BBC History Magazine

The BBC History Magazine is for sale all over Britain and in certain shops in North America. It is not available for poor sods in The Netherlands or Israel, to name but a few. Well, maybe it is, but it is certainly hard to come by. What IS easy to get, is the monthly, 30 minutes, podcast, the BBC History Magazine puts out as a promotional feature for the magazine.

I wasn't aware of this podcast, but luckily found it linked from another (new) history podcast: The Missing Link. The Missing Link's host Elizabeth Green Musselman wrote to me in an email:

I agree that it's hard to find good ones. With many of the history podcasts, I find the hosts trying too hard to be taken seriously, and they end up sounding like encyclopedias being read aloud.

I have called this the monologue style and claimed few manage to pull that off, but Elizabeth's characterization puts it more accurately.

The November issue is all about aviation. The podcast avoids the monologue/encyclopedia aloud style by using the interview approach. Three interviews with writer's on features in the actual magazine, make up the show. Interestingly, the two first interviews touch upon the famous Battle of Britain. The first interviewee tells how Britain had nearly fumbled in having the extremely important Spitfire fighter planes ready for the Battle and the second interviewee relates how the Battle of Britain was not even won, or in a way, the aviation war was not as decisive as it usually thought to have been.