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HistoryExtra podcast

History Extra podcast - February 2008

HistoryExtra podcast

HistoryExtra

History

4.34.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2008

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Historical writer Derek Wilson explains his choices for the most awful years in British history, Dr Michael Goodman delves into the mysterious death of frogman Buster Crabb, Professor Mary Beard visits Ancient Rome in our Time Machine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

There's a Peugeot SUV for everyone and every need.

0:04.3

Sport for choice.

0:05.2

I like it.

0:06.3

From the Compact 2008, the stylish 3008 to the Rumi New 5,08.

0:11.5

Weekend adventures, here we come.

0:13.3

Now available on 0% APR with a minimum 20% deposit.

0:17.1

Sounds like 100% match.

0:18.8

Book a test drive on perjo.co.uk. Offer ends 30 of September 2025. Personal contract purchase, subject to status and availability, T's and Zs 18 plus, excludes plug-in hybrids, Delantis Financial Services. Hello, this is Dave Musgrove, editor of BBC History Magazine, here once again to introduce you to our latest podcast. I'm joined by the deputy editor of the magazine, Sue Wingrave. Hello. And the section editor, Rob Atar. Hello. Now the February issue of the magazine is, I hope, a great one. We've got the worst years in British history, Buster Crab and a Cold War cover-up, King Alfred, terrorism, Tudor jesters, and First World War sportsmen. But before we go on to discuss some of those topics,

0:56.1

I'll start off with my monthly chat with Sue, who's in charge of our book reviews section.

0:59.8

So, Sue, what have you been reading this month? Well, this month I'm reading a book by James Ferguson called The Vitamin Murders.

1:07.1

This is part history and part travelogue, and the journey that he takes is the journey through

1:12.0

our post-war food industry. His wife is going to have a baby, so they start thinking about

1:17.4

whether to go organic and all that kind of thing, and they find out some quite scary facts

1:22.9

about a state of our food in Britain. But he's also looked back at the death in 1952, or the murder rather,

1:29.9

of the biochemist Sir Jack Drummond, who was brutally murdered while camping in Provence.

1:36.1

Now, Drummond was the government's scientific advisor during the Second World War,

1:41.1

and he really was the brains behind the Ministry of Foods campaigns to get us all to eat

1:46.3

more healthily. So he was a real pioneer and in fact he invented Drummond mixture which was a kind

1:51.9

of porridge made up which was distributed at the liberated concentration camps and saved thousands

1:57.0

of lives. So he's a big character but he had this mysterious, and there have been various conspiracy theories about it ever since. So Ferguson investigates that, and also tells us

2:07.0

about his own findings about our food industry. So it's quite a fascinating book, actually,

2:11.5

with some quite scary facts to discover about our food. And one of these is that you're probably

...

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