Shows / The History Book Buffs
The History Book Buffs
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 Reviews Deep dives into major historical topics — WW2, the Cold War, Tudor intrigue, empire, revolution and more — with sharp analysis and curated reading recommendations. ⚡ Buffs in Brief Short, focused episodes on events that happened…
Episodes
- The History Book Buffs
Who Blew Up Nord Stream? The Sabotage That Changed Europe History Book Buffs | The Nord Stream Conspiracy by Bojan Pancevski
In September 2022, explosions ripped through the Nord Stream gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea. Who was responsible for one of the most audacious acts of…
- The History Book Buffs
The Wager: Shipwreck, Mutiny and the Art of Writing History
How do you make a history book read like a novel—and where should you draw the line? This week on History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse…
- The History Book Buffs
Lord Cochrane: The real Jack Aubrey?
Thomas Cochrane: The real-life Master and Commander | Peter Moore’s A Dangerous Game Naval hero. Political radical. Convicted fraudster. Thomas Cochrane’s life…
- The History Book Buffs
Locked up with a Nazi
We’re back — and starting with a book that genuinely floored us. In 1949, Polish resistance fighter and journalist Kazimierz Moczarski was thrown into a Warsaw…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
🎆 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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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 —…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…
- The History Book Buffs
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…