Episode notes
To learn more about the last time an English king was usurped, listen to Season 7, Bonus Episode 12, where Dan tells the story of Henry VI’s grandfather, Henry Bolingbroke. In 1399, he toppled Richard II to become King Henry IV. By 1460, England has emerged into a polycrisis. King Henry VI has been relegated to a pawn. His son and wife have been disinherited, with Richard, Duke of York, now heir presumptive. Violence pulses through the countryside. In this pivotal chapter of the Wars of the Roses, it appears that Yorkist forces have finally overwhelmed the Lancastrians in the battle for the…
Podcast
This is History: The Tudors
Sony Music Entertainment · History · English
Historian Dan Jones returns with This Is History: The Tudors. Season one gives you the extraordinary origin story of England’s most iconic royal family. This is the ultimate story of kings and queens, seduction and spectacle, where power is seized in private chambers, performed in public and, too
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S9 · E18 · 5 May 2026 · 33 min
Ear Today, Gone Tomorrow: Van Gogh’s Guide to Artistic Failure
If you’re an artist, when would you like recognition to strike? Do you want it to be in your lifetime, only to be forgotten decades after your death? Or do you want to remain undiscovered, with your story potentially echoing for centuries after you’ve been discovered posthumously? These are some of the thorny questions Dan and Elizabeth consider in this episode about artistic failure. Together, they trace the stories of artists whose lives don’t neatly match up with the reputations their works have gathered: French writer George Sand, and the painters Vincent Van Gogh, and Artemisia…
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S9 · E17 · 28 Apr 2026 · 32 min
Why isn’t Leonardo Da Vinci remembered as an engineer?
If you judge him by his own elaborate metrics, Leonardo da Vinci was a failure. Long before the Mona Lisa became shorthand for genius, Leonardo imagined himself as something else entirely: a military engineer, a designer of bridges and armoured vehicles, a master of siegecraft and architecture. In 1482, he wrote a breathless letter to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, itemising these talents with bravado and noting, quickly, that oh, he could paint, too. Many of his boldest designs never left the page, or arrived centuries too early to be built. By his own standards, the future-facing polymath…
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S9 · E16 · 21 Apr 2026 · 40 min
How, exactly, does a woman ‘slip’ out of history?
What would you do if your life was omitted, reduced to an overlooked footnote, or filed away as an anomaly? In this episode, Dan and Elizabeth turn a lens on the practice of history itself, interrogating the choices and power structures that have traditionally left women out of the history books. They retrace the lives of three women who once stood firmly in their moment: Hatshepsut, a pharaoh who consolidated power in Ancient Egypt; Joanna Ferrour, a peasant whose voice briefly direct the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; and Ada Lovelace, a Victorian thinker whose ideas arrived well before the…
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S9 · E15 · 14 Apr 2026 · 36 min
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn are the Ross and Rachel of history
To love is to risk heartbreak. And while for some, breakups result in renewal, maybe some therapy (or a few months’ spent wallowing), for the historical figures of this episode… a relationship’s end has broken many more things than hearts. In this episode, Dan and Elizabeth discover the lessons of history’s epic failed romances through three world-changing unions: Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; Mark Antony and Cleopatra; and Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Each couple burned bright and fast, and with their downfall came the end to the worlds from which they came: Catholic England, the Roman…
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S9 · E14 · 7 Apr 2026 · 34 min
Was Richard III a Failure?
He died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. And we haven’t been able to stop talking about him since. Yes, it’s time to consider the story of England’s last Plantagenet king, Richard III — a centuries-old tangle involving alleged murder, Shakespeare, vanquish and one mighty rediscovery. In this debut episode of History’s Greatest Fails, Dan Jones and Elizabeth Day argue that the story of Richard’s rise and fall (and rise again) is much more modern that you’d first believe. Not least because of the reality-TV-style discovery of his remains under a Leicester council car park in 2022. In many…
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S9 · E11 · 17 Mar 2026 · 37 min
S9 E11 | The Pact
Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan gives an explainer on Warwick's piracy, the value of Calais, and the risks of another royal usurpation. Plus, hear more about Dan’s meltdown over a parking ticket. All is not well in a simmering kingdom. Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick — a key ally of Richard Duke of York — is holding the last skerrick of English territory in France: Calais. He’s the top military…
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S9 · E10 · 10 Mar 2026 · 35 min
S9 E10 | The Battle of St Albans
Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan gives you a primer on the pirate-cum-warlord, the Earl of Warwick. Plus, Dan makes good on his promise to tell the story of when he absolutely lost it over something rather inconsequential. All the drift and failure of Henry VI’s reign is coming home to roost. The fizzer of a king’s dodging arrows and men coming his way — and they’re not holding back. It’s 1455,…
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S9 · E9 · 3 Mar 2026 · 31 min
S9 E9 | Madness Descends
Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. It’s there where you can listen to this week’s bonus episode, where Dan discusses what likely triggered Henry VI’s descent into silence, while he also gives a primer on England’s warring noble families: the Nevilles, Percys, and Courtenays. Henry VI isn’t responding to anyone. Not to his physician, nor to his newborn son, Prince Edward. He’s just inert, catatonic. If the king’s health is said to be a mirror of the health of the realm,…
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S9 · E8 · 24 Feb 2026 · 32 min
S9 E8 | Royal Blood
Royal favourites, we want your voice notes in our new miniseries on historical failures. Look out for Producer Al’s callout post on patreon.com/thisishistory. There you can also listen to this week’s bonus episode, where we discuss the Duke of York’s super-royal credentials, and why the Duke of Somerset fails upward. Henry VI’s royal court breathes a collective sigh of relief — Queen Margaret of Anjou is pregnant. It’s a welcome addition to what remains of a vanishingly thin Plantagenet dynasty. Aside from Henry, this is the first royal birth in 50 years. The celebrations don’t last long. As…
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S9 · E7 · 17 Feb 2026 · 26 min
S9 E7 | Cade’s Rebellion
Don’t forget! Dan’s gifted you his favourite bonus episode from this season. To listen for free, simply search for the last episode before this one. England is descending into mob rule. Henry VI has presided over a catastrophic loss over almost all of the Plantagenet possessions in France, and many in the realm want a scapegoat. Assassinations of powerful officials including the Duke of Suffolk, William de La Pole ensue. And in the summer of 1450, the violence comes to a head. Rebels led by military captain Jack Cade storm London in an echo of the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381. Remember, you…
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