The National Archives Podcast Series

Listen to Dr David Clarke, an expert in UFO history, as he explains the significance of the released UFO files.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Professor Foot is a noted historian and academic. He is the official historian for the Second World War Special Operations Executive (SOE) and has an extensive knowledge of the background to the requirements for secrecy in government records. This is a rare opportunity to hear the views of a person who has lived with the secrecy of such records for many decades.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

In the second part of this two part podcast for A-Level students a chief examiner from one of the major examination boards discuss the British policy of appeasement towards the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini. Chief Examiner of GCE History at Edexcel looks at how students traditionally tackle this question and how historians have grappled with it over 60 years.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

How did Britons weigh up the decision to go to war in the 1930s and did things turn out as they expected? Professor David Stephenson from the London School of Economics and Political Science explains how the British Government and the British public responded differently to the rise of Fascism in Europe.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

The tangled history of the papers of the playwright Joe Orton is unwoven by Dr Matt Cook. Here he reveals the extraordinary sources that survive on the writer's life, and the perhaps even more extraordinary ones that remain stubbornly missing. Warning: the following material may not be suitable for all listeners.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

From astrologers to oil barons: Professor Christopher Andrew, official historian for the Security Service, talks about espionage and tracking enemy agents.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Archivist Sue Lumas describes the painstaking cataloguing and conservation of naval records held at The National Archives.

Lectures, discussions, talks and other events presented by The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Conservator Stephen Harwood looks at the invention and development of photography, describing all the major photographic processes and explaining how anyone can identify different photographic types from the earliest photogenic experiments to today's sophisticated gelatine-silver prints.