33. Parallel histories

“Is there a podcast this week?” Someone tweeted us yesterday. “Is itabout trains? I’d like it to be about trains.” Oh boy have we got good news foryou. The first half is very much about trains – or at least, the tracks theyrun on, as Jonn tells Stephanie what I learned when I accidentally wrote ahistory of the London Underground. (Honestly, he just meant to do the linenames but it kind of got out of control.) Quick precis: there’s a huge gap inthe 20th century, and the British state is obsessed with bloodyroyalty.Then Stephanie talks about her favourite crazy article of the week: apiece in the Daily Mail which imagines what London would look like had the Gunpowder plot succeeded in 1605, thus undoing the Reformation and turning these islands back intoa Catholic country. Never mind that the last 400 years of British, European and Worldhistory would have been different, the article says –...

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