utilises the sinking of the Titanic as a prism through which to look at the end of the Edwardian era and the seismic shift of modernity the 1910s have come to mark in the West. The Darksome Bounds of a Failing World focuses on the symbolism of the Titanic as the floating symbol of Anglo-American success, its clientele an apt illustration of the limitless - technological, financial - possibilities of its time.

In the aftermath of the Battles of Khambula and Gingindlovu, a lull fell over the war-torn Zulu Kingdom. Though British forces under Lord Chelmsford emerged victorious during both encounters, earlier defeats, casualties, and supply shortages required them to withdraw back into Natal. Now with waves of long-awaited reinforcements arriving, Chelmsford prepares to launch a second invasion of Zululand. Death and destruction have taken their toll on the Zulu people. Thousands of families mourn for their loved ones, while refugees flee from the devastation of the border regions.

Exclusive interviews from Time Team members and special guests. First airing on Channel 4 in 1994, Time Team became one of the UK’s most beloved and long-running TV shows. The ground-breaking history series presented by Tony Robinson helped to popularise the field of archaeology and has since been watched in over 35 countries worldwide!Please note: These are unabridged, audio-only versions of the video interviews originally released on the Time Team Official YouTube channel.