History Podcasts
Print version
The place of history in British life has never been more important, as demonstrated by our continuing fascination with the World Wars of the 20th century, the celebrity of Simon Schama and David Starkey, and the popularity of websites such as the 1901 census. History & Memory is a new course offered by the Department of History from 2009. It examines the sometimes fraught relationship between the ‘real’ history practised by professional scholars, and the popular attitudes and attachments to the past that shape the identities of ordinary people. Alongside traditional lectures and seminars, students are required to visit a range of major sites in the capital, and will be able to download audio podcast lectures recorded on location.Foundling Museum podcast
The first podcast in the series to made available publicly introduces the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, London. The museum occupies a site close to that formerly the location of the Foundling Hospital, a famous London institution created in the eighteenth century for the care of children deposited with the hospital when single mothers felt unable to care for them. The full podcast and accompanying material can be downloaded from the website.
St Clement Danes Church podcast
The second podcast in the series takes the magnificent Anglican church of St Clement Danes, adjacent to King's College London's Strand campus, as a starting place for an exploration of the role church buildings have come to play in the memorialisation of aerial warfare 1939-45, and in particular those aspects connected with the bombing of civilian populations in large cities, in the course of which many churches were severely damaged or completely destroyed. The full podcast and accompanying material can be downloaded from the website.