Greetings fellow time travellers, it's lovely to have you with me. We travel through space and time together asking questions.

History's all around us. It's buried beneath her feet, literally, as I've experienced as a

when I was a working archaeologist. We can't tell what the future holds but we can look

back at the past as a kind of a user's manual as a bit of a guide and we can be

inspired if nothing else and that's what this series modestly humbly attempts

to do and it's a pleasure to be doing it with all of you.

If you want to support the podcasts via Patreon please do go to Patreon. Look for me by name

and you have to part with a little bit of cash monthly or

annually it's cheaper by the dozen it's now time to set aside the advert

strap into the time machine and set the coordinates as we hortle off towards the next stop in my love letter to the world.

Recorder, lovely, long brown hair, dark eyes. Europe's last which is led in chains through the little town of Glares in Switzerland

to a square pact with people. A science, reason and the Enlightenment are flourishing across

the rest of the continent. a swordsman swings his blade and cuts off the

witch's head. She's a powerful man's discarded mistress and can speak no more, the ultimate cancelling.

Hi Neil, last week we travelled with you to India as Britain expanded her empire, an empire which became the largest in human history.

Where are we this week?

Hi Paul, yes, this week? Hi Paul, yes this week the episode of the love letter.

It's got everything really that people associate with memorable stories, the sex, there's violence,

there's a beautiful woman, there's a powerful man,

there's headlines, there's a terrible tragedy. The year of 1782, we're in Glares, which is a small Swiss town, and were there in the moment when an executioner's sword

severs the head of a woman accused of witchcraft. I think we preface these all the time with this is one of my favorites, don't we?

This is one of my favorites, because it's so it's so pertinent

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