In this episode, host Victoria Barlow interviews Dr Brooke Newman about her recent book The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas. A story hereto relatively unknown to the public (though largely accepted in academic circles), the discussion delves into how, throughout the centuries, the British monarchy heavily invested into and greatly profited from the Atlantic Slave Trade. Dealing with such a contentious but important topic, Brooke explains why she wrote it for wider audiences, and the significance that this decision might have for the royal family.

Guest bio:

Dr. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain and the British Atlantic, with a focus on slavery and its legacies. She is the author of the award-winning book, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (Yale, 2018), and The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas (Mariner, 2026). Her writing and research have been featured in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Smithsonian Magazine, and she has served as a historical expert for HBO's Last Week Tonight, Vox, the BBC, and NPR, among others.

Follow Brooke Newman on social media:

@drbrookenewman [instagram]

@brookenewman.bsky.social [Bluesky]

In this podcast we delve into the story of female sovereignty and chiefly women in Aotearoa New Zealand via the story of Meri Te Tai Mangakahia and Queen Victoria.

Our guest speaker Dr. Miranda Johnson is a historian of colonialism and decolonisation, focusing on issues of settler identity, race, indigeneity, citizenship, and the politics of writing history. Her research focuses on Anglophone settler societies of the South Pacific and North America. Her first book, The Land is Our History: Indigeneity, Law and the Settler State (Oxford University Press, 2016) examined the wide-ranging effects of legal claims of Indigenous peoples in the settler states of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada in the late twentieth century. It won the W. K. Hancock Prize in 2018 from the Australian Historical Association. She is currently finishing a book tentatively titled: Redeemer Nation: Myth, History, and the Limits of Biculturalism in a Settler Colonial Society. This book examines the fraught imaginary of ‘biculturalism’ in Aotearoa New Zealand, between the 1970s-2020s, paying particular attention to history-making and changing historical consciousness over the past five decades. With Associate Professor Paerau Warbrick she is collating a collection of Māori petitions to the colonial New Zealand and British imperial governments in the nineteenth century, funded by a University of Otago Research Grant.

You can find Miranda’s chapter related to this podcast under the title:

"Chiefly Women: Queen Victoria, Meri Mangakahia, and the Māori Parliament." In Mistress of Everything: Queen Victoria in Indigenous Worlds, 228-245 (Manchester University Press, 2016).

For Miranda’s full list of publications, see: https://www.otago.ac.nz/history/our-people-in-history/associate-professor-miranda-johnson

In this episode, host Victoria Barlow interviews Lionel Arsac about the recent exhibition at the Palace of Versailles: The Grand Dauphin (1661-1711). Son of a king, father of a king and never king. This exhibition shines a light on the relatively unknown life and career of Louis of France (son and heir of the famous Louis XIV). Their discussion outlines the importance of remembering this interesting figure and explores the organisation of such an extraordinary exhibition.

Guest Bio:

Lionel Arsac has been curator of sculptures at the Palace of Versailles since 2017 and, since 2019, head of preventive conservation of the collections. In addition to numerous articles on the sculptures of Versailles, Lionel has taken an interest in subjects as diverse as the uses of oriental carpets at Court, Proust and Versailles, and, more recently, the sculpture collections of Ange Laurent La Live de Jully. Lionel has curated several exhibitions at the Palace of Versailles: Rediscovered Masterpieces. Zephyr and Flora and Abundance (2022), Louis XIV by Bernini, Genius and Majesty (2025) and, recently, The Grand Dauphin. Son of a king, father of a king and never king.

Follow Lionel on Instagram: @lionelarsac