5: The Ballad of Reading Services
Christmas Day, 2021. I stop at Reading motorway services and find graffiti on the wall of a toilet cubicle: two locals, Gavin and Chelsea, a...
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The Town That Knew Too Much
A podcast documentary about Cheltenham, the home of British spying, and the cracks of lying and deception that run through this seemingly perfect Cotswolds town. Praise for The Town That Did...
Episodes
20 of 21 episodes4: A History of the English Village
What makes the quintessential English village? A church? A pub? A post office? A cricket pitch? Everyone knows the English village, whether...
3: The Maunsell Sea Forts: Iron islands in the Thames
In 1942, an engineer named Guy Maunsell constructed a series of audacious defensive towers out where the Thames estuary meets the North Sea....
2: Lewes: a town of smoke and flame
Remember, remember the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Well, in...
1: Pluckley: England's most haunted village
Nestled away in Kent is the small village of Pluckley. It looks charming and chocolate boxy: a pub, a butcher, a post office and a churchyar...
Coming on Halloween... Other Edens
All things must change. As surely as winter bursts into spring life, spring into bountiful summer, summer into the falling leaves of autumn...
The Town That Knew Too Much: The Doughnut
The Doughnut. A giant circular low-rise office block in west Cheltenham; it is, jokingly I'm sure, said to look from above like a giant bull...
The Town That Knew Too Much: The Black Abbot
Where do the dead go when they die? Do we file them away in obituaries? Or celebrate them at a memorial service and slowly forget their day-...
The Town That Knew Too Much: Time of Trial
Geoffrey Prime, Soviet spy at GCHQ, has been arrested on sexual offences against children. But that was just the start of his world unravell...
The Town That Knew Too Much: The Wishing Fish Clock
There's a clock in Cheltenham that hangs above a shopping arcade. Below its face a magnificent golden fish rotates and, on the half hour spe...
The Town That Knew Too Much: Through The Looking Glass
This is the story of a man who had not one but two double lives. It is the story of the disorientating topsy-turvy world you'll find through...
The Town That Knew Too Much: Enigmas
Enigmas. Things that cannot be understood; things that must be unravelled and unriddled. Things that are not what they seem. This series is,...
The Town That Knew Too Much: The Devil's Chimney
Tucked away in a scenic corner of the Cotswolds, you'll find the Regency spa town of Cheltenham. It could be more English: from royal visits...
Coming Soon... The Town That Knew Too Much
Set in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds, in a part of England known for its beautiful Regency architecture, famous public schools and sky-...
The Town That Didn't Stare: Why East Grinstead?
East Grinstead, the home of Scientologists, Mormons, Rosicrucians and more; a nexus for ley lines, a perfect Prime Meridian settlement and B...
The Town That Didn't Stare: A Very British Killing
In 1556, three martyrs are burned at the stake. In 1812, the Prime Minister is gunned down in the House of Commons. And in 1996 a businessma...
The Town That Didn't Stare: The Guinea Pig Club
What is the Guinea Pig Club? At the height of the Second World War, the sleepy Sussex town of East Grinstead played host to one of the most...
The Town That Didn't Stare: The Ley of the Land
There is something that makes East Grinstead special, and has drawn extraordinary people to what looks, on the surface, like a very ordinary...
The Town That Didn't Stare: The Scientologists on the Hill
In 1959, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, one of the world's most controversial religions, bought a manor house in the sleepy Sus...
The Town That Didn't Stare: The Land of the South Saxons
From the early humans of the Middle Pleistocene era through to the Norman conquest, the history of Sussex is a tale for the ages. East Grins...