Surprise! I thought I'd interject in your, no doubt, extremely exciting Christmas time with this special announcement.

I started the Queens of England podcast way back in the summer of 2015, largely as an outlet for my pent-up historical nerdiness.

It plodded along quite nicely for a year or so, with a small but loyal group of listeners as we went through the high middle ages, including my favourite period, the Norman Queen. I'd initially planned to stop at the

end of the medieval period with Elizabeth of York. It seemed like a nice manageable chunk of history to do,

and then I'd probably just go on with my life. But I was having so much fun doing the show that I

decided to go on through the Tudors and the Stuarts to the last official Queen of England. The biggest moment in this podcast, though,

came when David Crowther, of the History of England podcast, after a bit of pestering from me,

it has to be said, kindly agreed to let me do a guest episode on his show. That was on end of the

fourth mistress, Jane Shaw. I know many of you listening to this show heard about it first from that episode. My listener number skyrocketed, and here we are now.

Like I said in the last episode, there will be a final episode of the Queens of England

podcast coming in the new year, but today I wanted to tell you about the big thing coming

in 2018. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would

like to do next. My first idea was something totally different, something to do with politics or

military history. But then I saw your reactions to the news that the show was ending, and then I knew

that what I needed to do was the opposite. Let's not blow everything that we've been doing all this

time up. Let's build on it and do something bigger and better. So, this new show will be an

expansion of the Queens of England podcast. I really like the format of the weekly slash biweekly

30-45 minute biographical episode show, telling the story of women through history,

with a common theme tying them all together.

So that is what this new show will do.

After spending months unming and airing about the name,

I finally settled on the other half podcast,

...