Entirely Unofficial Rest is History Catalogue and Interrogator

Enlightenment & Age of Revolutions

112 Episodes 23 Series 136 Figures 81 Events 300 Books 218 Authors

Spanning the late 17th through the early 19th centuries, this era covers Enlightenment ideas, political revolutions, imperial expansion and early industrialization. Content includes multi-episode series on the American Revolution (colonial prosperity, protest and war), the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar (naval strategy, geopolitics), Captain Cook (Pacific voyages and encounters), London Week (from Roman Londinium to later landmarks and personalities), and a four-part life-and-legacy study of Lord Byron. Sample episodes address the Industrial Revolution (interview with Emma Griffin), Henry Fielding (London: People Ep. 3), Nelson-era extras on Emma Hamilton, and the summer 1792 crisis in the French Revolution. Figures, events and books discussed include Louis XVIII, Sir John Jervis, Charles Cornwallis, Le Chapelier Law (1791), Glorious First of June (1794), Jacobite Rising (1745), the Industrial Revolution, Gulliver’s Travels, and An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

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Episodes Series Figures Events Books Authors

Episodes by year

Showing 12 of 112

2024

5 episodes

Lord Byron: Dangerous Liaisons (Part 3)

Lord Byron · Part 3

This episode examines Lord Byron's sudden celebrity after the publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the scandal…

Lord Byron: Scandal, Sex and Celebrity (Part 2)

Lord Byron · Part 2

This episode (the second in the hosts' multi-part study of Lord Byron) follows Byron's formative 1809–1811 travels and …

Lord Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know (Part 1)

Lord Byron · Part 1

This episode of The Rest Is History, hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, is the first instalment of a multi-ep…

The Man in the Iron Mask

Hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook examine the long-running mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask. They review conte…

RIHC: Undiscovered History, Byron and the Walking Dead

In this New Year episode Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook answer listener questions and reflect on 2023 and plans for …

2023

7 episodes

Young Napoleon: Teenage Revolutionary (Ep 1)

Young Napoleon · Part 1

This episode of The Rest Is History, hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, examines the origins and youth of Nap…

Young Napoleon: The Shadow of the Guillotine (Ep 2)

This episode follows Napoleon's transition from Corsican outsider to rising French military and political figure. After…

Captain Cook: History's Greatest Explorer (Ep1)

Captain Cook · Part 1

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook introduce a multi-episode focus on Captain James Cook’s first Pacific voyage. They tr…

Captain Cook: To the Ends of the Earth (Ep2)

Captain Cook · Part 2

This episode of The Rest Is History continues the hosts' narrative of Captain James Cook's first voyage. After observin…

RIHC: Schoolboy Stories Special (Livestream)

This episode is a live-stream conversation between hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. They open with viewer greet…

Le Marquis de Sade: Sex and Violence

This episode examines the life, works and long shadow of the Marquis de Sade. Holland and Sandbrook narrate Sade’s biog…

RIHC: The Industrial Revolution, Anti-Catholicism, and Archaeology

This bonus Rest Is History Club episode is a listener Q&A in which Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook answer members' qu…

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Series in this era

23 series

The French Revolution - Season 2 (July 2024)

9 episodes Aired: 2024-07-28 – 2024-08-14

Nelson (S2)

8 episodes Aired: 2025-10-08 – 2025-11-05

Nelson (S1)

5 episodes Aired: 2024-11-18

The French Revolution - Season 3 (October 2024)

5 episodes Aired: 2024-10-13 – 2024-10-14

American Revolution

4 episodes Aired: 2023-07-03

London's Golden Age

4 episodes Aired: 2026-03-09

The French Revolution - Season 1 (March 2024)

4 episodes Aired: 2025-03-03

The Great Northern War

4 episodes Aired: 2025-05-11

Battle of Trafalgar

3 episodes Aired: 2022-10-17

Lord Byron

3 episodes Aired: 2024-04-14

Historical figures

136 tagged

Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I of the French)

44 episodes

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

33 episodes

Marie Antoinette (born Maria Antonia of Austria)

27 episodes

Louis XVI of France

26 episodes

Maximilien Robespierre

20 episodes

George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)

19 episodes

Emma (Lady) Hamilton

18 episodes

Samuel Johnson

18 episodes

William Pitt (The Younger)

18 episodes

Edmund Burke

17 episodes

Historical events

81 tagged

French Revolution (1789–1799)

38 episodes

Napoleonic era (c. 1799–1815)

21 episodes

Battle of Trafalgar (1805)

19 episodes

Storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789)

19 episodes

American Revolutionary War (American War of Independence, 1775–1783)

18 episodes

Battle of the Nile (1798)

16 episodes

Flight to Varennes (1791, Varennes)

13 episodes

Reign of Terror (1793–1794, France)

13 episodes

Industrial Revolution

10 episodes

Insurrection and attack on the Tuileries (10 August 1792)

10 episodes

Books

300 tagged

Adventures in Time: Nelson, a Hero of the Seas

Author: Dominic Sandbrook

9 episodes

Dominion

Author: Tom Holland

7 episodes

Citizens

Author: Simon Sharma

6 episodes

A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Charles Dickens

4 episodes

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Author: National Constituent Assembly (France)

4 episodes

Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

4 episodes

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Author: Edmund Burke

4 episodes

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

Author: Tom Holland

4 episodes

The Revolutionary Temper

Author: Robert Danton

4 episodes

A Place of Greater Safety

Author: Hilary Mantel

3 episodes

Authors

218 tagged

Dominic Sandbrook

12 episodes

Tom Holland

10 episodes

Simon Sharma

8 episodes

Charles Dickens

5 episodes

Jane Austen

5 episodes

Thomas Paine

5 episodes

Edmund Burke

4 episodes

Hilary Mantel

4 episodes

National Constituent Assembly (France)

4 episodes

Robert Danton

4 episodes