PODCAST · history
The History Book Buffs
by Roger Moorhouse and Antonia Senior
Serious history. Serious books.Hosted by bestselling historian Roger Moorhouse and novelist & critic Antonia Senior, The History Book Buffs helps you discover the best history books — new releases and classic must-reads.We publish across three strands:📖 Book ReviewsDeep dives into major historical topics — WW2, the Cold War, Tudor intrigue, empire, revolution and more — with sharp analysis and curated reading recommendations.⚡ Buffs in BriefShort, focused episodes on events that happened this day or this week in history .🎙 Beyond the BookIn-depth Author Interviews. SUBSCRIBE!
Episodes
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The Best History Books for Summer: 8 Classics, Fact and Fiction, That Every History Lover Should Read
Forget the latest releases. For this special summer edition, The History Book Buffs are joined by Ollie Webb-Carter from the History Book Club to recommend the history books they've returned to again and again—the classics that have earned a permanent place on their bookshelves. From the Black…
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The Night of the Long Knives: On This Day. 2.7.1935
Hitler's most dangerous enemies weren't outside the Nazi Party—they were inside it. In this episode, historian Roger Moorhouse takes us inside the dramatic events of 30 June–2 July 1934, when Hitler unleashed a wave of assassinations against his own comrades in what became known as the Night of…
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Churchill's Finest Hour: Leadership, Myth and Britain's Darkest Moment
On 18 June 1940, with France collapsing and Britain seemingly standing alone against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill delivered one of the most famous speeches in modern history: "Their Finest Hour". In this episode, Antonia Senior and historian Roger Moorhouse revisit the speech that became...
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BOOK review: How the Soviet Union Died. The August Coup, by Robert Service
In August 1991, a group of hardliners inside the Soviet leadership launched a desperate bid to save the USSR. Led by the head of the KGB, they placed Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest, declared a state of emergency, and attempted to reverse the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Instead…
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The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich: Heroism, Terror and the Price of Resistance
Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse examine one of the most dramatic episodes of the Second World War: the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi official known as the "Butcher of Prague" and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. In May 1942, Czech and Slovak agents trained by...
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How Did Orwell Know? George Orwell, Stalin & the Power of Truth
George Orwell wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four before the full reality of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe had unfolded. So how did he see it coming? In this episode of History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse discuss Orwell’s extraordinary political insight, his…
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On This Day 14 May 1955: The Signing of the Warsaw Pact
Roger Moorhouse joins Antonia Senior for another episode of History Book Buffs: On This Day — and today we’re in Warsaw on 14 May 1955 for the signing of the Warsaw Pact. This was the treaty that formalised the Soviet bloc and defined the Cold War in Europe for the next 35 years. But why did the...
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WEIMAR GERMANY: Chaos, Culture and the Collapse of Democracy. Katja Hoyer and Victor Sebestyen reviewed
wo new books on Weimar Germany arrive at once: Victor Sebestyen’s Weimar Germany: Death of a Democracy and Katja Hoyer’s Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse discuss the fragile republic born after the First World War, the cultural explosion of 1920s Berlin,...
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Hitler's Death: Bodies. Bunkers. Conspiracies.
On 30 April 1945, as the Red Army closed in on Berlin, Adolf Hitler died in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. In this On This Day episode, Roger Moorhouse and Antonia Senior reconstruct Hitler’s final hours—his physical decline, the collapse of Nazi Germany, and the chillingly mundane...
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Anne Boleyn: History, fiction and zombies. Two new novels about Boleyn, and what they tell us about history.
Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, Tudor history—and a revenge story with a twist. Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse compare two very different novels about Anne Boleyn: one grounded in meticulous research, the other wildly inventive—featuring a reanimated queen on a revenge mission. They…
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Spies, Sex & Stalin: The Dark Truth About the Cambridge Five
BUY THE BOOK: https://amzn.eu/d/0eHvoNPP Were the Cambridge Five glamorous rebels… or something far darker? In this episode of History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior joins Roger Moorhouse from Cambridge itself to unpack the reality behind Britain’s most infamous spy ring: the Cambridge Five. From the...
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Agent Zo, the Polish Resistance, and Stalin’s Betrayal of Poland | Clare Mulley
How did one woman become one of the most extraordinary figures in the Polish Resistance? In this powerful episode of History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior speaks to award-winning historian and biographer Claire Mulley about her brilliant book Agent Zo — the story of Elżbieta Zawacka, known as Agent...
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The Most Dangerous Lying Memoirs in History? Kim Philby, Albert Speer & the Art of the Cover-Up
What happens when two of the 20th century’s most notorious men tell their own stories? In this episode of History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse dive into two of the most seductive, slippery and deeply unreliable memoirs ever published: Kim Philby’s My Silent War and Albert…
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The Death of Trotsky | Stalin, Espionage and Assassination – with Josh Ireland
In this episode of History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior talks to historian Josh Ireland about his gripping book The Death of Trotsky, which tells the extraordinary story of how Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin hunted down his greatest rival, Leon Trotsky. After the Russian Revolution, Trotsky seemed...
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Murder or Suicide? The Cold War Death of Jan Masaryk. A Buffs in Brief special
In March 1948, Jan Masaryk, the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia and son of the country's founding president, was found dead beneath the window of the Foreign Ministry in Prague. Was it suicide? Or was it murder ordered by Stalin’s agents? Masaryk’s death came just weeks after the Communist…
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Sex, Mysticism and Revolution: Rasputin at the Court of the Tsar
In this episode of History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse dive into the extraordinary story of Grigori Rasputin—the mystic, healer, and alleged holy man who gained an astonishing hold over Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. From his arrival in St Petersburg to his influence...
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Was This the Worst Peace Treaty Ever? | Brest-Litovsk (1918)
108 years ago, Lenin signed one of the most punishing peace treaties in modern history. In this 10-minute Buffs in Brief, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse examine the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk — the deal that took Russia out of the First World War but stripped it of Ukraine, the Baltic states,...
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Buffs in Brief #2 — The Reichstag Fire (27 February 1933). Conspiracy or Opportunity?
A burning parliament. A communist caught at the scene. Within weeks, German democracy was effectively dismantled. Was the Reichstag Fire a Nazi conspiracy — or a brilliantly exploited accident? In this ten-minute deep dive, we unpack what happened and why it mattered — and recommend two excellent...
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OTD: Stalin thrown under a bus by Khrushchev. A Buffs in Brief special #1
Was this the most reckless speech in modern political history? In February 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a four-hour address that stunned the room — and reshaped the communist world. Behind closed doors, in what became known as the “Secret...
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The Baltic Crusades: The Teutonic Knights and the Birth of Europe’s Most Dangerous Frontier
The Teutonic Knights. Pagan forests. Crusade-by-fire. And the medieval origin story behind modern Europe’s most volatile borderlands. Antonia Senior and historian Roger Moorhouse explore the Baltic Crusades through Alexander Pluskowski’s Black Cross, tracing how the Teutonic Order reshaped the...
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The Secret Nazi Scientist Programme that Helped Build America
What if the origins of America’s Cold War science boom — and even the Space Race — were built on the knowledge of Nazi scientists? In this episode, Antonia Senior and historian Roger Moorhouse dive into the dark, fascinating, and deeply controversial history of Operation Paperclip: the secret…
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The Day Capitalism Broke: The Wall Street Crash of 1929 & the Road to Hitler
On 29 October 1929, the world changed forever. As share prices collapsed, panic ripped through Wall Street, fortunes vanished in hours, and confidence in capitalism itself cracked. What began as a stock market crash in New York spiralled into the Great Depression, reshaped global politics,...
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🎆 The History Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2026 🎆
Happy New Year from History Book Buffs! After our 21 Days of Christmas Book Gifts, we’re back with a special episode looking ahead to the most exciting history and historical fiction books coming out in 2026. From Soviet assassins and Baltic crusades to Cromwells, Bolsheviks, Weimar Germany and…
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Brilliant Books for Christmas Stockings PART 2
Welcome back to History Book Buffs for Part 2 of our 21 Days of Christmas Books series — a bumper festive episode packed with brilliant history (and a couple of cracking novels). I’m Antonia Senior — writer and journalist — joined by my fellow book buff Roger Moorhouse, and together we’re sharing...
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Brilliant Books for Christmas Stockings — Part 1
🎄 21 Days of Christmas Book Gifts – Round-Up of the First 10 Books 🎄 In this special episode, we run through the first ten titles in our 21 Days of Christmas Book Gifts series — a curated collection of the very best in history, espionage, military narrative, and historical fiction. If you’re...
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Nuremberg: Day 1...20.11.1945. The Days that Changed the World
Eighty years ago, the world watched as the Nuremberg Trial opened in a ruined German city — the first time leaders of a defeated regime were prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace. In this episode of our series Days That Changed the World, we take you inside...
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The Days that Changed the World: 23 August, 1939. The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
On 23 August 1939, two dictators who despised each other made a decision that reshaped the world. In this episode, we explore the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — often known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact — and its profound impact on Europe and the outbreak of the Second World War. In the first of a new…
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Inside Operation Biting: The History Book Buffs read Max Hastings.
🔍 Inside Operation Biting: Antonia and Roger review Operation Biting, Max Hastings's account of one of WWII’s Most Daring Raids | Churchill, Radar & Revolution Step into the shadows of World War II as we uncover the high-stakes raid known as Operation Biting, brilliantly chronicled by legendary...
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The horrors of U-boat warfare: the books that inspired Wolfpack by Roger Moorhouse.
KeywordsU-Boat War, Wolfpack, Das Boot, WWII, German perspective, naval history, PTSD, memoirs, historical narrative, empathySummaryIn this conversation, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse dive into the complexities of the U-Boat War during World War II, discussing the launch of the book…
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Did books defeat the Soviet Empire? The History Book Buffs read The CIA Book Club by Charlie English.
In this episode of @TheHistoryBookBuffs Antonia Senior is joined by bestselling author Roger Moorhouse to discuss The CIA Book Club by Charlie English — a thrilling history of how the CIA used books as weapons in the Cold War.They explore how literature was smuggled across the Iron Curtain, why…
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Tunisgrad. Was this the battle that changed the course of WW2?
In this episode of "History Book Buffs," hosts Antonia and Roger delve into the often-overlooked Tunisian campaign of World War II, as detailed in Saul David's compelling book, "Tunisgrad." Join them as they explore the strategic significance of this campaign, its impact on the Axis powers, and…
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Storm of Steel and All Quiet on the Western Front: A WW1 classics showdown
Two masterpieces. Two utterly different visions of war. In this episode, the History Book Buffs go head-to-head over Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque — the twin titans of German World War I literature. Which novel best captures the brutal...
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The Siege: Terror and the SAS in the London Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980.
In this episode, Roger Moorhouse and Antonia Senior delve into Ben McIntyre's gripping narrative, "The Siege," which masterfully recounts the harrowing events of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, McIntyre brings to life the tension and...
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Which books shaped our lives? The HistoryBookBuffs take the 3 Book Challenge.
🎙️ Top Historian Roger Moorhouse & Critic Antonia Senior Take the 3 Book Challenge! 📚 In this fascinating episode of The History Book Buffs, acclaimed historian Roger Moorhouse (author of First to Fight and Devil's Alliance) and celebrated writer and critic Antonia Senior (The Tyrant's Shadow,...
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Tanks, Blitzkriegs and Battlefields.
🔊 EPISODE DESCRIPTION: In this episode, we dive into the powerhouse new release Tank by Mark Urban, a thrilling and thought-provoking history of the most iconic weapon of the 20th century. From the muddy trenches of World War I to the sweeping mechanized offensives of World War II and the Cold…
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Why Did Millions Follow Hitler? Reading The Nazi Mind by Laurence Rees.
🎧 What Made Nazism So Seductively Dangerous? | Roger Moorhouse & Antonia Senior on The Nazi Mind Why did millions of ordinary people embrace Nazism? In this compelling episode, historian Roger Moorhouse joins writer and critic Antonia Senior to explore The Nazi Mind — the latest book by...
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Is this the bloodiest war of the Twentieth Century? Reviewing Korea, War Without End, by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman
🇰🇷 Why the Korean War Still Matters | Forgotten Battles, Cold War Flashpoints & Raw Human Stories 🎙️Military history enthusiasts—especially those fascinated by World War II, the Cold War, and the real cost of combat—won’t want to miss this deep-dive podcast episode. The @TheHistoryBookBuffs...
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The End of World War 2. Have we got it all wrong? Reviewing Victory '45 by Al Murray and James Hollland, and 45: The Reckoning by Phil Craig
In this episode of the book review podcast, award-winning historian Roger Moorhouse and journalist Antonia Senior reflect on VE Day and discuss two significant books. 'Victory 45' by James Holland and Al Murray, which explores the final weeks of World War II through key surrenders. 'The…
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RAIN OF RUIN - Firebombing, nuclear weapons and the ethics of war.
In this explosive episode, award-winning historian Roger Moorhouse and journalist Antonia Senior dive deep into Richard Overy’s Rain of Ruin — a powerful exploration of the American bombing campaign against Japan at the end of World War II. From the devastating firebombing of Tokyo to the moral...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Serious history. Serious books.Hosted by bestselling historian Roger Moorhouse and novelist & critic Antonia Senior, The History Book Buffs helps you discover the best history books — new releases and classic must-reads.We publish across three strands:📖 Book ReviewsDeep dives into major historical topics — WW2, the Cold War, Tudor intrigue, empire, revolution and more — with sharp analysis and curated reading recommendations.⚡ Buffs in BriefShort, focused episodes on events that happened this day or this week in history .🎙 Beyond the BookIn-depth Author Interviews. SUBSCRIBE!
HOSTED BY
Roger Moorhouse and Antonia Senior
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The History Book Buffs have?
The History Book Buffs currently has 41 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The History Book Buffs about?
Serious history. Serious books.Hosted by bestselling historian Roger Moorhouse and novelist & critic Antonia Senior, The History Book Buffs helps you discover the best history books — new releases and classic must-reads.We publish across three strands:📖 Book ReviewsDeep dives into major historical...
How often does The History Book Buffs release new episodes?
The History Book Buffs has 41 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The History Book Buffs?
You can listen to The History Book Buffs on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The History Book Buffs?
The History Book Buffs is created and hosted by Roger Moorhouse and Antonia Senior.
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