Hello and welcome to the Restless History, Dominic. Have you heard the latest exciting news about our live tour?

I have, Dominic. It's actually shocking news. It's shocking but also heartening. But just to remind you the listener, the rest is history is going on a nationwide tour at the end of April 2023.

I say tour but it's for three nights only. We'll be in London on the 25th of April and the historic Drury Lane Theatre. Then we'll be able to Edinburgh the following evening on the 26th of April to play at Usher Hall.

And we will finish on the 30th of April at the Larry in Sulford Greater Manchester. But Tom, the listeners are gacking to know about this shocking news that you have for them about the tour.

Ladies and gentlemen, I can announce that our London live show has now sold out. I repeat, all 2000 seats, yes 2000 seats at Drury Lane Theatre are now sold out.

So not even frozen the musical. The show that we are of course replacing at Drury Lane, not even frozen sold out that quickly.

I can imagine Elsa listening to this right now, fuming at the very thought of the rest is history stealing her snowy thunder. But Elsa, all I will say to you is let it go.

People can go to both shows. But just to emphasize, that's our first live date already sold out. And tickets are selling incredibly quickly for Sulford and Edinburgh too.

So if you do want to come, please buy your ticket right now to avoid disappointment. Now, if you've never been to one of our live shows, what a treat or wait. So we have an incredibly inventive approach.

Tom will take the first half and he will be running through his repertoire of Marilyn Monroe songs and I do be the do thanks for that. And I will be picking up after the interval with the PowerPoint presentation on the economic policies of Stanley Baldwin.

It's an absolute riot.

It's fun for all the family. So these are our first ever shows outside London as a podcast. So we'll be putting on a tour de force. I think Dominic is the only word for it in both greater Manchester and the Scottish capital.

So they'll be impressions, perhaps a Mureguin pipe music and plenty of absolute lads from history. Here is how you can get tickets. Just go to rest is history pod dot com. It is very, very, very straight forward. That is www dot rest is history pod dot com by your tickets now to Sulford and Edinburgh before it's too late.

From the right of Bohemian rap city. This is what they want. America's me. You won't give it to him. Just watch me.

I want to dance with somebody only in cinemas from Boxing Day.

This is a moment to seize the kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux soon. They will settle again before they do let us reorder this world around us.

That was Tony Blair on the second of October 2001 five days before the American British invasion of Afghanistan. And now we all know how that story ended up.

So Tom, we thought we would devote this week's podcast to a survey of Afghan history. Didn't we explain some of the background to the events that we've been seeing in the last few days and to ask some of these sort of big questions about can.

Empire's ever intervening in Afghanistan. Is it in inherently lawless and violent place or is that just a series of kind of cliches and also this episode will serve as an introduction to a much more focused

episode which will follow tomorrow with Willie Darrymple looking specifically at the episode that people often kind of compare to what's going on today, which is the first Afghan war absolutely calamitous disaster, the history of British imperialism.

But yes, but I think I do think that the the talk of Afghanistan as a graveyard of empires of which obviously for obvious reasons, there's a great deal at the moment, includes the way in which Afghanistan has also been a great womb of empire.

If you pull the camera back this way in which imperial powers kind of just state within Afghanistan and then they kind of come out down the the Kibapas invade northern India, settle there, become kind of innovative and soft and then the cycle repeats.

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