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In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we return to the moment Julius Caesar steps onto the shores of Britain in 55 BC, a bold gamble at the very edge of the Roman world. Britain is not yet a conquest but a rumour, a place of shifting tribes, chariots on the beaches, and uneasy diplomacy. Caesar’s landings are about prestige and intelligence as much as warfare, and they bind Britain, loosely but permanently, to Rome’s ambitions.

From there, we trace how Britain becomes entangled in the long collapse of the Roman Republic. Alliances are made, hostages taken, and client kings cultivated, while Rome turns inward through civil war, assassination, and the rise of emperors. Augustus hesitates, Caligula blusters, and Britain remains an unresolved question, known now, but not yet claimed.

We end on the threshold of change. By AD 43, Britain is no longer beyond Rome’s reach, merely awaiting the moment when Claudius will finally act. Episode two begins there, when Rome returns, not to visit, but to conquer.

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In Part One we watched Hermann Goring face the judges at Nuremberg, but Part Two is where the story really hits home. Because Nuremberg did not end in 1946, it launched a revolution, one that still shapes global justice today. It gave us the Genocide Convention, the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and ultimately the International Criminal Court, a court designed to hold even presidents and generals to account.

But here is the twist. The same world that created these rules often breaks them. The same nations that championed Nuremberg now dodge the ICC, ignore arrest warrants, and even blow up suspected drug boats in the Caribbean without credible intelligence or due process. If Nuremberg taught us that killing suspects is a crime, then what exactly are we watching unfold today?

This episode asks a simple, uncomfortable question: does international law still mean anything, or have we slipped back into a world where the powerful decide what justice looks like?

Short, sharp, and impossible to ignore. This is Part Two, and you will not want to miss it.

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Christopher Marlowe was a genius, a heretic, and almost certainly a spy.
In the shadowy world of Elizabethan London, where faith was treason and a careless word could mean death, Marlowe moved easily among informers, torturers, and men who vanished without trace. He wrote blazing poetry by candlelight and carried state secrets by day. He drank with killers. He argued with atheists. He lived on the edge of the gallows.

In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we follow the brief, incendiary life of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare’s dangerous contemporary and perhaps his darkest mirror. From taverns thick with smoke and lies to the final violent afternoon in Deptford, this is a story of espionage, betrayal, forbidden ideas, and a death that still refuses to explain itself.

This is not the tale of a quiet scholar.
This is the story of a man who walked too close to fire, and paid the price.

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Step inside the blood soaked heart of ancient Rome, where fame was forged in steel and death was sold as entertainment. From slaves and prisoners to superstars of the ancient world, gladiators lived brutally short lives beneath the roaring crowds of the Colosseum. In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we uncover who these men really were, how many truly died, how the games were staged, and why an empire became addicted to watching humans kill for spectacle. This is not the romantic myth of Hollywood. This is the hard, violent truth of the arena, where survival was rare, mercy was political, and death came with thunderous applause.

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Hermann Göring sat in the dock at Nuremberg draped in arrogance, still convinced that history might yet bend in his favour. Our latest episode peels back the veneer of the Reichsmarschall and exposes the unsettling truth that the man who helped forge a regime of industrial murder was not a monster from myth but an ordinary human being who revelled in power, vanity, and spectacle. We walk through the trial that should have broken him, the testimony that stripped away the last illusions, and the final act—his calculated suicide—crafted as a last twisted gesture of defiance.

This is not just a story about the fall of one of the highest-ranking Nazis. It is a story about how ordinary men commit extraordinary evil, how charisma shields cruelty, and how justice can feel simultaneously triumphant and hollow.

With a new film featuring Russell Crowe about to reignite public fascination with Nuremberg, this episode arrives at a chilling moment. The past is not as distant as we like to pretend. The echo remains… and it grows louder.

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Ronald Reagan. The smiling cowboy president who told Americans he would make their country great again, long before that slogan returned to stalk the halls of power. But behind that easy grin was a far more complex figure, and in this episode I step into the darker rooms of his legacy.

Reagan sold a dream of American renewal, but for many it came wrapped in fear, austerity, and a widening gulf between those who had plenty and those who were quietly abandoned. His tax cuts rewired the American economy, his rhetoric reheated the Cold War, and his administration walked the tightrope between bold gambles and disastrous judgement. Then came Iran Contra, a scandal so murky it still feels like a political fever dream, a tangle of secret deals, shadow wars, and a president who seemed to drift further away from the controls.

With President Trump again sharpening that familiar make America great again slogan, it felt like the right moment to look back at the first man who used it, and to ask what it really left behind.

This is Reagan stripped of the Hollywood lighting. The charm, the contradictions, the damage, and the ghosts that still walk American politics today. Step in, if you dare.

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Millions displaced. Millions dead. Borders redrawn in blood and dust.

Between 1937 and 1971, South Asia was shattered, not once, but five times. From Burma’s separation to the birth of Bangladesh, the British Raj fractured into new nations, each carrying the scars of migration, memory, and loss.

In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we trace the story of Shattered Lands: The Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, a journey through the chaos of empire, the dream of independence, and the price of freedom still being paid today.

Because history doesn’t just live in the past. It breathes in every border, every name, and every silence left behind.

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In 1720, London lost its mind.

Merchants, maids, dukes, and kings all chased the same glittering dream, a company that promised riches from the farthest seas. But what began as a daring new financial experiment became one of the greatest scandals in history.

The South Sea Bubble wasn’t just a crash, it was a mirror held up to human greed, belief, and folly. This is the story of a nation that invented the modern stock market, fell for its own illusion, and paid the price in ruin.

Join Keith Hockton for a journey through coffee houses, counting rooms, and collapsing fortunes, where paper wealth met real tragedy, and Isaac Newton himself learned that you can calculate the stars, but never the madness of men.

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