Hello, fun cotton hair from the Happy Place podcast.

It's about this time of year that you might be thinking a bit more than usual about what you want to change.

Well, change, challenge, power and the potential of the world around us are all things Michelle Obama

reflects on in the light-week Harry, the follow-up to her critically acclaimed best-selling memoir

becoming. And let me tell you, it is brilliant. I'm a massive fan of audio books.

I absolutely love listening to Michelle Obama's books in audio. It's like having her sat right

beside you. It's an absolute must-listen from Penguin Audio.

Search the light-week Harry by Michelle Obama on all audiobook retailers and start listening today.

Hello and welcome to the HistoryX Reportcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling

History Magazine. I'm Ellie Corporn. The 17th century was one of the most turbulent periods in

London's history, one that was blighted by civil war, pestilence, fire and revolution.

Yet, as Margaret Lincoln chronicles in her new book London and the 17th century,

it was also a period in which London became the mercantile and political powerhouse that would

sit at the centre of a huge empire. Here, in conversation with our production editor Spencer Misen,

Margaret reveals how a modern metropolis was forged in the century of peeps, Newton and Cromwell.

So Margaret, your new book London in the 17th century tells a story of one of the most

tumultuous periods in the city's history, one that takes in plague, fire, the terrible civil war,

and near the end of the century revolution. But before we go into that in more detail,

I wonder if you could set the scene a little. What sort of city was London at the dawn of the 17th

century? In terms of size and influence, where would you say it ranked among Europe's great cities?

Well, it was a crowded, filthy place, full of dirt and pollution. By 1600, the population had

risen to about 200,000, which doesn't sound much to us today. But overcrowding produced foul odours,

...