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Birmingham told itself it was a city of progress. Industry, pride, invention. But beneath the smoke lay something far darker, cramped streets, shared poverty, and young men learning that survival meant violence.

They were not heroes. Not legends. They were products of their world, brutal, territorial, and feared most by their own neighbours.

This is the real story of the Peaky Blinders, stripped of myth and romance, from backstreet gangs to organised crime, where violence became business and fear became currency.

Because in the end, this is not about style.

It is about what happens when a city creates its own monsters.

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Before Indiana Jones ever cracked a whip, there was Allan Quatermain—big-game hunter, reluctant hero, and the original explorer of darkest Africa in search of lost kingdoms and forbidden treasure.

King Solomon’s Mines exploded onto the scene in 1885, igniting imaginations with its heady mix of danger, romance, ancient secrets, and thrilling adventure. It was one of the first English quest novels to plunge readers into the unknown heart of a continent—and it hasn’t stopped inspiring storytellers since.

H. Rider Haggard’s vivid, pulpy prose laid the foundations for everyone from Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft to Wilbur Smith, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. Without Quatermain, there would be no Indiana Jones.

Join Keith as he dives into the daring world of King Solomon’s Mines, unpacks Haggard’s trailblazing legacy, and explores how one novel helped create an entire genre—and a new kind of hero.

Adventure begins here.

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Allan Quatermain

King Solomon’s Mines

H. Rider Haggard

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Last year, our deep-dive into the wild world of the Mitford sisters ruffled a few aristocratic feathers and sparked a torrent of listener emails. The question that echoed through every message was simple, but loaded: Were they all bad?

In this follow-up episode, Keith peels back the layers of myth, gossip, and public outrage to look at the whole Mitford clan, this time, including the much-overlooked brother, Tom, and their delightfully eccentric parents. We venture beyond the headlines about fascists and communists, parties and poultry, to ask if it’s possible for a family to be so infamous and yet, in flashes, strangely sympathetic.

Listeners will meet each sibling in turn, Nancy with her razor wit, Pamela the forgotten foodie, Diana the dazzling fascist, Unity the Nazi’s English rose, Jessica the runaway Red, Deborah the duchess, and poor Tom, lost to war and obscurity. And, looming over them all, Lord and Lady Redesdale: comic, tragic, utterly baffled by the children they unleashed on the 20th century.

This is not just a roll-call of scandal, but a nuanced portrait of a family who embodied the contradictions of their time. Were they monsters, victims, or simply very English oddities? Join us for a candid, entertaining, and occasionally exasperated exploration of the Mitfords, one that might just leave you questioning what it means to be “bad” in the first place.

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For books written and published by Keith Hocton

www.entrepotpublishing.com