Neil Oliver: News, Comment, History

In this episode we join Neil as he steps aboard the Titanic, one of the most iconic ships in the world. For Neil this a pivotal moment in history, which marks a point when the world changed forever.When the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage it was the largest human-made object that had ever moved across the face of the planet. 900 feet long (240m), 92 feet wide (28m) and weighing in at 50,000 tons. Built in Belfast it was one of a set of near identical triplets. With 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic heads out into the wild Atlantic ocean, sailing into tragedy as the band played on.To help support the making of this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverHistory & CommentNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, powered by their fabulous fecundity and political astuteness, the Stuart family line inherited the Scottish and English crowns and spread their power and influence right across the British Isles.The C19th saw a canny member of the Stuart clan spotted a gilt-edged opportunity in Cardiff. As the industrial revolution swept across the world, iron, steel and coal were in great demand and high-grade coal from the Rhondda Valley in Wales became a very valuable commodity. If you could control the supply of this precious resource, there were fortunes to be made.From his castle in Cardiff, John Crichton-Stuart developed the port of Cardiff, which become the busiest in Britain, and as the coal bonanza boomed, feeding an insatiable global hunger, vast quantities of the ‘black gold’ were ship out and incredible fortunes poured in.To help support the making of this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we’re putting on our best and strolling along a stylish promenade in Scarborough, the ‘Nice of the North’ to pay homage to the Great British seaside tradition.The tentacles of Scarborough’s history stretch back thousands of years. On it’s cliffs is an Iron Age Fort. The Viking also took a fancy to the place and much later in the C13th Henry III fortified what was then an important port. But it was the Victorians who made it the place we recognise today.Attracted by its restorative spa waters, the Victorians added the cast iron, glass, grandeur and glamour, and it becomes Britain’s first seaside town.Overlooking a stunning long curve of pale sand is what used to be the largest hotel in Europe – built in the shape of a V to honour Queen Victoria and designed to around the concept of time, this week we’re checking into the Grand Hotel in Scarborough.To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we stride around the Elizabethan battlements of a town held ready for war!Berwick-upon-Tweed is a place packed to bursting with thousands of years of rich history.Celtic Britons made it their home, followed by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons.It was a wealthy, flourishing port before any of the modern nation states – England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland – even existed.Sitting on the border of what became Scotland and England it was coveted and fought over in a deadly tug of war lasting hundreds of years. It’s a place that sharply reminds us, that in the British Isles it’s more often than not the case that local rather than national identities have the deepest roots.To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we travel with Neil to meet the man who split the atom!Ernest Rutherford’s father said to his children, ‘without money we have to think’ – and think Ernest did. Ernest’s brain took him from his childhood home in rural New Zealand to a scientific career that spanned right around the world. In Manchester he assembled a brilliant and diverse team of fantastic minds. He built one of the largest and best equipped laboratories ever seen in the world and with his team set about exploring the infinitely complex universe within the atom. Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physicsTo help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we’re in the midst of the great Victorian engineering revolution as the dream to reconnect with Europe begins. 8,000 years ago the Storegga Slide hit and severed the British Isles from the European mainland. To thrive and prosper the new islanders had to develop a mastery of the sea, and those coming to the islands had to be determined and committed. For thousands of years the psyche of the people living on this archipelago was shaped and moulded by it’s ‘separateness’, but in the 1800’s people on both sides of the Channel began to dream of a reconnection.To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we set sail with Neil and find ourselves at the centre of a devastating hurricane that’s intent on destroying a proud and hardworking fishing port. In the 1800’s Eyemouth’s fishing fleet found itself battling the elements, bureaucracy and the church. As the harbour remained dangerously inadequate a hated ecclesiastical tax was draining resources. One fateful day bad weather was looming, but under pressure to feed their families and pay the bills, Eyemouth’s brave fisher folk set sail. The whole fleet was out at sea when, sweeping across the North Sea, a hurricane hit, pounding boats to matchwood. To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we set sail with Neil, past Fasnet Rock, fleeing the horror of famine. The Vikings called it Hvasstann-ey, ‘the island shaped like a sharp tooth’, the Irish knew it first as Carraig Aonair, ‘the Lonely Rock’, then as Fastnet, ‘Ireland’s Teardrop’.A treacherous island, little more than a jagged rock, it has been responsible for countless shipwrecks and deaths at sea. It was the last part of Ireland many emigrants saw as they sailed to North America to escape the Great Hunger and many a teardrop was shed over it.A rock wreathed in sadness and tears, standing as a fitting memorial to lives lost at sea and the lives driven off to be lived elsewhere. To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every Week Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode a dark shadow falls across all of Ireland. A time of unimaginable pain and suffer, which has caused a deep wound between the British Isles ever after. It is known as An Gorta Mor or The Great Hunger. For years starvation stalked the land and over a million people died of hunger as ships fully laden and brimming with food left the Irish ports.Standing on the edge of a mass grave in Skibbereen Cemetery Neil comes face to face with the human tragedy.To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every WeekPlus a video archive packed full of History, Comment & Current Affairs. Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode as machines begin to flex their muscles the spectre of human poverty rises darkly and menacingly across the whole of the British Isles.In C19th Dorset a small group of workers came together to dream of a better future. But for daring to stand up straight, demand dignity and call for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work they were crushed by the authorities: arrested, tried and transported to work as slave labour in the penal colony of Australia. In their defence a public outcry swept across the country as people fought to save this group who became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.To help support this podcast sign up to Neil Oliver on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/neiloliverNew Videos Every WeekPlus a video archive packed full of History, Comment & Current Affairs. Instagram account – Neil Oliver Love Letter https://www.instagram.com/neiloliverloveletter/?hl=en Neil Oliver YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVR-SdKxQeTvXtUSPFCL7g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.