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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

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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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Eleven hundred years ago, a young king stood in Kingston upon Thames and was crowned, and in that moment, something entirely new began to take shape.

His name was Æthelstan.

In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we explore the life and reign of the man who forged the first recognisable Kingdom of England, not through inheritance alone, but through strategy, diplomacy, and decisive force. From a contested succession and a fractured landscape of rival kingdoms, to the submission of kings and the brutal victory at Brunanburh, this is the story of how England was not simply born, but built.

And yet, for all his achievements, Æthelstan remains one of history’s most overlooked figures, a king who created a kingdom, but was never fully written into its memory.

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They were born into privilege, raised for balls and debutante seasons—but the Mitford Sisters would become something far more dangerous than society darlings.

In the glittering 1920s, Diana Mitford was hailed as the most beautiful woman in England. But beneath the diamonds and designer gowns lurked a deadly fascination with power. She would marry Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, and throw in her lot with a man who dreamed of dictatorship.

But it was her younger sister, Unity, who stepped off the edge entirely—obsessed with Hitler, she tracked him down in Munich and forced her way into his world. Soon, she was a regular at Nazi banquets, sitting beside Eva Braun and earning Hitler’s personal praise as a “perfect Aryan.” But was she more than just a friend? Was Unity his mistress? Was she carrying his child when she returned to Britain, broken and suicidal?

Why was she so enthralled by the violence of the SS? And how did two aristocratic Englishwomen become seduced by the most brutal ideology of the 20th century?

Join Keith as he peels back the layers of glamour, obsession, and betrayal to reveal the darkest chapter in the story of the Mitford Sisters.

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The Mitford Sisters

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Rudyard Kipling’s If— and The Two-Sided Man aren’t just poems—they’re survival guides wrapped in verse. Fierce, honest, and deeply human, they capture the struggle to stay balanced in a world constantly pulling us apart.

In this episode, Keith dives into the raw beauty of these two masterworks—and shares why they’ve stayed with him through life’s storms. These aren’t just words on a page; they’re mirrors, provocations, and quiet companions for when the world gets loud.

Join him for a deeply personal journey into Kipling’s most powerful poetry—and discover why, in moments of doubt and duality, Kipling still has something urgent to say.

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Rudyard Kipling

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In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we descend into one of the most dangerous worlds of the Second World War, the claustrophobic steel tubes of Hitler’s U-boats. Drawing on Roger Moorhouse’s gripping study of the submarine war, we explore the brutal reality faced by the crews who hunted Allied shipping across the Atlantic. Life inside a U-boat was filthy, suffocating, and terrifying, with sailors enduring scurvy, sleep deprivation, and the constant fear that the next depth charge might crush the hull around them.

Statistically, three quarters of German submariners would never return from the war.

But the story of the U-boat war is more complicated than legend suggests. Beneath the surface lies a strange world of naval traditions, unexpected acts of mercy, and the moral ambiguities of submarine warfare. From daring attacks on British battleships to the disturbing massacre of survivors in the Atlantic, this episode explores the human drama behind one of the most ruthless campaigns of the war, and asks whether the men inside those submarines were villains, victims, or something far more complicated.

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How did a tiny movement centred on a crucified Jewish teacher grow into the dominant religion of the Roman world? In this episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles, we explore the extraordinary rise of Christianity, from small communities meeting quietly in Roman cities to a powerful institution that would eventually shape the destiny of an empire.

But this is not just a story about belief. It is also about organisation, trade networks, politics, and the administrative machinery of Rome itself.

As the empire changed and eventually fragmented, the structures of Christianity helped carry forward the legacy of the Roman world long after the emperors and their legions had disappeared.

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